Pharaoh called to Moshe and Aharon, and said, “Pray copiously to Hashem, that He remove the frogs from me and my people. (Shemos 8:4)
Whenever it says עתר it denotes praying plentifully. (Rashi)
Pharaoh requested of Moshe and Aharon that they pray a lot for him. He realized that due to the serious nature of his evil deeds, and his great stubbornness, it will not suffice if Moshe just prays a regular prayer. Moshe needs to daven abundantly in order for Hashem to answer him. And indeed, it says after this:
Moshe screamed out to Hashem about the frogs.
Moshe needed to engage in tefilah with tze’akah in order to relieve Pharaoh of the frogs that were plaguing him and his people.
Later, in makas arov, Pharaoh again asked העתירו בעדי, “Pray copiously for me.” And it says that Moshe indeed went and prayed copiously to Hashem – משה התפלל הרבה. Rashi explains that Moshe “exerted himself in tefilah and prayed a lot.” Because at that point, a single scream would no longer suffice. Moshe really needed to daven a lot.
The third time, at makas barad, when Pharaoh requested of Moshe העתירו אל ה’, Moshe replied as follows:
When I leave the city, I will spread out my hands to Hashem.
The Greater the Sin, the Greater the Prayer
It is explained in Targum Onkelos that “spread out my hands” means outstretching his hands in prayer. This type of prayer is mentioned in Megilas Eichah:
We will raise our hearts to our hands, to G-d in heaven.
This is pouring out one’s heart in prayer. It is as if a person takes himself out of his body and rises to above and gives over his very soul in prayer to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. This is an awesome and powerful type of prayer, entailing mesirus nefesh.
The first time Moshe intervened on Pharaoh’s behalf, one scream was enough. The second time, he needed to daven a lot. And the third time, only tefilah with mesirus nefesh was effective.
This shows that the deeper a person sinks into sin, the more powerful a tefilah he needs to arouse Hashem’s mercy.
There is a wonderful eitzah here for us all. It is written “The heart knows its soul’s pain.”
A person knows his spiritual “pains” better than anyone else does. He knows how far he falls short in his obligations to Heaven. Yet, when sickness or trouble comes along, and we pray to Hashem to remove it, or when we pray on Yamim Noraim for our lives and all our needs, we often take it too lightly. We think that if we just exert ourselves a little bit in teshuvah and tefilah, all our problems are supposed to go away.
But this minimal type of effort is really not enough at all. The more sins we have committed, and the more times we have committed those sins, the tefilah that can get us out of our troubles becomes harder and harder.
This may be compared to a physical illness. Let’s say a person ate something that is bad for his health, and he doesn’t feel well, and he rushes to the doctor, and the doctor writes him out a prescription. But when it happens again, the regular medicine won’t do the job anymore. The more he repeats the harmful behavior, the more damage it does to him, and he might even need an operation now.
It is the same with spiritual ailments. We shouldn’t think that in the meantime, we can take things easy a little, we can let up a little on Torah learning, or davening with kavanah, or guarding the purity of our eyes and thoughts; we shouldn’t think we can get angry a little, or quarrel a little, etc. etc. – and then, when we need to, we will just let out a scream to Hashem. It’s not so simple. The more aveiros accumulate, the more we engage in them, the harder it is to do teshuvah.
We can also learn from here how supremely righteous the leaders of the Jewish people are. Moshe Rabbeinu suffered from Pharaoh’s stubbornness, and prayed for him, and davened more and more to the point of mesirus nefesh, and never once snapped back at Pharaoh, saying, “Enough with your stubbornness! Daven for yourself – if you can!” Instead, Moshe prayed again and again, and took his heart in his hands, even for evil Pharaoh. He showed endless mercy and compassion.
