Комментарий о цитате к Шмот 9:5

הנני מביא מחר ארבה, “behold I will bring on a plague of locusts,” Nachmanides writes that some commentators believe that many months separated the plague of hail from that of the locusts. These scholars base themselves on the line (verse 5) ואכל את כל העץ הצומח לכם מן השדה, “it will consume every tree that grows for you in the field.” [seeing that the Torah had described the hail as ruining all the trees, (9,25) until they had been replaced how could the locusts eat their foliage? Ed.] Nachmanides himself disagrees with this view, claiming that only a few days elapsed between the plague of hail and that of locusts, seeing that the judgments visited upon the Egyptians did not exceed a period of 12 months. Moreover, it is clear from the Torah that there had been some residue which had not been harmed by the hail (again verse 5,ואכל את יתר הפלטה הנשארת לכם מן הברד, “it will consume any remnants left intact for you by the hail.”) This clearly shows that both plagues occurred in the same calendar year. The hail could not have occurred before the month of Adar, as no crop would have had advanced enough to be ruined; the plague of locusts, obviously, must have occurred before the middle of the month of Nissan, the month of the Exodus. The trees that the hail struck were the branches which had not yet sprouted blossoms or fruit. The trees struck by the locusts had already produced leaves, etc.

With God's help, I will now offer my own answer to these questions: Why does the simple child means when he asks, "What is this?," regarding the commandment of the firstborn? Furthermore, since the essence of the answer to the simple child's question is, "When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord slew every first-born in the land of Egypt, the first-born of both man and beast," why are these words left out of the Haggadah? Why isn’t this written first in the answer, followed by, 'It was with a mighty hand that the Lord brought us out from Egypt, the house of bondage?" Why does the Haggadah only bring the first part of the Torah's answer, especially since the essence of the answer is missing from the text.
The Torah offers this answer in order to put more emphasis on this plague rather than on the other plagues in which the death of livestock occurred, such as pestilence. Regarding pestilence, the Torah explicitly says, "Not one of the livestock of the Israelites died." (Ex 9:5-6) How is the saving of livestock during the tenth plague any different from the saving of the livestock during the fifth plague, pestilence? In fact, regarding the fifth plague the Torah says, "All of the livestock of the Egyptians died." One might argue that the fifth plague was even more miraculous than the tenth plague. The tenth plague only involved the death of firstborn of the herds while the rest of the livestock was unharmed. The miracle would not have seemed so miraculous since some of the Egyptian livestock survived during the tenth plague, just like the Israelite livestock.
This is why the simple child now asks, "What is this?" He wonders, why does the Torah differentiate the tenth plague from the other plagues in which the livestock died such as wild animals (arov), pestilence (dever), and hail (barad). In all of these plagues God protected the livestock of the Israelites and killed the livestock of the Egyptians. Why does the Torah provide a special remembrance for the tenth plague and not the other plagues? Why do we have a special ritual (the sanctification of the firstborn) to commemorate the tenth plague and to single it out?
The commandment to sanctify the firstborn is not just a commemoration for the saving of the firstborn livestock. It is also a reminder that the tenth plague represented the beginning of the Exodus. This was not the case with the other plagues. It was the tenth plague that brought about the final Exodus. It was with the punishing of the first born that God brought about judgment, measure for measure, as we saw above. It wasn’t until they saw that God exacted judgment that all of Israel gave thanks. Because of this, Pharaoh said to Moses and Aaron, "Go forth from my people," and the Egyptians pressed them to leave. This did not happen during the other plagues.
When the Torah says: 'It was with a mighty hand that the Lord brought us out from Egypt, the house of bondage," it is not clear which of plagues led to the Exodus. It is only in the second part of the passage, "When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord slew every firstborn in Egypt, the first-born of both man and beast," that we know that it is the tenth plague that caused the Exodus. The second passage makes it clear that the commandment of the firstborn commemorates the tenth plague. Each of the plagues represented a deliverance of sorts, but only the tenth plague was the final deliverance from Egypt. Only then did it become clear that it was the hand of God that caused all these plagues.