Before the Exodus, G-d struck Egypt with ten plagues. The plagues contained four aspects: G-d asking Moses to go to Pharaoh to let the people go and warn him of the consequences of the plagues if he refuses; Moses asking Pharaoh to let the people go and warn of the impending plague if he refuses; hardening of Pharaoh’s heart and his refusal’ and the actual plague. Similarly, before the plague of locusts, it states (Exodus 10:1-6):
Then G-d said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them, (2) and that you may recount in the hearing of your child and of your child’s child how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed My signs among them—in order that you may know that I am G-d.” (3) So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, “Thus says G-d, the G-d of the Hebrews, ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me? Let My people go that they may worship Me. (4) For if you refuse to let My people go, tomorrow I will bring locusts on your territory. (5) They shall cover the surface of the land, so that no one will be able to see the land. They shall devour the surviving remnant that was left to you after the hail; and they shall eat away all your trees that grow in the field.
The structure of this plague is: in verses 1 and 2, G-d tells Moses to go to Pharaoh; verse 3, Moses goes to Pharaoh, asking him to the let the people go; verses 4 and 5, Moses’ warning of the consequences of the plague of locusts if he refuses. This is followed by verse 12-15 with the actual plague of locusts:
Then G-d said to Moses, “Hold out your arm over the land of Egypt for the locusts, that they may come upon the land of Egypt and eat up all the grasses in the land, whatever the hail has left.” So Moses held out his rod over the land of Egypt, and G-d drove an east wind over the land all that day and all night; and when morning came, the east wind had brought the locusts. Locusts invaded all the land of Egypt and settled within all the territory of Egypt in a thick mass; never before had there been so many, nor will there ever be so many again. They hid all the land from view, and the land was darkened; and they ate up all the grasses of the field and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left, so that nothing green was left, of tree or grass of the field, in all the land of Egypt.
No instruction of warning
In the case of the locusts, however, when asking of Moses to go to Pharaoh, it omits what Moses should actually say to Pharaoh. It only states (Exodus 10:1-2): ‘Then G-d said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them.’ Rashi, on Exodus 10:1, comments on this and inserts: ‘and warn him’ (ve-hit-re bo). R. Elijah Mizrachi (1425-1555), R. Judah Loewe (1520-1609) and R. Obadiah Bertinoro (c.1540-c.1516) explain that the reason for this addition in Rashi is to fill in the missing biblical text, that although it does not say explicitly that G-d instructed Moses to warn Pharaoh, the subsequent warning, as cited in verses 4 and 5, was not based on his own understanding of what G-d wanted him to say, but by the command of G-d, similar to the warning prior to other plagues.
Variants in the Rashi manuscripts
There are four versions of this comment of Rashi in the manuscripts and the published edition:
1. In the published edition, it cites the words: ‘And the L-rd said to Moses: Go to Pharaoh’ and comments: ‘and warn him.’ This is found in the Bomberg Chumash with Rashi, printed in Venice 1547, as well as manuscripts: Frankfurt MS 19, Breslau MS 102, Breslau MS 10, Paris MS 159, and Paris MS 157.
2. In manuscripts of Rashi: MS Leipzig B.H.1, MS Munich 5, as well as Oxford manuscripts of Rashi: Oxford MS CCC 165, Oxford MS Oppenheim 34 (1201-1225), British Library MS Or 2696 (1350-1399), and Ashkenaz Oxford MS. Oppenheim 35 (1408), the comment is omitted completely. In most of the versions that omit the commentary, the commentary on Exodus chapter 10 begins with the title of the parsha: ‘Go to Pharaoh’ (bo el Pharaoh), and proceeds straight into the comment on the following words in the verse: ‘I may set’ (shi-ti). In MS Munich 5, it includes in the opening the sentence: ‘And the L-rd said to Moses: Go unto Pharaoh, etc.,’ but omits the comment: ‘and warn him,’ and instead proceeds with the comment on the following words in the verse: ‘I may set’ (shi-ti).
3. In Oxford MS. Oppenheim Add. 4° 188 (1301-1400), the comment is added in the margin: ‘Go to Pharaoh: and warn him.’ In Oxford MS. Canonici Or. 35 (1401-25), the comment is also added as a marginal note, but above the line of the main text. In Oxford MS. Canonici Or. 81 (1396), it utilises the name of the Parsha in large font: ‘Go to Pharaoh’ (Bo el Pharaoh) and adds in the margin above the main text: ’and warn him.’ These manuscripts omit, however, the opening of the verse: ‘And G-d said to Moses.’
