The plagues commenced in Egypt with the ghastly plague of blood, and continued, perhaps oddly, with the comical-sounding plague of frogs. Commenting on the Hebrew word tzefardea, 'frog,' R. Samson Raphael Hirsch quotes a fanciful etymology, according to which the word is a compound of the Aramaic word tzefar, 'morning,' and the Hebrew word da, 'knowing.' The frog, he explains, is a meek creature active mainly at night; it knows the coming of morning and is quick to hide before most humans are up and about. What happened in the plague is not that there suddenly were frogs where none had been, but that the creatures, in defiance of their usual nature, stayed up and went where people could see them. Instead of staying under the sink, they jumped up onto the plates. Just so, continues Hirsch, were the slaves in that society -- always present, but rarely noticed. The portent of the plague was that the society's "invisible people" were about to become visible and trouble the nation's consciousness.
In the plague of locusts, too, an army of small, ordinarily barely noticeable creatures rises up to "cover the eye of the land." So, as the disasters piled up, did the Hebrew slaves become the most noticeable and troublesome group in society. To end the plague, God sweeps up the locusts and drops them in the area of the Sea of Reeds -- pointing to the spot where the slaves were to have their final, redemptive confrontation with Pharaoh's army.
In that confrontation, two elements of society that usually hover just below our consciousness, intermingled in society and taken for granted, are set out in the stark light of a desert morning, with the sun glinting off the sea: the most oppressed, and the perpetrators of oppression. For once, we can tell who is who; they stand on one side, and we on the other. And even then, with the final overthrow of the oppressors, God is said to have chided his angels: "My creatures are drowning in the sea, and you are singing songs?"
The lesson, perhaps, is that no creature is invisible to God, and we, to realize God's image in ourselves, need to open our eyes to the "invisible people" who ought to be troubling our consciousness. Case in point: When our planes and tanks wreak havoc upon a civilian population, we'll never be able to assess the extent to which the destruction was justified unless that population is visible to us -- unless we can see them as real people, and not just as "the enemy."
Unless we want to end up where some of our enemies want us -- in the sea -- we'd better not wait until they "cover the eye of the land."
In the plague of locusts, too, an army of small, ordinarily barely noticeable creatures rises up to "cover the eye of the land." So, as the disasters piled up, did the Hebrew slaves become the most noticeable and troublesome group in society. To end the plague, God sweeps up the locusts and drops them in the area of the Sea of Reeds -- pointing to the spot where the slaves were to have their final, redemptive confrontation with Pharaoh's army.
In that confrontation, two elements of society that usually hover just below our consciousness, intermingled in society and taken for granted, are set out in the stark light of a desert morning, with the sun glinting off the sea: the most oppressed, and the perpetrators of oppression. For once, we can tell who is who; they stand on one side, and we on the other. And even then, with the final overthrow of the oppressors, God is said to have chided his angels: "My creatures are drowning in the sea, and you are singing songs?"
The lesson, perhaps, is that no creature is invisible to God, and we, to realize God's image in ourselves, need to open our eyes to the "invisible people" who ought to be troubling our consciousness. Case in point: When our planes and tanks wreak havoc upon a civilian population, we'll never be able to assess the extent to which the destruction was justified unless that population is visible to us -- unless we can see them as real people, and not just as "the enemy."
Unless we want to end up where some of our enemies want us -- in the sea -- we'd better not wait until they "cover the eye of the land."
