Pharaoh built up a false narrative that he was a god. The plagues slowly destroyed that narrative. There is nothing worse for a dictator than to have his lies revealed as such.
Pharaoh, Narrative Control, and the Collapse of a Lie
One of the central struggles in this week’s parashah is not merely between Pharaoh and Moses, or even between Egypt and Israel. It is a struggle over who controls the narrative.
Pharaoh is an authoritarian ruler in the purest sense. Egypt is not a constitutional monarchy; it is an absolute one. Pharaoh’s will is law. What he desires becomes policy. But when such a system begins to unravel, the ruler does not surrender power gracefully. Instead, he fights to preserve something else: the story he tells about himself and his world.
This is the last stand of every dictator.
From the beginning of the plagues, Pharaoh is losing—again and again. Yet he continues to minimize, reinterpret, and dismiss what is happening. Why? Because once he admits the truth, the entire structure collapses. His authority rests not on justice or legitimacy, but on illusion.
A striking example appears with the very first plague. Moses is instructed to confront Pharaoh early in the morning, by the Nile. The commentators explain why: Pharaoh presents himself as a god. A god, of course, has no human bodily functions. To maintain this fiction, Pharaoh must secretly go to the river at dawn.
Moses knows this. He grew up in Pharaoh’s palace. By confronting him there, Moses is not merely delivering a warning—he is exposing the lie. He is stripping away the divine mask and revealing Pharaoh for what he truly is: a human being.
This theme runs deeper. The entire enslavement of the Israelites was built on a false narrative. The Torah tells us that a new Pharaoh arose “who did not know Joseph.” This does not mean ignorance; it means willful denial. Joseph saved Egypt from famine. Everyone knew it. But acknowledging that truth would undermine the regime’s justification for oppression.
So Pharaoh rewrites history: What have these people ever done for us?
Once a society is built on a lie, it must be defended relentlessly. Truth becomes dangerous. Memory becomes subversive. Narrative control becomes essential to survival.
That is why Pharaoh denigrates Moses, belittles the Israelites, and dismisses each plague as coincidence or magic. He cannot afford to recognize reality. And yet, with every plague, another layer of illusion is peeled away.
On one level, the plagues are meant to free the Jewish people. On a deeper level, they are meant to demonstrate something even more fundamental: God is God, and Pharaoh is not. Each plague dismantles another pillar of Egypt’s theology and political mythology. Nature itself refuses to cooperate with the fiction.
This contrast becomes even clearer when we look at Moses himself. When the Torah introduces him, it does not name his parents. It simply says that “a man and a woman” had a child. Rabbi Yaakov Kamenetsky points out the significance of this omission. Moses is not born a demigod. He has no royal lineage, no divine origin story. The Torah is emphasizing a radical idea: any human being can rise to leadership—but no human being becomes God.
That is the essential difference between Moses and Pharaoh.
Pharaoh claims divinity and must deny his humanity. Moses embraces his humanity and becomes the greatest leader in Jewish history. Redemption does not come through self-deification, but through humility.
The ultimate lesson of the Exodus is not only political or historical—it is existential. When power is built on lies, it must constantly fight the truth. When leaders forget that they are human, reality will remind them.
We are not diminished by being human.
We are dignified by it.
God is God.
And human beings—no matter how powerful—are not.
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