The plague of lice is a sardonic comment on the monumental scale of Egyptian architecture. The Egyptians believed the gods were to be found in things that are big. God shows them His Presence in something so small as to be almost invisible. The irony recurs in the division of the Red Sea, where Pharaoh’s greatest military asset, the chariots, prove to be his undoing, as their wheels sink into the mud. The key to the plagues – as in God’s covenant with Noach – is the principle of reciprocity: ‘As you do, so shall you be done to.’ Those who harm others will themselves be harmed. Nations that begin by depriving others of their liberty in the end destroy themselves. Historically, this was so. Egypt never again recovered the greatness it had enjoyed in the earlier part of Ramses II’s rule.

Commentary on The Ten Plagues,
The Jonathan Sacks Haggadah


haggadah Section: -- Ten Plagues
Source: The Jonathan Sacks Haggadah