i
God sends the Plagues to force Pharaoh to send the Children of Israel free.
Pharaoh cannot bear the Plagues. So over and over, Pharaoh promises to free the Children of Israel if God will call off the new Plague that has come.
And after Pharaoh's promise, God calls off the Plague.
And after God calls off the Plague, Pharaoh sees that there is respite.
And after Pharaoh sees that there is respite, he reneges on his promise.
And after Pharaoh reneges on his promise, he does not let the people go free.
*
Pharaoh is a man with no memory. His experience of the world is wholly an experience of the now.
When he is frightened of God, he follows God. When things are better, he forgets that he is frightened of God.
Because he is a man with no memory, Pharaoh cannot make promises.
He cannot tie what he must do to what has happened, to what has been said; he cannot understand how the past obligates him.
ii
God heard the groaning of the Children of Israel in Egypt. And God remembered His Covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob to bring his People to the Land.
Because God remembers the Covenant, God frees the Children of Israel from slavery.
*
God's memory of the Covenant outlasts and overpowers and undoes any immediate experience that there is: of suffering (of His people) or of triumph (of Pharaoh, the tyrant).
*
Pharaoh is a man with no memory. God rules through memory.
iii
Remember the day when you came out from Egypt, Moses says: all the days of your life.
Tie each moment of your life—all the days of your life—to the eternality of the Covenant of God, to the eternality of the promise of God.
Let your memory join with God's memory.
~~~~~
Section III is based on a thought of my father. The wording around "....is a man with no memory" is borrowed; I cannot remember from where.
~~~~~
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