Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev opens his commentary on Parshat Va'era with a question about the nature of prophecy. God tells Moses, "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as El Shaddai, but by My name YHVH I was not known to them" (Exodus 6:3). What exactly is the difference?
The Sifri (Mattot 2) teaches that every prophetic revelation experienced by later prophets was a residue of Moses' prophetic experience. No prophet received a type of vision that Moses had not first received. And the Talmud (Yevamot 49) specifies: all subsequent prophets saw through a blurred glass, while Moses alone saw through a clear glass.
Rabbi Levi Yitzchak explains that receiving "clear" visions of the Creator requires God to first garb Himself in garments that diffuse His overwhelming light. Without this screening, any prophet lesser than Moses would be spiritually blinded. The most minimal of these screens is called me'irah (מאירה), "illuminating," hiding just enough to make contact survivable. This is what Moses received. Everyone else received their visions as derivatives, filtered through Moses' experience.
The patriarchs had a profound relationship with God, but it operated at the level of El Shaddai (אל שד-י), a divine name that represents God's power within defined limits. The name YHVH represents God's essence beyond all limitation. Moses alone accessed this direct channel.
The ten plagues that shattered Egypt were not merely acts of punishment. They were revelations. Each plague demonstrated a different aspect of God's sovereignty over the natural order. The Egyptians had deified the Nile, the sun, the earth. Plague by plague, God reclaimed each domain, showing that the forces Egypt worshipped were not gods at all but instruments in the hand of the one God who controls everything.