We know the biblical account, but what about the legends, the stories whispered in hushed tones across generations?
Well, according to those whispers, Pharaoh never truly died.
Imagine this: He stands eternally at the gates of Gehenna, hell, a chilling sentinel. And as the kings of the nations arrive, he delivers a stark warning. As Legends of the Jews tells us, he cries out, "O ye fools! Why have ye not learnt knowledge from me? I am denied the Lord God, and He brought ten plagues upon me, sent me to the bottom of the sea, kept me there for fifty days, released me then, and brought me up. Thus I could not but believe in Him." A pretty powerful indictment, right? He becomes a testament, albeit a reluctant one, to the power of God.
But the story doesn't end there. What about the bodies of the Egyptians? What became of them? It wasn't just happenstance that they washed ashore. According to tradition, there were very specific reasons why God ensured this happened.
First, to silence any doubt in the minds of the Israelites. They couldn't claim that the Egyptians had also escaped, simply by taking a different route. There was no parallel escape.
Second, to prevent the Egyptians from deluding themselves into thinking the Israelites had suffered the same fate as them. Everyone needed to know the truth.
Third, and this might be a little harder to swallow, the Israelites were entitled to the spoils. The silver, the gold, the precious adornments that the Egyptians wore – it all became the booty of the freed slaves.
And finally, perhaps the most human, and raw, reason of all: the Israelites deserved the satisfaction of seeing their enemies suffer. Imagine the scene: they could point, one by one, at the corpses. "This one was my taskmaster," they might say, "the one who beat me with those fists that the dogs are now gnawing on!" Or, "Yonder Egyptian – the dogs are chewing the very feet that kicked me!" Talk about visceral. Talk about a reckoning.
It's a harsh image, isn't it? But it speaks to the depth of the trauma, the years of suffering endured by the Israelites. As Ginzberg retells it in Legends of the Jews, this final act provided closure, a brutal, but perhaps necessary, end to a chapter of enslavement.
These legends aren't always comfortable. They force us to confront the darker aspects of human nature, the desire for revenge, the need for justice. But they also remind us of the power of belief, the enduring nature of faith, and the importance of remembering, always remembering, where we came from. What do you think? Does knowing the 'why' behind the Egyptian's fate change how you see the Exodus story?