Finger of The Almighty: Parashat Va’era

The Plagues from the Saul Raskin Hagaddah

The Plagues from the Saul Raskin Hagaddah

Parashat Va’era
Exodus 6:2 – 9:35

God rains down plagues upon the Egyptians because Pharaoh will not allow the Israelites to leave their state of servitude to him. The first plague is the transformation of the Nile waters into blood. The second plague brings frogs out of the Nile waters.

For the reader and listener there is a difference between how we react to the first plague and to the second. To contemplate the first plague is to be filled with horror.  But our response to the second plague is not serious at all. Frogs are goofy. Perhaps being overrun by frogs is uncomfortable. But it hardly conjures up images of death and violence. We swing from the sickening horror of rivers of blood to a  curious sense of the ridiculousness of little hopping creatures who are oblivious to the fact that they have lost their initial effect of cuteness and have become pests. (We are fine with singing a children’s ditty that “frogs were jumping everywhere,” but would never imagine singing a jolly tune  about “blood was flowing everywhere.”)

So it is with plagues. They initially hit us with shock and dread and then gradually just become a grim nuisance. With these very first plagues we have been introduced into the danger of losing our sensitivity to suffering.

The third plague is lice. The magicians of Egypt have been able to replicate the first two plagues. But they are stymied when they try to produce their own lice. Why can’t they do it? They say, with a mixture, perhaps, of awe and resentment, that “this is the Finger of the Almighty.” (Ex. 8:15) Something has happened at this point that is different from before. This plague issues, not from the water, as did the first two plagues, but from the dust of the earth. This plague is a direct attack on the human being (who, we recall, was created from the dust of the earth – Gen. 2:7) The Torah tells us: “the lice [plague] was in the humans and animals.” (Ex. 8:14) The first plague was about disembodied blood. The second was about silly critters running rampant. Only the third  plague affects us directly, on and in our bodies.

But God will not allow the magicians to imitate this plague because only God will inflict this direct attack on human beings and their animal companions. Now that the invasion of plague is personal, there are no more games to play; there are no more possibilities for deflecting our feelings. We will not be allowed to cause others to suffer through our own obliviousness.

Or, at least, so thought God. But Pharaoh knew better. And so do we.

Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Greenstein


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image: The Plagues from the Saul Raskin Haggadah 

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