Punishing Gradually

There seems to be a very odd verse in Parshat Va'era. Moshe and Aharon had already moved on to the plague of hail, hail laced with scorching fire. And yet, even though the Egyptian people had already suffered from boils, Moshe on Hashem's instructions rewinds and says prior to afflicting the Egyptians with hail: "I could have stretched forth My hand and stricken you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been effaced from the earth."

In other words, Hashem backtracks; pestilence is already passé, the Egyptian's livestock has already been struck and the people can't stand for the boils which leave them no peace of mind. Why does God go back to the pestilence?

It would seem that the answer is what guided, or directed, Rabbi Yehuda to break up the plagues into triads of three. Each set of three had a structure of its own. First, there was an speech where Moshe told Pharaoh the point of the set of the next three plagues - and then, Moshe told the non-believing Pharaoh which new revelation he would attain because of the plagues. First, it was that Hashem was in fact Hashem, a God with active engagement in the land who sought to protect his people using merciful retribution; second, not only was it that Hashem was Hashem (the Tetragrammaton) but that Hashem's place or manifestation was "b'kerev ha'aretz", or in the midst of the land, stemming from the root karov, or close, i.e. God wasn't a distant being detached from human experience but rather actively engaged, and then finally now, Moshe was telling Pharaoh, before I up it a notch with my last set (and after I start, I'm not turning back), now you have to realize that Hashem is master, or Hashem, "b'kol ha'aretz," in all of the land. 

In essence, Pharaoh is going from a place where he didn't even recognize Hashem's being, to Hashem's domain being widespread, actively present, to Hashem reigning over the entirety of the land and there being no other entity other than him. 

The take-home message here seems to be that to actively educate, and on the flip-side, punish (also a form of education), each and every stage needs to be defined and concrete. Pharaoh understood what Moshe was teaching him, and understood the consequence, the hardening of Pharaoh's heart precipitating and enabling each successive stage of Hashem's revelation. But, it was not a fait accompli; it was Pharaoh's decision, at each and every "exit point" to bring upon Egypt even greater suffering, which is exactly what Moshe is telling him here. If you think I'm strictly out to get you, I could have smitten not only the animals but you and your kingdom as well in the previous set; now, that you've refused to recognize my jurisdiction over you and my people, you have no choice but to bear the full brunt of what's next, hail, locusts, crippling darkness, and ultimately, the death of each and every firstborn. 

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