Summary of the Parasha

God answers Moses: He had revealed Himself to the patriarchs as El Shaddai, but now He will reveal His name Hashem, the One who fulfills promises. He pronounces the four expressions of redemption: “I will bring you out, I will save you, I will redeem you, I will take you as a people”, the source of the four cups of the Seder, plus a fifth, “I will bring you to the land” (Elijah’s cup). But the people do not listen to Moses, “because of shortness of breath and hard labor”.

The Torah pauses to give the genealogy of Reuben, Simeon and Levi, down to Amram and Yocheved, parents of Aaron and Moses, and down to Pinchas. God makes Moses “a god to Pharaoh” and Aaron his prophet, and announces that He will harden Pharaoh’s heart. Moses is 80, Aaron 83.

Before Pharaoh, Aaron’s staff becomes a snake and swallows the magicians’ staffs. Then come the first seven plagues: blood (the Nile, Egypt’s god, is struck first; Aaron strikes it, because the river had protected Moses), frogs, lice (the magicians admit: “It is the finger of God”), wild beasts (arov), which spare Goshen, pestilence on the livestock, boils (shechin), which strike even the magicians, and hail mixed with fire, “two enemies that made peace to do their Creator’s will” (Rashi). Pharaoh admits: “Hashem is righteous, and I and my people are wicked”, but as soon as the hail stops, he hardens his heart.

The Haggadah repeats these plagues with Rabbi Yehudah’s acronym: DeTzaCh ADaSh BeAChaV.

Summary of the Haftara

“Koh Amar Hashem Elokim B’Kabtzi” (“Thus says Hashem God: when I gather”)
Text in Ezekiel 28:25–29:21

The haftara begins with the promise to gather Israel in safety on its land. Then Ezekiel prophesies against Pharaoh and Egypt: Pharaoh is “the great crocodile lying in the midst of his rivers, who says: My Nile is mine, I made it”. God will drag him out of the water with hooks. Egypt, which had been a deceptive “staff of reed” for Israel, will lie desolate for forty years, then remain a minor kingdom. Nebuchadnezzar will receive Egypt as payment for his siege of Tyre.

Parasha-Haftara Connection

In both texts God judges Pharaoh, who takes himself for a god and master of the Nile. The plagues begin with the river itself. The parasha tells of the first redemption; the haftara opens with the promise of Israel’s final ingathering.