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):
https://www.youtube.com/...
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.
The Egyptians believed that they were in charge: "top of the heap", highest on the food chain, to use an ecological metaphor. The Israelites are their slaves: chattel that exist only to help the Egyptians build storage cities and increase their power and wealth. Almost -- one might say -- "vermin"?
The plagues shatter this way of thinking. Suddenly, the mighty Pharoah himself is laid low by a bunch of "vermin" -- frogs and bugs. A single bug is small, laughable: easy to squish. But en masse, a swarm of locusts can strip the land bare in hours. Suddenly, the powerless have become powerful.
In a larger sense, Pharoah and his officials have been reminded of how the web of life works. They're not "in charge"; the Egyptians don't "own" or "control" the Israelites any more than the frogs "own" the Nile or the cattle have "control" over biting flies. When one strand of the web (the Nile, the frogs, the bugs) sees itself as supremely important and tries to take over, the result is a chain of disastrous consequences affecting everyone.
But it isn't only the Egyptians who should take away an important message here. We may not own "slaves" or see another people as our "property" any longer (at least, not explicitly; the implicit consequences of our global capitalist system are another story.) But like the Egyptians, we (humans) see ourselves as the top of the totem pole, masters of the world. The environment? Who cares? It's there to serve our needs and make us richer.
No less than for the Egyptians, the plagues contain an important message for us: remember how the web of life works. Remember that everything depends on everything else. Remember that even Pharoah, for all his power, couldn't stop a swarm of determined gnats.