Why Were the Egyptians Punished if the Enslavement Was Decreed Long Before?

One of the beautiful and moving parts of the Haggadah is the description of the punishment of the Egyptians. This description raises a question: What makes us so joyful about this punishment? How many plagues did they receive at sea and how many on land? It's true that the Israelites who themselves suffered the pain and hardship of bondage probably needed to see this; the fear of slavery wouldn't have been released without 'And the Israelites saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.' But that was then. Why now, from a distance of over 3,000 years, do we still need to preach blood, fire, and pillars of smoke for this?

Why were the Egyptians punished at all, asks Maimonides, when the decree of enslavement was made from on high years earlier, revealed to Abraham our patriarch in the Covenant Between the Pieces, 'Your offspring will be strangers in a land not their own - and they will enslave and oppress them.'

From Maimonides' answer, we can perhaps learn about the importance of discussing the punishment of the Egyptians.

Maimonides explains that although the enslavement was decreed upon the children of Israel, the Egyptians did not do it 'for the sake of fulfilling the prophecy.' They acted out of malice and selfishness. They exploited the Israelites, hated them, and humiliated them. For that, they certainly deserved punishment. Moreover, each Egyptian individually was not obliged to act cruelly towards the Israelites; that was their choice. The decree would have been fulfilled even without their actions.

From this, we understand that Hashem calculated in advance that when the Israelites went down to Egypt, even if they arrived there peacefully, something in the structure of the Egyptian nation would lead to the enslavement and oppression of the Israelites, as indeed happened. And the punishment was also calculated beforehand, as the sages say, ten conditions did Hashem make with His world, and one of them was the splitting of the Sea of Reeds. The splitting of the sea was embedded in the nature of the world at its creation. And the Mover of causes orchestrated the Israelites - upon whom enslavement was decreed, the Egyptians - whose character led them to do evil, and the Sea of Reeds - that in its nature was destined to split at a certain date.

When we look at our world, we can understand that every event that occurs has more than one cause. When a person is, God forbid, decreed to be ill, it is also decreed that his household will experience distress, his workplace will face difficulties, and the treating physician will attend to him. No action occurs in a vacuum. Every result has other results, and these results can return to the same people, in wide circles.

And not only among people, but also in influencing nature. A person can throw a cigarette butt out of the window, causing a butterfly to fly faster, which causes a bird to swoop towards it, etc. This phenomenon is known as the 'butterfly effect.' The smallest action can set off a chain reaction that might even cause an earthquake.

Hashem does not calculate just what everyone deserves, but also all the billions of effects of every action, even if Hashem were to reveal to us only what concerns our own lives, why everything happens, it would still not be a small part of Hashem's wisdom that connects the things together. The same thing that happens to you, happens also to your wife, your neighbor, your children, your environment, and spreads in circles. It's an infinity of events, and the Creator of the world: 'who designs the winds,' He calculates everything, like a grand and infinite Sudoku, with the goal: to do good for us, to fix the world.

This immense wisdom was revealed to the people of Israel for the first time during the Exodus from Egypt. All the things that seemingly happened by chance came together for an immense revelation of the divine presence. The people of Israel received what they deserved, the Egyptians received what they deserved, and nature did what it was assigned to do. This revelation of the divine presence serves as the example of Hashem's wisdom, to teach us that even when we cannot see or understand, someone up there...