4. In Italian MS. Michael 384 (1399) from Camerino, it has the comment included in the main commentary, after the heading: ‘Go to Pharaoh,’ but omitting the opening of the verse: ‘And G-d said to Moses.’ This is also the version cited by R. Elijah Mizrachi, R. Judah Loewe and R. Obadiah Bertinoro.
One can summarise the variants into three categories: a. omission, b. addition of the comment, citing just: ‘Go to Pharaoh,’ and, c. addition of the comment, including the opening of the verse: ‘And the L-rd said to Moses.’ The history of the text appears to be: first, it was omitted, as indicated from MS Leipzig 1 and Oxford CCC 165 manuscripts, beginning the commentary on Exodus chapter 10 with just the words: ‘Go to Pharaoh.’ The opening was then expanded to include: ‘And the L-rd said to Moses: Go to Pharaoh, etc.,’ but still omitting the comment: ‘and warn him.’ The comment: ‘and warn him’ was then added as a marginal note, perhaps by a disciple of Rashi, following by including it in the main commentary. In the process of including the comment in the main commentary, it seems to have first utilised for this comment just the citation from the verse: ‘Go to Pharaoh,’ but then expanded, perhaps following MS Munich 5, to include also: ‘And the L-rd said to Moses.’ Combining the full opening of the verse, as found in some of the early manuscripts, and the additional comment, became the published version in 1547. What is the reason for these variants?
Four interpretations
Four interpretations help us understand the comment of Rashi:[1]
1. As mentioned, R. Elijah Mizrachi, R. Judah Loewe and R. Obadiah Bertinoro explain, the comment of Rashi is merely to highlight that the subsequent warning of Pharaoh in verses 4 and 5, is in fact issued by the command of G-d and not drawn from Moses’ own logic. The same is the case with the plague of the firstborn, where it states (Exodus 11:4): ‘Moses said, Thus says G-d: Toward midnight I will go forth among the Egyptians,’ but there is no statement saying that G-d actually said this to Moses. Nevertheless, it is clear that Moses would not issue a statement in the name of G-d, if G-d had not instructed him to. Furthermore, in some cases, the Torah does not provide information about a statement from G-d for Moses to convey to Pharaoh and there is no actual statement to Pharaoh, but nevertheless, this does not mean there was no instruction. This is the case with the plague of boils, where it only states (Exodus 9:8): ‘Then G-d said to Moses and Aaron, “Each of you take handfuls of soot from the kiln, and let Moses throw it toward the sky in the sight of Pharaoh.”’ Similarly, with the plague of darkness, it just states (Exodus 10:21): ‘Then G-d said to Moses, “Hold out your arm toward the sky that there may be darkness upon the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be touched.”’
2. A further interpretation of Rashi’s comment is that there is a distinction between warning and testifying about impending plagues. In Exodus Rabba 9:12 and Midrash Tanchuma, Vaera 13, it states:
‘And a full seven days were completed after G-d struck the [Nile] River’ - Rabbi Yehudah and Rabbi Nechemiah (disagree). One says he warned them for twenty four days so that the plague wouldn’t come, and for seven days they experienced the plague. The other says for seven days he warned them, and for twenty four days they experienced the plague. According to the opinion of the one who says for twenty four days he warned, and the plague took seven days; and according to the opinion of the one who says for seven days he warned and the plague took twenty four days, [we find that] ‘a full seven days were completed after, etc’ - that he warned them regarding the next plague.
This suggests that Moses warned Pharaoh before each plague. Rashi on Exodus 7:21 comments, however, there were two kinds of warning:
And there was completed (the verb is singular) the number of seven days during which the river did not return to its original condition. For each plague functioned a quarter of a month and for three quarters he testified and warned them.’
The term ‘warning’ suggests uncertainty as to the impending plague actually occurring, since Pharaoh may heed the warning. The term ‘testifying’ about the impending plague suggests, however, certainty regarding the impending plague, as it is a punishment not for the future - not heeding G-d about the Exodus, but rather past refusal. The latter certainty occurs in the case of the first plague of blood, where it states in Exodus 7:16:
And say to him, ‘L-rd, the G-d of the Hebrews, sent me to you to say, “Let My people go that they may worship Me in the wilderness.” But you have paid no heed until now.’ Thus says G-d, “By this you shall know that I am G-d.” See, I shall strike the water in the Nile with the rod that is in my hand, and it will be turned into blood.’
