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📜 The Story

The plagues go on. God sends Moses to Pharaoh again, and the last three plagues come one after another. First come the locusts. Huge swarms of them cover the land and eat every green plant that is left. Pharaoh almost lets the people go, but at the last minute he changes his mind again.

Next comes darkness. For three days, a darkness so thick you could feel it covers Egypt. The Egyptians cannot see each other or even get up from their places. But in all the homes of the Israelites, there is light.

Then God tells Moses and Aaron about the tenth and last plague, the death of the firstborn. Before it comes, God gives the Israelites their very first mitzvah (commandment) as a nation: to set the start of each new month. That is how the Jewish calendar works. God also tells each family to take a lamb, keep it for a few days, and then bring it as the Passover offering, and to put some of its blood on their doorposts. The holiday is called Passover because God passed over the homes of the Israelites.

At midnight the plague comes, and every firstborn in Egypt dies. The homes with blood on the doorposts are passed over. At last Pharaoh gives in. He tells Moses to take the people and leave right away. They leave in such a rush that their dough has no time to rise, so they bake it flat. That is matzah, and we still eat it on Passover today.

The parsha ends with mitzvot (commandments) that help us remember leaving Egypt. We tell the story to our children. We put on tefillin. And we do pidyon haben, redeeming a firstborn son, because God saved the firstborn of Israel. The Torah says the Israelites had lived in Egypt for 430 years when they finally went free.