Moshe first describes how absolutely every firstborn among the Egyptians will die. He then goes on to foretell of the resulting ‘great outcry’ of painful anguish that will be expressed by the people, that will be unparalleled in its magnitude in the history of all mankind. Finally he reveals to Pharaoh that ‘against the Children of Israel, no dog shall whet its tongue, against neither man nor beast, so that you shall know that G-d will have differentiated between Egypt and Israel’.

It seems quite strange that Moshe chooses not to distinguish between the Egyptians and the Jews by accentuating the fact that not even one Jewish firstborn will die, but rather by emphasizing merely the silence of the dogs towards the Children of Israel.

What is this ‘great outcry’ that the Torah stresses? Of course, with so many deaths and ‘not a house where there was no corpse’, there would naturally be an overwhelming outburst of grief. What added dimension to this plague is punctuated by reporting this fact?

The term used to describe this lack of any barking dogs among the dwellings of the Jews is intriguing.

לא יחרץ כלב לשנו - שמות יא ו, No dog shall whet its tongue. The word normally associated with barking is נבח, the root word used here of חרץ, is a matter of much discussion. Some allege it means to ‘growl’, ‘bark’, ‘bite’, ‘sharpen’ (its tongue), or perhaps ‘wag’. All of these translations somehow relate to the dog stifling its normal instinct to react, by either; sharpening its tongue; growling; barking; biting or simply wagging.

The Ibn Ezra, however, directs us to a verse in Melachim, כן משפטיך אתה חרצת (מ"א כ מ), So shall your judgment be, yourself has decided it, where the word implies rendering a  decision.

What ‘decision’ or ‘judgment’ do dogs generally adjudicate over before barking that the Torah finds it necessary to tell us here that the dogs didn’t ‘decide’ to bark?

Until the Plague of the Firstborn the Egyptian people took a physical beating. Their water, crops, bodies and livestock were afflicted with painful and damaging assortment of assaults.

Somehow this toughened people led by their pompous and defiant king, held on to their pride and distorted self-confidence, in taking it on the chin rather than submitting to defeat.

They were still a mighty nation with a system of government that was headed by their Pharaoh, supported by the privileged caste of firstborns and followed by the people who each found themselves a roll within this hierarchical system. As long as the leaders could maintain their composure, displaying confidence in their positions of leadership instilling a loyalty, within the populace, to the kingdom, they would fend off their pain for the sake of the greater nation.

But with the advent of the total decimation of the upper echelons of this precarious ‘House of Cards’, they were left with nothing to have faith in, and became totally demoralized causing true fear to set in. The great ‘outcry’ wasn’t merely over the grief on the loss of their loved ones, but rather a paralyzing angst that their whole world was crashing in. Never in history did an entire nation suddenly discover at once that the ‘Emperor had no clothes’!

The contrast between the Egyptian nation and the Jewish one, wasn’t simply the total survival of every firstborn among them, but rather their absolute faith in G-d that instilled within them an aura of extraordinary confidence in themselves, in their mission, and in their deepening bond with the Creator.

Dogs sense fear or confidence and react accordingly. The Egyptians were falling apart emotionally and displaying profound angst and fear that prodded the dogs to respond with wild and frantic barking. The Jewish nation on the other hand were supremely calm, firmly implanted  in the safe and warm embrace of a benevolent and caring G-d. The dogs instinctively reacted in kind by withholding any display of anxiety whatsoever.

Perhaps this is the ‘judgment’ the Torah alludes to, referring to dogs natural ability to sense and discern danger or safety, fear or calm, and reflect it in their behavior.

In Torah literature the ‘barking dog’ serves as a metaphor at times for; ‘the dogs that surround us’, our enemies;  the evil inclination; the speaker of Loshon Hora, slander.

The antidote for these marauding canines is to reaffirm our faith in G-d and ourselves. When we doubt G-d’s unconditional concern for us, which is when we are exposed to the attacks of these vicious dogs. They sense our fear and seek to undermine us further by adding to our angst.

When we weaken in our personal resolve to grow, the keen sense of smell of the doglike evil inclination picks up our scent and growls menacingly at our helplessness, compelling us to sink even further in our self-doubt.

When we doubt ourselves and our abilities and lose faith in our personal mission, that is precisely when the slandering ‘frisky  dogs’ attempt to take advantage of those vulnerabilities by yelping their aspersions upon our character, further diminishing our confidence in ourselves. They desperately seek to draw us into the ‘dogfight’, compelling us to join them in the hurling of invective that will only leave us muddied and wounded.

The Plague of the Firstborn and its impact served as the ultimate distinction between our two nations.

Will we strut through life with an artificial sense of power and confidence supplied by privilege  and circumstance, positioning ourselves conveniently above others, where we can assert our authority and influence?

Or will we lead lives of purpose and mission, empowered by our relationship with the Almighty and His faith in us, that will bring a quiet calm to all our endeavors even when they don’t bring out our expected results?

If we mimic the former attitude, sooner or later our personal ‘House of Cards’ will collapse, exposing the folly of our ways, leaving us among the ruins of ancient Egyptian culture.

But if we ‘gird our loins’ with determination, firmly placing ‘our shoes on our feet’, trekking purposefully towards our goals, and carry proudly the ‘staff in our hands’, we will be able to face any challenge and succeed in keeping those ‘dogs at bay’ as our ancestors so admirably did on that fateful night!

באהבה,

צבי טייכמאן