Parshat Shemot5 min read

Pharaoh Tried to Heal Himself With Hebrew Blood

Pharaoh's leprosy drives his doctors to prescribe bathing in Hebrew children's blood, turning Egypt's cruelty into a medical horror.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Sick King's Decree
  2. Ginzberg Names the Remedy
  3. What Pharaoh's Disease Was For
  4. The Suffering Increased Further

Pharaoh was covered in disease, and his physicians told him the only cure was Hebrew blood.

That is the moment Egypt's cruelty stops looking like policy and becomes something else. A king who made a whole people his tools now wanted to turn their children's bodies into medicine.

The Sick King's Decree

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 2:23 reads the cry of the Israelites through a new lens. The Torah says the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned from the bondage and their cry rose to God. The Targum says the king did not die. He was struck with disease and he commanded that Israelite firstborn be killed so he could bathe in their blood.

The cry that reached heaven was not only the cry of enslaved labor. It was the cry of parents whose children had just been ordered to become a cure for the man who enslaved them.

The Targum is explaining why the cry is so sharp, why the verse says it pierced heaven, why this particular moment triggered a divine response when years of bondage before it had not. The decree to kill firstborns for medical bathing is the final form of a despotism that has consumed everything around it and begun consuming children for its own maintenance.

Ginzberg Names the Remedy

Legends of the Jews, compiled by Louis Ginzberg between 1909 and 1938, gives the tradition fuller shape. Pharaoh's disease covered his entire body. His court physicians, who in rabbinic memory included Balaam and Job among his advisors, could offer no ordinary remedy. Balaam made the recommendation: Hebrew blood. Bathe in the blood of three hundred children, morning and evening, and the flesh will heal.

The decree went out. Three hundred children a day, the tradition says in its most extreme form. The mothers fled to the hills with their newborns. The fathers worked their quotas under threat while hiding where their children were. The slave quarters became a place where people organized in secret to protect the most vulnerable members of their families from a medical project they had never agreed to serve.

The king who wanted healing showed no sign of receiving it.

What Pharaoh's Disease Was For

The story has a theological argument built into it. Pharaoh does not ask what his disease means. He does not consult a prophet. He does not consider whether the condition of the people he rules has anything to do with the condition of his own body. He asks whose body can be spent to make him comfortable again.

The disease is not merely physical misfortune. It is a mirror. The kingdom built on the consumption of Hebrew bodies is now generating a king whose body consumes Hebrew children. The logic of the empire has become the logic of the cure.

That is why the cry rises at this moment and not before. The Targum is making an argument about how heaven counts: there is a line, and when it is crossed, the cry reaches. The blood bath crossed it.

The Suffering Increased Further

Ginzberg also records that when Moses and Aaron first appeared before Pharaoh, the king's response was to increase the burden. He had already been denying them straw for their bricks. Now he forbade them from resting on the Sabbath, because he knew they used that time to read the scrolls that spoke of their redemption. He understood what the scrolls did. He knew hope was a fuel. He tried to cut the fuel line.

Moses and Aaron had brought him news that their God had seen the affliction. The king responded by making the affliction worse. He was not ignorant of what he was doing. He was racing the rescue. He knew that a people who still had enough hope to observe the Sabbath had not yet broken, and he wanted them broken before the rescue arrived.

The plagues began before he finished trying.

PharaohEgyptDivine JusticeMosesExodus
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From the tradition

Sources

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 2:23Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

Why did the cry of the Hebrews finally pierce heaven? Because Pharaoh had stopped being a tyrant and become a monster.

"And it was after many of those days that the king of Mizraim was struck with disease, and he commanded to kill the firstborn of the sons of Israel, that he might bathe himself in their blood. And the sons of Israel groaned with the labour that was hard upon them; and they cried, and their cry ascended to the high heavens of the Lord. And He spake in His Memra to deliver them from the travail."

The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (2:23) is unflinching. Pharaoh has contracted a disease, tradition calls it leprosy. And his physicians, or perhaps his magicians, have told him the cure: bathe in Hebrew blood. He has therefore issued a new decree. Not drown the male babies any longer. Now: slaughter the firstborn so the king can soak in them.

This is the moral bottom. The tyrant who once feared the babies now wants to use them as medicine. The system that once wanted to prevent births now wants to harvest bodies. When a society starts using the weak as raw material for the powerful, heaven stops whispering and starts listening.

The verse pivots on this exact point. Their cry ascended. Not just a cry of pain. A cry that finally reached a threshold the Holy One had been waiting for. And He spake in His Memra. His Word, to deliver them. The Targum's preferred term for God's active presence is moving here. Redemption is not coming as an abstraction. It is coming as a decision.

