Iran and the Politics of the Plague of Locusts

“In every generation they rise against us to destroy us.” This year, on Seder night, those words did not feel like memory. They felt immediate. The distance between Pharaoh then and the tyrants of today seemed to collapse.

The Torah is not only a book of faith; it is a work of political wisdom and its narratives are lenses through which to read the present. Nowhere is this more evident than in the story of the plagues—and, in particular, in the strange disruption that occurs at the plague of locusts.

The rabbis spoke of ten plagues. Yet a close reading reveals a more nuanced structure. The first nine form a coherent literary unit, unfolding in three triads. In each set, two plagues are described at length, followed by a third that arrives suddenly, without warning. As I explain in my recently published Haggadah, the pattern follows Egyptian patterns of thought. In ancient Egyptian culture, the number nine carried symbolic weight, often signifying completeness or totality. One is singular, two forms a pair, but three is “many.”  Thus, three sets of three (3 x 3) represent an all-encompassing whole.

Within this structure, a second pattern emerges. In the first two plagues of each triad, God commands Moses to confront Pharaoh, yet the Torah often omits the encounter itself. We infer Pharaoh’s refusal from the plague that follows. In the third plague of each triad, even the warning disappears; the blow falls without prelude.

And then comes the eighth plague—the plague of locusts—and the pattern breaks.

Here, the Torah reverses its own conventions.  There is no report of the mandate God gave Moses. Conversely, and unlike any of the other “long” plague accounts, the encounter between Moses and  Pharaoh is described in detail. The text draws our attention to the meeting itself, as if to say: something has changed.

Here for the first time Pharaoh’s closest advisors question the wisdom of staying the hardline course (Exod 10:7): “How long shall this situation be a snare to us? Send the people away…. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?” These are the first cracks within the regime. Power, until now monolithic, begins to fracture.

What caused the shift?

The earlier plagues demonstrated power, but their damage was temporary. This begins to change with the seventh plague, the plague of hail. The Torah tells us that it devastated the land, destroying the vegetation. Yet it adds a seemingly incidental detail: the flax and barley were struck down, but the wheat and spelt survived, for they ripen later.

That detail is anything but incidental. It reveals the psychology of a regime under pressure. When defeat becomes likely, victory is quietly redefined. No longer is it triumph over the enemy; it is simply endurance. To survive is to win.  Pharaoh, surveying the ruins, still sees a future. The remaining crops—wheat and spelt—offer the possibility of recovery, however diminished. So long as survival remains within reach, resistance can continue.

The locusts removed that illusion.  They would consume what remained, resulting in irreversible economic ruin. In modern terms, this was not a strike against armies, but against infrastructure—the material basis of national life. After locusts, there is no recovery, no harvest, no future. Survival itself becomes impossible.

It is at that moment that Pharaoh shifts. Not fully, not yet, but unmistakably. Now faced with both economic pressure and dissipating loyalty amongst his officials, Pharaoh softens his negotiating position, offering to let the adult males, but no one else venture into the desert to worship to their Lord.

This is not only ancient history. It is political psychology.

Military losses, however severe, do not necessarily break regimes. They can be absorbed, reframed, even exploited. But when the economic foundations of a state are threatened—when survival itself is at stake—the calculus changes. Loyalists begin to question. Cracks appear where once there was certainty.

That is the logic of the eighth plague.

It is also, unmistakably, part of the logic shaping the present confrontation with Iran. In recent days, we have heard warnings from within Iran itself of the fragility of its economy, and the possibility of collapse should the current trajectory continue. At the same time, there have been explicit American threats to move from military targets to the infrastructure upon which that economy depends.

These are not incidental developments. They reflect a deeper strategic logic—one already present in the Torah’s account of the plagues. When the conditions of economic survival are placed at risk, even the most entrenched regimes begin to face internal doubt.

The Torah does not tell us what to do. But it teaches us how power works, how regimes think, and how change begins.