Bo: Eizov – The Humble Herb that Ended Egypt

Have you ever wondered why Hashem us to use eizov (hyssop) to smear the blood of the Korban Pesach on the doorposts? Here's my favorite answer, from Ralbag, with a speculative addendum of my own.

Jan 19, 2024

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You have NO IDEA how many attempts I made to generate an image of hyssop being used to daub blood on an Egyptian doorway. I finally gave up and decided to go with one of the more hilarious duds. Thank you, DALL-E 3, for making me laugh.

Bo: Eizov – The Humble Herb that Ended Egypt

On Rosh Chodesh Nisan, Moshe Rabbeinu instructs Bnei Yisrael in the procedure of the korban Pesach which will ensure their freedom on the night of the 15^th:

Draw out and take for yourselves sheep according to your families, and slaughter the Pesach. Take a bunch of eizov and dip it in the blood that is in the basin and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. And, as for you, no man shall go forth from the entrance of his house until morning. And Hashem will pass through to plague the Egyptians, and He will see the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, and Hashem will skip over the entrance and will not let the destroyer comes into your houses to plague. (Shemos 12:21-23)

The slaughter of the sheep for the korban Pesach gets a lot of attention, as does the marking of the doorways with its blood, but for some reason, the humble bundle of eizov tends to be overlooked.

The most basic question is: What is eizov? Rashi (ibid. 12:22) describes it as “a kind of herb which has thin stalks.” Ibn Ezra (ibid.) quotes the view of Saadia Gaon, who writes that “eizov is a plant known in Arabic as zatar and in the vernacular as oregano. It is an herb distinguished by various kinds of flavors.” Shadal (ibid.) notes that this opinion is shared by ibn Janach, Radak, and Rambam, among others (including modern scholars, who identify eizov with Majorana syriaca). Ibn Ezra rejects this on the basis of the pasuk: “[from the cedar which is in Lebanon] down to the eizov which emerges from the wall” (I Melachim 5:13), arguing that oregano doesn’t grow out of walls. He concludes: “I do not know the identity of the eizov. However, logically speaking, it is not a very mighty plant for it is the opposite of the cedar mentioned in Scripture.” Most commentators who write about the significance of the eizov focus on its quality of lowliness.

But the fundamental question is: Why eizov? Why did Hashem require the Israelites to use this lowly herb to daub the blood of the Pesach on their doorways? The Ralbag provides a compelling explanation. First, we must familiarize ourselves with his understanding of the purpose of the korban Pesach as a whole (Shemos 12:3):

This mitzvah was [designed] to instill in them [the Israelites] true conviction in Hashem, exalted is He, and to extricate them from the corrupt Egyptian beliefs. Because the Egyptians worshipped the sign of Aries and thought that the slaughter of the sheep would anger their deities and bring terrible harm upon them, Hashem commanded them to slaughter the most perfect specimen: a blemish-free male – a yearling, whose slaughter is even stranger. Hashem promised them that through this action, they would be saved from the great harm that He would bring upon the Egyptians – [salvation] being the very opposite of what the Egyptians thought would occur as a result of this action.

On this basis, the Ralbag (ibid.) explains why Hashem commanded Bnei Yisrael to use eizov:

It is known that the eizov is an exceedingly lowly plant. It is for this reason that it was said: “from the cedar that is in Lebanon down to the eizov that emerges from the wall” – in other words, from the tallest plant to the lowliest plant. Hashem commanded that this sprinkling be with a bundle of eizov in order to degrade the sheep, which was the Egyptian deity, to the utmost extent, in order to demonstrate to Israel the deficiency of the Egyptian belief. In contrast, the sprinkling [of blood] on the Altar, which is for the glory of Hashem, was with the finger of the Kohen’s right hand … thus, it is clear that the sprinkling [of the blood of the korban Pesach with eizov] would be an extreme degradation to the Egyptian deity, which is why the sprinkling was commanded to be done in this manner.

In other words, the use of such a lowly shrub added insult to injury: in our divine service, we utilize the finger of the priest’s right hand – the most exalted instrument a human being possesses – but when dealing with the blood of Egypt’s sacred animal, we resort to using a handful of weeds.

I would like to suggest a similar but original interpretation based on two excerpts from The Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel (2020). In her mini-article, “Plague of Darkness” (p. 58), Dr. Racheli Shalomi-Hen writes:

The sun god was believed to have a solar barque, or boat, and an entourage with which he crossed the sky every day from east to west. He would start his cruise in the eastern horizon as a new-born baby, become a man at his prime at noon, and an old man in the evening. When the sun god set in the western horizon as a tired old man, he entered the Realm of the Dead, the Netherworld, in his solar barque, beginning his dangerous nocturnal sail.
Every night, the sun god fought his way through the Netherworld to be reborn again in the morning. In the Netherworld, the giant chaos serpent Apophis would try to stop him, to prevent the sun god’s rebirth. Each night, the sun god and his entourage managed to fetter Apophis and cross the Netherworld successfully, and consequently guaranteed the continuous existence of the world.
Ancient Egyptian society was very anxious about the possibility that the sun god might fail his nocturnal sail in the Realm of the Dead, and never rise again. It was believed that this would allow chaos to take over creation and bring the world to its pre-creation state of endless dark, inert, and opaque waters. Hence, the solar priests of ancient Egypt performed detailed nightly rituals to secure the sun god’s journey.

Dr. Shalomi-Hen doesn’t provide specific details about these rituals. However, R’ Jeremiah Unterman gives us an inkling of what these rituals may have entailed in his mini-article, entitled “The Sacrificial Cult in Egypt” (p.60):

The king was considered to be the high priest of Egypt – even though most of the actual rituals were carried out by priests, who represented him and acted on his behalf … Sacrificial offerings of the king were meant to provide assurance to the gods that he was a just ruler who maintained the cosmic order … The daily offerings in the temples were also believed to satisfy the deities’ need for food and drink – including, in some cases, that of the deified king.
At an ancient Egyptian temple, three meals were offered each day – all made in the name of the king. These consisted of grain, vegetables, wine, beer, fruit, meat, and birds. Meat could be beef, ox, oryx, gazelle, and ibex. The amount of food used for the ritual was enormous. During the New Kingdom, for example, at Karnak alone, the daily offering included fifteen hundred liters of grain, six fowl, two or three measures of wine, fourteen baskets of fruit, four measures of honey, two measures of fat, and a hundred bunches of vegetables.

Drawing on these archaeological insights and the Ralbag’s approach, I would like to suggest an alternative – and admittedly speculative – explanation for why Hashem commanded the use of eizov. The Egyptian deities required a significant amount of daily and nightly offerings, entailing exorbitant expenses, which needed to be carried out by an elite class of priests acting on behalf of the king. In stark contrast, Hashem achieved His purpose by commanding a nation of slaves to smear the blood of a dead (and evidently impotent) Egyptian god on the doorways of their homes using nothing more than a lowly herb. Whereas the Egyptian gods demanded lavish oblations to accomplish such (literal) everyday tasks as ferrying the sun across the sky, the Israelite God dealt a fatal blow to the entire Egyptian pantheon using sprigs of garnish, in the hands of the lowliest people.

What do you think of this approach? Have you heard any good explanations for why eizov was used in the Pesach Mitzrayim?

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