Beloved, when tyrants begin treating people as medicine, heaven becomes a physician.

Full source
Legends of the Jews, IV. Moses In Egypt, A Bloody RemedyLegends of the Jews

The Bible tells us about the Israelites' enslavement in Egypt, but some of the most chilling details come from other sources, like Legends of the Jews by Rabbi Louis Ginzberg. Ginzberg, drawing on a wealth of midrashic (rabbinic interpretive commentary) and Talmudic sources, paints a truly horrifying picture of the final years of Israel's bondage.

In Ginzberg's retelling, Pharaoh wasn't just a cruel tyrant; he was also stricken with a terrible plague, a form of leprosy that covered his entire body. Imagine the agony, the shame, the desperation. What would you do?

Pharaoh, in his desperation, consulted his advisors: Balaam, Jethro, and Job. You might recognize Job from the Book of Job, a man known for his patience and righteousness. Balaam, however, was a very different sort. He offered a truly horrifying solution: the blood of Israelite children. "Thou canst regain thy health," Balaam said, "only if thou wilt slaughter Israelitish children and bathe in their blood." What kind of depravity leads someone to suggest such a thing?

Jethro, horrified, immediately fled to Midian. He refused to be party to such an atrocity. Job, though he disapproved, remained silent. Midrash Rabbah tells us that Job was later punished for his silence with a year of suffering, but was then rewarded in this world so that he would not have a claim on the world to come.

And Pharaoh? He listened to Balaam. According to this account, Pharaoh had his officials snatch babies from their mothers' arms and slaughter them, bathing in their blood in a vain attempt to cure himself. For ten years, this horror continued, one child a day sacrificed to Pharaoh's vanity.

But it didn't work. In fact, his condition worsened. His leprosy turned into boils, adding to his suffering. Just imagine the added agony, physical and spiritual!

Then came the news that the Israelites in Goshen, the land allotted to them in Egypt, were becoming lax in their forced labor. Enraged and weakened, Pharaoh had himself harnessed to a horse-drawn chariot to go and crack the whip. But divine justice, it seems, had other plans.

As Pharaoh's chariot passed through a narrow passage, the horses jostled, and his chariot overturned. He was crushed, his flesh torn. Plainly: "for this thing was from the Lord, He had heard the cries of His people and their affliction."

Pharaoh was carried back to Egypt, knowing his end was near.

His advisors urged him to choose a successor from among his sons. He had three sons – Atro, Adikam, and Moryon – and two daughters. The eldest son was an idiot. The second, Adikam, while clever, was physically repulsive, short and ungainly. Nevertheless, Pharaoh chose Adikam, who became the next Pharaoh.

The old Pharaoh died in disgrace, his body so putrid it couldn't even be embalmed. The Lord, the story says, requited him with evil for the evil he had done to Israel.

Adikam, also known as Akuz (meaning "short" in Egyptian), proved to be even worse than his father. He increased the Israelites' workload and, in a particularly gruesome detail, ordered that missing bricks be replaced with Israelite infants, literally built into the walls.

The suffering of the Israelites reached a fever pitch. They cried out to God, and He heard them.

Now, here's a fascinating point: the text emphasizes that God's decision to redeem the Israelites wasn't necessarily because of their righteousness. In fact, God knew they would later sin, even worshipping the golden calf. As the text says, "they were empty of good deeds." However, God remembered his covenant with their ancestors. They also, the text points out, possessed several virtues: they avoided incestuous relations, refrained from gossip, maintained their Hebrew names and language, and showed compassion for one another. They helped each other complete their work. "Therefore," the text concludes, "God spake, 'They deserve that I should have mercy upon them, for if a man shows mercy unto another, I have mercy upon him.'"

This story, while gruesome, offers a powerful message. It's a reminder of the depths of human cruelty, the consequences of unchecked power, and the enduring importance of compassion and solidarity, even in the face of unimaginable suffering. And perhaps most importantly, it reminds us that even when we feel undeserving, even when we fall short, the potential for redemption always remains.

Full source
Legends of the Jews, IV. Moses In Egypt, The Suffering IncreasesLegends of the Jews

It wasn't all smooth sailing once Moses and Aaron showed up. In fact, things initially got a whole lot harder for the Israelites.

Pharaoh, that stubborn, prideful king, didn't just refuse to let the Israelites go. Oh no, he went further. According to Legends of the Jews by Ginzberg, on the very day Moses and Aaron had their audience with him, he decreed that the Israelites must deliver the same amount of bricks, but without being given any straw to make them! Imagine the back-breaking work suddenly becoming exponentially more difficult.

