Torah reading: Exodus 6:2 to 9:35
Haftarah: Ezekiel 28:25 to 29:21
First, some buzzing music from Handel to set the scene (we sang "Israel in Egypt" when I was in undergrad choir, and this is still my favorite movement):
Frogs, flies, gnats, and lice! Today's Torah reading seems to contain a veritable host of creepy-crawlies...and there's still locusts to come next day! There's something almost more amusing than disastrous about the first group of plagues (that is, if you're reading about them and not actually living through them!). One gets the feeling that God is holding back, putting on a show of force without inflicting much real damage, as some animals do to warn off predators. "Let My people go, now...or it's not just bugs you'll have to deal with."
Some historians have suggested that the plagues were natural phenomena, and pointed to a possible "chain-reaction" mechanism: the water of the Nile is poisoned by algae, turning it blood-red. All the fish in the water die, but the frogs leave the water and seek land, where they eventually die as well. Without the frogs to keep them in check, insect populations (flies, lice, gnats, locusts) multiply out of proportion and swarm over the land of Egypt, then causing boils and livestock diseases. Other commentators have pointed out that, even if the plagues' immediate cause was a natural phenomenon, their timing and the devastating effect on Egypt suggests that God's hand was ultimately behind them.
However, I'm going to take this a step further: not only could the plagues be seen as natural phenomena (and natural phenomena that the Egyptians would probably have been familiar with!) but this very fact is an essential part of the lesson they teach. How so? Follow me beneath the orange swarm for more.
