Q&A: Was Pharaoh Wicked?
Was Pharaoh Wicked?
Question
People say that Pharaoh was an utterly wicked man who enslaved the Jewish people and so on.
On the Sabbath, it suddenly hit me that maybe he wasn’t really wicked. What’s the story? He sees a foreign outside people growing stronger and multiplying in his land.
He just sees a danger to his country and his nation! He isn’t wicked, he’s just a politician. He was king over a country in danger, so he takes responsibility and does what needs to be done. He’s like today’s Zemmour. But not wicked.
In the period in which he lived, enslaving people was not necessarily considered bad. He did what others would have done.
In short, why is he portrayed as wicked?
Answer
Interesting question. If such a danger really did exist, then he acted properly and truly was not wicked. But if there was no danger and he declared there was one in order to gain legitimacy for abusing Israel (like the Nazis), then he was wicked. And what if he was mistaken and thought there was a danger even though there wasn’t? Then this is a subjective mistake. He committed a wicked act, but in his intention he was not wicked. See column 372.
Discussion on Answer
I didn’t understand—even if we assume he believed there really was a danger to his people, does that justify murdering babies? (“Every son that is born you shall cast into the Nile…”)
Why not? If this is in the category of Amalek, where every child is presumed to grow up to become an enemy of the Egyptians, then one can understand that this is what he did. That’s what we are supposed to do to Amalek too, isn’t it?
Even if we assume Pharaoh acted this way because he believed an existential danger threatened his people, it’s still fair to ask why that would justify killing babies (“Every son that is born you shall cast into the Nile…”)? Isn’t that enough to call him wicked?
(Sorry I asked the question twice; I just didn’t see that the previous comment had gone through.) As for Amalek, that really is a question, but one could argue that the divine command to kill Amalek overrides the moral command. But Pharaoh—even if he thought every child was presumed to be a murderer when he grew up—still had no moral justification for it as long as that had not happened for certain. Though admittedly this is definitely not such a great moral flaw that it would justify turning him into an utterly wicked villain.
Regarding Amalek, that’s not what I was claiming. I was claiming that if there is a people that raises its children to become mass murderers, there is justification for killing them as infants. In the sense of “they are killed on account of their ultimate future” (the wayward and rebellious son, the burglar tunneling in). Think about the Holocaust period. Would it not be right to kill babies growing up in a camp of Nazis? In my opinion, there is definitely room for that.
(Maybe this is trivial, but this analogy is new to me: the exaggerated interest in judging things from his own perspective reminds me of the issue of microscopic indirect-causation mechanisms on the Sabbath.)