With the plague of frogs, however, the warning was a stipulation (Exodus 7:27): ‘If you refuse to let them go, then I will plague your whole country with frogs.’ The same is the case with swarms of insects (Exodus 8:17) and pestilence (Exodus 9:2). In this context, the comment of Rashi: ‘and warn him,’ pertaining to the plague of locusts, is to inform that the nature of the statement was a ‘warning,’ as opposed to testimony. Although not explicit, this is deduced from verse 4, when Moses issues this warning to Pharaoh: ‘For if you refuse to let My people go, tomorrow I will bring locusts on your territory.’
The reason why the comment of Rashi is necessary, is because the biblical text may be understood differently: a. it says in verse 3: ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before Me? Let My people go that they may worship Me.’ This implies the plague of locusts is for the past refusal to free the Jews. Furthermore, it states in verse 2: ‘I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them.’ This suggests the warning is in the manner of testimony, despite the language in verse 4: ‘For if you refuse to let My people go, tomorrow I will bring locusts on your territory.’ For this reason, Rashi clarifies that it was in fact a conditional warning.
3. A third interpretation is that the comment of Rashi aims to answer a problem in the text: why is it necessary to state that G-d will harden his heart (Exodus 10:1): ‘For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers,’ when this had already been stated on three occasions: Exodus 4:21, 7:3 and 9:12. Relating to the actual hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, the Torah states this on six occasions, before the plague of locusts, including Exodus 7:13, 7:22, 8:11, 8:15, 8:28 and 9:7, and in Exodus 8:11 it clarifies that the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, seemingly on his own volition, was in fact ‘as G-d had spoken:’ ‘But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he became stubborn and would not heed them, as G-d had spoken.’ What is then the reason why it states an additional time: ‘Then G-d said to Moses, Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers’? The comment of Rashi: ‘and warn him’ may be explained in light of the following verse: ‘in order that I may display these My signs among them, and that you may recount in the hearing of your child and of your child’s child how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed My signs among them—in order that you may know that I am G-d.’ The ‘mockery’ is the fact that Pharaoh, on one hand, is being warned to let the Jews leave Egypt, implying freewill, but in fact ‘I have hardened his heart’ – he had lost all ability to choose otherwise, demonstrating the power of the Al-mighty.
4. A fourth interpretation is that the comment of Rashi aims to reconcile a different problem in the biblical text: what is the logic in the statement: ‘Then G-d said to Moses, Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them’? How is: ‘I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers’ a reason to ‘Go to Pharaoh?’ If Pharaoh’s heart is hardened, that is a reason not to warn him! As above, the comment of Rashi: ‘and warn him’ aims to explain this reasoning, based on the following verse: ‘I made a mockery of the Egyptians:’ on one hand, being warned while in fact ‘I have hardened his heart’ demonstrated to Pharaoh the power of the Al-mighty.
Variants in the manuscripts
This explains the reason for the variants in the manuscripts of Rashi’s commentary on Exodus 10:1. The version that has the comment ‘and warn them’ omitted, suggests the purpose of the comment, following the understanding of R. Elijah Mizrachi, R. Judah Loewe and R. Obadiah Bertinoro, is merely to state the obvious: G-d did in fact tell Moses to warn Pharaoh about the locusts, even though it is not explicitly mentioned. For this reason it is omitted. The versions that have it included, with the addition: ‘And G-d said to Moses,’ clarifies that despite the obvious, that G-d told Moses to warn Pharaoh about the plague of locusts, it was nevertheless necessary to have it included, for clarity.
The editions that have the comment added, but without: ‘And G-d said to Moses’ in the beginning, citing only: ‘Go to Pharaoh,’ suggest that the comment is not merely to explain the obvious, that it was G-d who told Moses to warn Pharaoh, but to either negate a valid misunderstanding in the text or reconcile a problem in the text: This was a. to negate the idea that the prediction of the plague of locusts was not in fact a warning but a testimony, b. to explain why G-d’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is a reason to go to Pharaoh – in order to mock him, c. and why the statement about G-d hardening Pharaoh’s heart is necessary at all, as it had already been stated previously on more than one occasion. The warning of Pharaoh in this case, alongside G-d’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, was intended to mock Pharaoh, demonstrating the power of the Al-mighty and bringing the knowledge of the existence of G-d to Egypt – the ultimate purpose of the Exodus.
[1] See Likkutei Sichot 6:57-62.