No Absolutes

"…And every firstborn will die…." (Ex. 11:5)

G‑d did not say: "I will kill him." The reason, as we have pointed out on previous occasions is, that evil does not originate with G‑d. He is the Creator of all that is good. Anything in the nature of evil is initiated by one of the agents He has designated. G‑d Himself indicated who was the firstborn; His agents carried out the death sentence. This is why the mention of "destroyers" at the time the Israelites put the blood on their door-posts and the fact that G‑d Himself orchestrated the plague are not contradictory.

There may also be another meaning, similar to what we are told where Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai put his eye on a sinner and that sinner died as a result. (Shabbat 34) At first glance, how are we to understand that a pious person of the caliber of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai would summarily "execute" someone by giving him "the eye?" The same Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai had castigated people of the evil eye as possessing a very negative virtue. (Zohar III, page 211) Actually, the exact wording in the Talmud was, "he looked at him with his eye" (singular). We would have expected the Talmud to say that "he looked at him with his eyes" (plural)

We have to remember that inasmuch as "evil" and "death" are synonymous, how is it that evil exists at all? This is because there are no absolutes; just as the attribute of Mercy contains a small part of the attribute of Justice, so every good virtue contains a small element of evil, and vice versa. In the case of evil, death occurs when that small part of "good" or "life" which kept it alive is withdrawn. Keeping this in mind, we can understand the peculiar statement according to which G‑d will slaughter the evil urge at an appropriate time in the future in the presence of the righteous. (Sukkah 52) How are we to understand this? How can one slaughter an angel (disembodied spirit)? Considering what we have just said, we can understand the statement in the Talmud very easily. G‑d will remove the part of the evil urge which makes it a viable, i.e. active force.

We also need to appreciate the natural tendency of identical, or basically similar, virtues to coalesce with each other. The good attracts the good; the evil tends to attract more evil to itself. This is the secret of how the souls of the Israelites which had their origin in the positive emanations could "draw" to themselves the "lost" souls which we described as being particularly prevalent in Egypt.

[The author has repeatedly described these souls as having been captured by the negative side of the emanations as a result of Adam eating from the tree of knowledge. (Compare his comments on Genesis 49:9) EM.]

G‑d had given outstanding Torah scholars the ability to attract to themselves the "good" part of any sinner. When Rabbi Shimon looked at the sinner in question, he extracted the good part of that sinner, thus leaving no viable element within that person. As a result, the sinner died. When G‑d passed through Egypt on that night, He extracted the good that was within any of these firstborn; as a result, such a firstborn simply dropped dead. It was as if Rabbi Shimon had put his eye on such an individual.

The meaning of "and every firstborn will die" is not simply that the soul of that person would die leaving the body as it had been, but the element which had made that person different from others because he was firstborn would die with him. In other words, there would never again be Egyptians (or even other Gentiles) whose characteristics would include elements of what had been known as the "firstborn" of the people beholden to the powers of the kelipa, the forces of negative virtues. Perhaps this is why no exile ever again assumed the dimensions of the exile in Egypt. G‑d had weakened the powers of the kelipa permanently.

[Selected with permission from the five-volume English edition of "Ohr HaChaim: the Torah Commentary of Rabbi Chaim Ben Attar" by Eliyahu Munk.]