Given the biblical assumption of God’s omnipotence, one might expect God to be able to whisk the Israelites out of Egypt without such dramatic measures. Though it’s one of the best known details of the Exodus story, the plague narrative raises a number of complicated questions. As we recite each plague, we spill a drop of wine in recognition, according to many interpretations, that the process of our liberation caused suffering to the Egyptian people. One of the most dramatic moments of the Passover seder comes with the recitation of the 10 plagues that, the Bible says, God brought on the Egyptians to persuade Pharaoh to free the Israelites from slavery. As with previous outbreaks, it was decreed that any house where plague was identified should be shut up for 40 days with the family inside, marked with a cross and be guarded by watchmen.My Jewish Learning is a not-for-profit and relies on your help Donate In early June he described his first encounter with their futile measures to control the spread, ‘I did in Drury-lane see two or three houses marked with a red cross upon the doors, and “Lord have mercy upon us” writ there – which was a sad sight to me’. Pepys is the best source for understanding the desperation and frustration of officialdom in dealing with a catastrophe that they didn’t fully understand. During this time his diary and letters report a rapidly worsening situation, a devastated population, and his own worries, grief and fears. Nevertheless, unlike many of those who had the opportunity, Pepys remained in London for much of that year, and even after he and his employer were forced to relocate to Greenwich in the late summer, he commuted by river from there to his home in Seething Lane near the Tower of London and visited other parts of the capital. Memoirs relating to the state of the Royal Navy of England for ten years determined December 1688 by Samuel Pepys
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