Comentários de Citação sobre II Reis 1:10

ועברתי בארץ מצרים, “and I will go through the land of Egypt, etc.” This whole paragraph is meant to be something that Moses and Aaron were to tell the Israelites. We would therefore have expected the Torah to write at this point ועבר בארץ מצרים, “and He will go through the land of Egypt,” rather than “and I will go through the land of Egypt.” The unusual change in syntax here prompted our sages the Haggadah shel Pessach to say that the emphasis on the ending תי, after the ועבר which we would have expected teaches that G’d meant that He personally and not any agent of His would execute all the firstborns. They phrase it as אני ולא מלאך, אני ולא שרף, אני ולא השליח, אני ה', “I and not an angel; I and not a category of agent known as Saraph; I and not someone whom I usually delegate such a task to; I, all by Myself.” When G’d killed an army of 185,000 Assyrians (Kings II 19,35) many hundreds of years later on the anniversary of that date, He employed an angel to carry out His decree. This time He did not delegate the task.
והכתי כל בכור, “I will smite every firstborn;” again we have the emphasis on “I, not a saraph.” Not only the dying but the smiting, the plague resulting in death will be inflicted by Me personally. I will not act like a king who delegates unpleasant duties to be performed by underlings. The “saraph” mentioned by our sages are the kind of angels that burned the soldiers sent to capture Elijah and whom he commanded to be burned (compare Kings II 1,10).
ובכל אלוהי מצרים אעשה שפטים, “and against all the deities of Egypt I will carry out judgments.” Again G’d employs the pronoun “I” to emphasise that He would not employ any delegate such as the angel Mattatron who normally is in charge of matters pertaining to the terrestrial part of the universe. The meaning of the word “Mattaron” transliterated is מורה דרך, someone teaching the way. A messenger is called Mentor in Greek.
'אני ה', “I the Eternal.” I and no one but I. G’d emphasizes His uniqueness, indicating that the reason He will do all this by Himself is to remind us that there is No On like Him.
Nachmanides writes that the emphasis on the words אני ה' is that inasmuch as G’d is supreme and unique there is no one who could interfere with what He sets out to do. Nachmanides wants to explain that had G’d employed any assistants in this plague then the plague would have occurred as an extension of His “intensified,” מתוחה, attribute of Justice. If this had been the case His delegates would not have been able to distinguish between Jewish and Egyptian firstborns seeing that from the vantage point of that attribute they had not deserved to be saved. This is why G’d had no choice but to carry out this plague unassisted without delegates. The aspect of G’d which carried out this plague was the Shechinah which is comprised of a mixture of the attribute of Mercy and the attribute of Justice. This is the meaning of what the sages referred to as “not by means of a messenger.” In other words, G’d performed the plague all by Himself. This is reflected in the use of the word אנכי for the name of G’d in connection with this plague. That term is an allusion to the Shechinah. We refer, of course, to the warning: הנה אנכי הורג את בכורך (Exodus 4,23) “Here I am going to kill your firstborn.” G’d used the same attribute describing Himself there as He had with Yaakov in Genesis 46,4 when He told him that He (His Shechinah) would accompany him down to Egypt and would also accompany him on the way back from there. G’d had already used that name אנכי describing Himself in Genesis 15,14 when He told Avraham about the distant future when his descendants would be enslaved prior to their redemption. It meant already at that time that the attribute which would exact retribution from the nation enslaving Avraham’s descendants would be the one known as אנכי. This is also what is meant in 12,27 “when He smote the Egyptians and He saved our houses.”

Rabbi Ami (Berachot 9), commenting on the repeated words ענני, claims that Elijah asked for two responses. He wanted a demonstration of heavenly fire which should consume the prophets of the Baal together with the offerings. His second request was that the people watching should not consider what was going to happen as a form of witchcraft.
Now to the six occasions when heavenly fire represented signs of G’d’s anger or displeasure: The first such instance occurred here when Nadav and Avihu were killed by heavenly fire as we read in 10,2. The second incident occurred in Numbers 11,1 when the Israelites complained for no apparent reason. The destructive fire on that occasion stopped only in response to Moses’ prayer. The third instance occurred during the uprising of Korach and Datan and Aviram. We are told in Numbers 16,35 that “fire came forth from the Lord and consumed the 250 men who had offered incense” which had been rejected. The fourth such incident is reported in Job 1,16 where heavenly fire falling down and killing boys and sheep is mentioned. Both the fifth and sixth incidents occurred in connection with Elijah who called down such fire to burn the detachment of a captain and 50 soldiers whose task it was to capture him (Kings II 1,10 and 10,12). The reason that these people were punished was the arrogance they displayed vis-a-vis the accredited prophet of G’d. [The third detachment was spared as the captain related to Elijah with deference. Ed.]