Bo

During the plague of locust Pharaoh's servants came to him and said, for how long are you going to let this man destroy us? Send them out to serve 'ה for you know that Egypt is lost. Moshe and Aaron are brought before Pharaoh & he says, go serve 'ה, who's going? Moshe tells him, the young, the old, our sons & daughters, & all our animals are going. Then Pharaoh says, I refuse to send the women & children & it goes without saying that I won't send out the flocks. לכו נא הגברים let only the men go. Why? As the posuk continues ראו כי רעה נגד פניכם: see that evil faces you. Rashi brings the Midrash that says that the evil he was referring to was a star called ראו that Pharaoh saw meant bloodshed for the Jewish people in the desert. The כלי יקר explains an obvious question. If evil awaits them & that's why he's not letting them go, so then why let the men go? Shouldn't he be concerned about them too? He answers that Pharaoh knew that the men had two mitzvos to protect them: the mitzva of פסח & the mitzva of מילה. Since women aren't obligated in the mitzva of מילה, & children don't generally sacrifice, they would have no protection, so let only the men go.  How do we understand this? Is Pharaoh all of a sudden concerned about us? Is he trying to protect us with religious rationalization? The posuk states later on that Hashem says, I will pass through the land of Egypt on this night & kill every firstborn Egyptian in the land of Egypt. והיה הדם לכם לאת על הבתים: and the blood on your houses will be a sign that you are there and I will pass over you. There will not be a plague among you when I strike the land of Egypt. Then the posuk says, לא תצאו איש מפתח ביתו עד בקר: that no man should leave his house until morning. Rashi says that this is telling us that once the destructive forces are allowed to destroy, they don't differentiate between צדיקand רשע, so the Jews had to stay in their homes and 'ה will not let the destructive forces come into the Jewish homes to destroy.   The sefer עוד יוסף חי asks, why was it necessary for there to be a destroyer in Egypt necessitating the Jews to stay in their homes to be safe, since it was 'ה himself who did the killing and he could differentiate between צדיק and רשע ? He answers that when the Egyptians heard about מכת בכורות they thought it would be done through destroyers, & when they saw the Jews putting blood on their doorposts so that the destroyer wouldn't come into their homes, the Egyptians thought to outsmart 'ה & forced the Jews to house the Egyptian firstborns in their homes where they would be safe from destruction. However, one who thinks he's able to annul ה's decrees or tries to outsmart Him will not only not succeed, but will lose double. What did 'ה do? He sent the destroyers out to the Egyptian homes to kill the firstborn, and when they didn't find a firstborn there, they killed the oldest in the house, while 'ה Himself went & skipped over the Jewish firstborns & killed the Egyptians that were in the same house. So not only didn't they save the firstborn, they caused the death of whoever was the oldest in the house too.     Maybe that is also what Pharaoh was doing. He was trying to appeal to Moshe with religious rationalization explaining why they couldn't all go, because by saying the women & children couldn't go he knew  the religious ceremonies they'd have without the women & children wouldn't have a lasting effect & would be worthless. He thought that by granting partial permission he would circumvent the end result. At the end, not only did everyone go, but Pharaoh himself sent animals with them for their religious sacrifice, proving that there can be no gain from trying to outsmart  'ה or go against His will. We have to trust that if we follow His ways and don't rationalize  we'll always come out on top!