“Let my people go,” said Moses to Pharoah.

“Not until I get my horse back.”

“You have a thousand horses.”

“It’s the principle: Take a horse, you take a palace.”

“I set it free in the mountains of Midian.”

“Then find it and bring it back.”

“Once free, forever free,” Moses told him. “It’s the principle.”

“Power trumps principle everytime,” Pharoah said.

“I have a higher power.
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

“Never heard of him.”

But God had heard enough.
“Give him back his horse,” He whispered to Moses,
“or I’ll have to do something I don’t want to do.”

“It’s the principle.” Moses said shaking his head.

“Sometimes I regret giving man free will,” God told Moses.
“Principles can cause a lot of suffering.”

“But what good is free will if we can’t have principles?”
asked Moses.

“What good is principles without power,” God replied.

“What good is a God without principles?”

“You need both,” God said. “I’ll show you.”

He sent seven plagues down on the Egyptians:
Blood and Frogs and Gnats and Swarms of Wild Beasts,
and Murrain and Boils and Hail.
Yet Pharoah hardened his heart.
He would not let the Israelites go free.

“Three more plagues will do it.” God told Moses.
“The last one is a killer.”

Moses wondered why
the Egyptian people
should suffer for Pharoah’s principles,
but he remained silent.