We are used to the idea that there were ten plagues, but why did God need more than one? Presumably, once Pharoah and the people of Egypt saw the Nile turn to blood or frogs magically multiply across the land someone would have said, “Ok! We get the idea. This slavery thing is bad.”

Even before God hardened Pharaoh’s heart (which doesn’t happen until the 6th plague), the drama should have been over. Socrates argued that if people only knew what the right thing was to do, they would act accordingly. The question was just one of knowledge. Well, it doesn’t take a ruler of genius to recognize that bringing more plagues on your land is a bad idea.

Judaism does not agree with the Socratic notion. Our tradition teaches that people have both a good and an evil inclination. Sometimes, the evil inclination is ascendent and we do bad things because we just feel like doing bad things. For all the complicated currents that run through human motivation, in the end, we do have a choice, and people sometimes knowingly choose wrong. Coleridge said of Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello that he practiced “motiveless malignancy” – that is, evil for no good reason.

Although people may hate for no good reason, they can also love for no good reason. As we can do cruel things even in the face of deterrents to cruelty, we can do kind things even when the odds are against it. We can act selflessly and that too is a choice.

Readers of the biblical story sometimes forget that to end the plagues Moses had to beseech God. In other words, Moses repeatedly prayed that the Egyptians would not suffer. His goal was not the pain of the Egyptians but the liberation of the Israelites. In our own struggles, these two principles are foremost: we understand that acting with hatred or with kindness are choices, and what we wish for is not that the haters will suffer but that they will change.

Human nature will always be a battleground. With effort, we can claim more and more territory for goodness, for decency, and for love.