It didn't stop there. Pharaoh, suspecting the Israelites were finding hope and strength in their traditions, also forbade them from resting on the Sabbath. He knew they used that precious time to read the scrolls that foretold their redemption. Can you imagine the sheer cruelty?

Why did God allow this? As Ginzberg tells us, "All this was a part of God's plan; the oppression of Israel was to be increased the closer the end approached." It's a difficult concept to grasp, isn't it? That suffering could be part of a larger, divine plan.

The Israelites, desperate for straw, were forced to scavenge, and were mistreated by the Egyptians. This widespread cruelty meant that the Divine punishment wouldn't fall solely on Pharaoh, but on all of Egypt. This terrible period of extreme suffering lasted six long months. Moses, in the meantime, journeyed to Midian, leaving Aaron alone in Egypt.

When Moses returned at the end of this reign of terror, two Israelite officers confronted him and Aaron, blaming them for making things worse. Can you imagine the despair and anger? They accused Moses and Aaron of making the situation even more unbearable. "If ye are truly the ambassadors of God," they said, "then may He judge between us and Pharaoh. You are responsible for the widespread stench now issuing from the Israelitish corpses used as bricks for building when our tale was not complete."

These officers, Dathan and Abiram, were known troublemakers, and this wasn't the first or last time they caused problems for Moses. They felt like sheep caught between a wolf (Pharaoh) and a shepherd (Moses), being torn apart in the middle.

The suffering of his people deeply troubled Moses. He turned to God, questioning the justice of it all. "I have read the book of Genesis through," he said, "and I found the doom in it pronounced upon the generation of the deluge… These, too, were just. But what hath this nation of Israel done unto Thee, that it is oppressed more than any other nation in history?" According to Legends of the Jews, Moses even questioned why the descendants of Esau and Ishmael weren't suffering similarly, since they were also descendants of Abraham.

Moses's words are bold, even audacious. He essentially asks God, "Why did you even send me if things are just going to get worse?" According to Ginzberg, if God were only a God of justice, He might have struck Moses down for his audacity. But because Moses spoke out of compassion, God responded with grace.

God answered Moses, "Thou shalt see what I will do to Pharaoh," hinting that Moses would witness Pharaoh's punishment but not that of the thirty-one kings of Canaan. Moses was being rebuked for his lack of faith and his questioning.

God reminded Moses that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had also faced challenges, yet they didn't question Him in the same way. He had appeared to them as El Shaddai, God Almighty, but they hadn't known Him by His name Adonai, God All-Merciful, as Moses did. Moses had demanded to know God's name and then questioned its effectiveness when suffering increased.

God then swore an oath to fulfill His covenant with the Patriarchs, rewarding their unquestioning faith and the perseverance of the Israelites despite their suffering. This oath was meant to reassure Moses and to ensure that the redemption would indeed come.

But even with the promise of redemption, God cautioned Moses and Aaron. He warned them that the Israelites were "perverse, passionate, and troublesome," and that they would face abuse, even being stoned. He instructed them to respect Pharaoh and to consult with the elders. Most importantly, He told them to lead the people away from idolatry.

This last task seemed almost impossible to Moses. "See, the children of Israel will not hearken unto me. How, then, should Pharaoh hearken unto me?" This was the third time Moses had declined God's mission, and now, divine patience was wearing thin.

Initially, only Moses was meant to perform the miracles, but because of his hesitation, Aaron was now included. From then on, the word of God was addressed to Aaron as well, and he was given a share in performing the wonders that would lead to the Exodus.

The story reminds us that even in the face of immense suffering and doubt, faith and perseverance are key. And sometimes, just sometimes, things get worse before they get better. It's a message of hope, even amidst the darkest of times.

Full source
Midrash Aggadah, Exodus 2:23Midrash Aggadah

"And it came to pass in the course of those many days, etc." From here we learn that the days of trouble are more numerous than the days of good.

"And the king of Egypt died." This teaches that he was stricken with tzaraat (leprosy), and a leper is accounted as one dead.

"And the children of Israel groaned." This "groaning" is nothing other than death, as it is said, "for my groanings are many, etc." (Lamentations 1:22), for the wicked Pharaoh would slay them and take their blood and bathe in it, thinking that he would thereby be cured.

"And they cried out." For they would take the infants of Israel and set them in the place of the bricks, and they would shriek until their shrieking went up to God.

"From the labor." For they would force their wives.

Full source