The second Torah portion reading from the Book of Exodus this week is in some respects THE beginning of the Exodus itself, in that it describes the first set(s) of the ‘Ten Plagues of Egypt.” ‘Vaera’ (Exodus 6:4 through chapter 9), beings, however, with an explanation of His Name, YHVH. “And I appeared,” (‘vaera’) He says, to Abraham, and to Yitzak, and to Yakov, “as El Shaddai, but by My Name YHVH I did not,” at not in the way that He is about to, “make Myself known to them.

And that is the essence of what He is about to do!

The Erev Shabbat reading, as usual, covers the story itself, but also starts to lay out the incredible significance of just what that means:

The Sabbath Day midrash takes a deeper look at a number of key elements that are laid out in this parsha, from the emphasis on His Name YHVH, and that He would then SHOW what that means, so that all of us would know, to the patterns and projections associated with the plagues themselves.

They were not only all judgments against various fake Egyptian ‘gods,’ but also, Mark contends, a set of ‘open brackets,’ or one half of a set of bookends, which we will eventually see closed by the prophesied second, or “Greater Exodus.”

And there are certainly “candidates” for those in play today.

The combined two-part teaching is here: