The God Factor: From the Exodus to the Iran War
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What’s missing from the experts’ predictions about the news.
Living in Israel during the current war with Iran, in between running to our bomb shelter during ballistic missile attacks, I usually try to chill out by reading the news. (Yes, I know that’s crazy, but a brain that repeatedly gets interrupted by air raid sirens during sleep cycles doesn’t think clearly.)
What irritates me is that only about 20% of the news communicates what actually happened. The other 80% is experts predicting, speculating, and pontificating about what will happen, what’s likely to happen, and what’s impossible to happen. Will US allies help secure the Strait of Hormuz? Will Saudi Arabia and Oman attack Iran? Will rising oil prices trigger a recession? Will Trump stop the war with a negotiated settlement? Is there any chance left of a regime change in Iran?
The human compulsion to want to know what’s going to happen comes from our desire to control, which puts us in direct competition with God.
As Jews around the world prepare for their Passover Seder celebrating the Exodus from Egypt, a relevant question to ponder is: What was the purpose of the Exodus?
You might answer, “Freedom,” but God had a different purpose in mind. Throughout the Biblical account of the Ten Plagues that led up to the grand finale of the Israelite slaves leaving Egypt, God repeatedly declared His purpose:
And in case subsequent generations didn’t get the point, God lays it out clearly long after the Israelites are freed: “I am the Lord your God who took you out of Egypt in order to be your God” (Num. 15:41).
Knowing that God is God is the import of the first of the Ten Commandments the entire nation heard at Sinai. What sounds like merely an introductory statement —"I am the Lord your God who took you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage"—is, according to our Sages, a commandment to believe in God, a God who acts in history for our benefit.
Bottom line, God’s job description is that God is in control. Although human beings have free will in the moral sphere to choose between good and evil, right and wrong, what actually happens is determined by God, who loves us and acts in the world and in our personal lives for our ultimate spiritual benefit.
Can you imagine the media of ancient Egypt reporting the news during the period following Moses’s first encounter with Pharoah?
Government officials declare that there is no possibility that Pharoah, head of the world’s leading empire, will accede to the outrageous demand of Jewish leader Moses to free the Israelite labor force.
According to unnamed authoritative sources, Aaron turning his staff into a serpent and water into blood are merely sorcery tricks well known to Egyptian academics. Moses and Aaron pose no threat to the stability of Pharoah’s administration.
Experts predict: Despite the devastating cost of the plagues to the economy, the Egyptian regime is still intact, offering no possibility that the Israelite slaves will be freed.
All of the available metrics could never have predicted that a powerless population of slaves could challenge the mighty Egyptian regime and walk out free.
Egypt was indeed the mightiest and longest-lived empire the world has ever known. The Great Pyramid of Giza, which dominated the landscape for a thousand years before Moses, was the tallest man-made structure in the world until 1889, when the Eiffel Tower was built. Ramesses II, likely the Pharoah of the Exodus, had erected four colossal, seated statues of himself at the entrance to the temple at Abu Simbel. Each statue (they still exist) is 20 meters (66 ft.) tall, a testimony to the massive power of Pharoah’s regime.
All of the available metrics could never have predicted that a powerless population of slaves could challenge the mighty Egyptian regime and walk out free. It only could happen, and did happen, because of the God factor, the power of the all-controlling God to achieve the unlikely, the improbable, and the impossible.
While we have seen some painful losses, we here in Israel, 3338 years after the Exodus, are again witnessing open miracles. Iran has launched over 300 ballistic missiles at Israel during the current war. A ballistic missile is 40 feet long and carries about 2,000 pounds of explosives, easily enough to destroy a whole multi-story building and kill everyone in it. For example, in January 2023, a Russian missile hit a nine-story residential apartment block in Dnipro, Ukraine, and killed 46 people.
In the last four days, three ballistic missiles fired from Iran at Israel scored direct hits in crowded urban neighborhoods, in Dimona, Arad, and Tel Aviv. Our air defenses attempted to shoot them down and missed. (The companies that produce those systems claim only 90% success.) In all three direct hits, the missile landed next to an apartment complex, but not on it. The death toll was zero.
In Arad, the force of the blast propelled a three-year-old boy out of a third-story window. Rescue workers on the ground found the boy, lying on his bed, with just a few scratches.
The three-year-old boy who flew out of the window and landed on his bed
A retired U.S. F-16 fighter pilot who took part in missions over Iraq and Afghanistan said in an interview after the 12-day war with Iran last June:
“I know what it’s like to fly thousands of kilometers into enemy territory. I’ve done it. But what Israeli Air Force pilots are doing in Iran? That’s on another level entirely.
“They’re flying distances twice as far as what we flew. Refueling mid-air, entering areas with air defense systems, carrying out precise strikes — and returning home. Every night. This isn’t normal. It’s superhuman.”
”In war, you’re sure there will be. And here? Nothing. Zero.”
When asked what surprised him the most, he answered: “Zero malfunctions. In training, you expect at least some malfunctions. In war, you’re sure there will be. And here? Nothing. Zero.”
Jews are forbidden to rely on miracles. We are required to engage in “reasonable effort” to accomplish our goals. During this war, for civilians that entails following the directives of the Home Front Command and going to a protected space when the air raid siren sounds. For the IDF, it entails the courageous, non-stop fighting of an existential war to eliminate the threat of Iran.
But what actually happens in this war is ultimately determined by God, because the same God who took us out of Egypt 3338 years ago is still bucking the odds and is still in control.
