At the beginning of Parshas Bo, Moshe and Aharon tell Pharaoh “...For if you refuse to send forth My people, behold, tomorrow I shall bring a rbeh (a locust swarm) into your border. It will cover the eye of the land so that he will not be able to see the land; and it will consume the remaining residue that was left to you by the hail, and it will consume all the trees that grow for you from the field. They will fill your houses, the houses of all your servants, and the houses of all Egypt, such as your fathers and your grandfathers have not seen from the day they came onto the earth until this day.” (Shemos 10:4-6).
The Sefas Emes derives an inference from this last pasuk: The pasuk says that the parents and grandparents of the Egyptians never saw such a plague of locust until this day. The Sefas Emes says that the Ribono shel Ola m brought back their parents and grandparents who already died, in order that they should be able to witness the plague of arbeh. They never saw such a locust plague until this day, but today they did see such a plague!
We thus have an instance of techiya s hameisim (resurrection of the dead), not for tzadikim (righteous people), but for resha ’im (wicked people), in order that they witness this terrible plague that befell their children and grandchildren. The Sefas Emes further references an oft-quoted passage from the Zohar in Parshas Pinchas which states that when a person makes a simcha (e.g. – a chassanah, abar mitzvah, etc.), the neshamos (souls) of the parents and grandparents who are no longer in this world, come, in some sense, to the simcha to witness and ‘participate in’ the joyous family occasion.
The Sefas Emes makes the interesting observation: The Ribono shel Ola m takes the neshamos of the parents and grandparents of Yiden from Gan Eden and brings them to the simcha so that they should be able to witness the joyous event of their descendants. On the other hand, the Ribono shel Ola m took the resha’im – the parents and grandparents of the Egyptians, who also made Klal Yisra el suffer so much, not in order that they should see and enjoy the simcha of their children and grandchildren, but so that they should see and ‘participate in’ the suffering of their children and grandchildren.
The Sefas Emes explains “how this works”: Regarding Klal Yisra el, the Almighty is “metza ref machshava tova l’ma aseh.” (Hashem links our good intentions with actions.) He considers a good thought as having been consummated, even though in reality, it was never accomplished. However, with the goyim, Hashem is “metzaref” their “machshava ra’ah l’ma aseh“. He holds them responsible for having acted wickedly, even for their evil plans that were never executed.
The Sefas Emes says: When a person makes a chassanah and he takes his children down to the chuppah k’das Moshe v’Yisroel (according to Jewish law and custom) and the parents are good and the children are good – part of the credit is due to the ‘machshavos tovos‘ (good thoughts) that the parents and the grandparents invested into their children. The Ribono shel Ola m says “They have a part in this chassanah. The reason this next generation is able to bring their dear children down to the chuppah is because of all of the ‘machshavos tovos‘ that the parents and grandparents implanted in their children. Even if those thoughts and aspirations were not all fully fulfilled, the “machshava tova” was there, HaKadosh Baruch Hu joins a “machshava tova” to action even if the action was never fully consummated.
The reverse is true regarding the goyim. The Egyptians and their ancestors were all part of this evil plot to destroy Klal Yisrael. Their “machshava ra’ah” (evil thought) was a cause of this suffering. The Ribono shel Ola m says: You caused this to happen? You implanted these wicked tendencies in your children? You are going to see the “nachas” of them suffering from the arbeh.
