Well, I didn't seriously mean I thought God was messing in the mess in the middle east. Metaphorically, I meant it was inexplicable to me that this -- blood, bombs, killing, and once a generation, all-out war -- has been going on for sixty years and neither side has noticed yet how badly it's working for them.

But let me leave that aside and, as promised, expound on the passage from the Haggadah about God hardening Pharoah's heart. It actually has some relevance, because I think it represents a pivotal moment in the development of monotheism.

The ancient middle east featured a vast panoply of warring gods. Each people had their own, but it was also common, because it must have seemed prudent, for people to worship the local gods wherever they found themselves, until they moved on. The relationship between the Israelites and the god Yahweh, as expressed in the Covenant and later in the first commandment, changed at one point in history, to this: if the Israelites agreed to worship only Yahweh, wherever they were and whatever god was supposedly in charge there, then Yahweh would guarantee that as a people they would survive. In a time and place where warring tribes called on their gods to help destroy each other, that seemed like a good deal to the Israelites.

The first commandment doesn't say There Are No Other Gods. It says the Israelites aren't allowed to worship them.

So why did Yahweh harden Pharoah's heart? Seen in this theological/historical context, the reason could be this: the Israelites were wavering. The Haggadah says that Pharoah was slaying male children and forbidding husbands and wives from sleeping together. It must have looked to at least some of the Israelites like they were in danger of extinction, and Yahweh wasn't keeping his end of the deal. So they started to question the wisdom of keeping theirs. If Moses had been able to talk Pharoah into letting the Israelites go without any big visible miracles, Yahweh might have lost his hold on them. So he hardened Pharoah's heart so that he could provide those miracles and rescue them. So they'd know that one, they needed him, and two, he'd come through.

But look what happened: Yahweh hardened Pharoah's heart. Where were Pharoah's gods when this was going on?

Gone. They gave up. Yahweh won.

There's another place a little further on in the Haggadah where, when Pharoah's army drowns in the Red Sea, the angles sing and rejoice. Yahweh, by now called God, silences them: "My creatures are drowning, and you rejoice?"

It must have been a lonely moment for God when he realized that he could no longer treat the Israelites as his to save and everyone else as someone else's problem, in his battle with the other gods. The other gods were gone. And he was left with us.