The Pasuk in this week’s Parsha says, “And Moshe said, ‘Thus says Hashem: At about midnight I will go out within Egypt’” (Shemos 11:4).
This wording immediately raises a fundamental question.
Hashem Himself told Moshe that the final plague—the Death of the Firstborn—would occur precisely at midnight, “Ba’chatzos halailah.” If so, why does Moshe Rabbeinu convey the message to Pharaoh that the plague will occur “Kachatzos,” at about midnight? Why the imprecision?
Rashi addresses this question directly. He explains that Moshe intentionally avoided absolute precision so as not to give the Egyptian astrologers an opportunity to discredit him. Should they miscalculate the exact moment of midnight, and the plague not occur according to their reckoning, they would accuse Moshe Rabbeinu of falsehood. To preempt such distortion, Moshe said, “Around midnight.”
But the Zera Shimshon offers a different explanation, one that reveals the metaphysical drama of that night.
That night was governed by two distinct mazalos, two cosmic influences. Until midnight, the world was under the influence of Tzedek, a mazal associated with kindness, righteousness, and beneficence. After midnight, the governing force shifted to Din—judgment, severity, and destructive power.
Had the plague occurred before midnight, the Egyptians could have claimed: “The Jewish people were spared not because they were worthy of redemption, but because the mazal of Tzedek, righteousness, was ruling at the time. It was merely good fortune.”
And had it occurred after midnight, they could have said the opposite: “The Egyptians were struck not because of Divine justice, but because the mazal of Din was dominant. It was bad luck.”
Either way, redemption would be reduced to astrology. Fate, not G-d. Mazal, not truth. Therefore, Hashem orchestrated the moment with infinite precision.
The redemption occurred exactly at chatzos, after the mazal of Tzedek had ended, and one instant before the mazal of Din took hold. In that infinitesimal moment, Hashem demonstrated that neither kindness nor judgment, neither fortune nor fate, rules history, but only Him.
It was a double revelation: Klal Yisrael was redeemed not because of luck, but because Hashem chose them. And the Egyptians were struck not because of a harmful cosmic force, but because Divine justice demanded it.
This idea finds a haunting echo in modern Jewish history.
A survivor of the Holocaust, who endured the horrors of Bergen-Belsen, once stood up on the day the Nuremberg Trials began and the Nazi leaders ym”s were finally being brought to justice.
“Today I am witnessing a double miracle,” he said. “First, that I and my brothers and sisters survived and were redeemed. And second, that Jewish spilled blood was not ignored. Justice has come.”
Redemption is incomplete without justice. And justice is hollow without redemption. That night in Egypt, at midnight, Hashem taught the world that history does not hinge on chance or constellation. It turns on Divine will.
And that lesson still speaks to our past, our present, and our future.
