Comentario sobre Exodo 8:12

אמר אל אהרן SAY UNTO AARON — The dust did not deserve to be smitten by Moses because it had protected him when he slew the Egyptian, for “he hid him in the sand”; and it was therefore smitten by Aaron (Tanchuma; Exodus Rabbah 10:7).

לכנם, different kinds of insects that cause man discomfort.

והך את עפר הארץ, they did not warn Pharaoh of the advent of this plague. Neither did they warn him before the onset of the שחין, the boils and blisters, nor before the darkness. The nine plagues, exclusive of the killing of the firstborn, were intended to serve as demonstrations of G’d’s power to change the laws of nature. Although the simultaneous dying of the firstborn was also a powerful such demonstration, it was intended as retribution for refusal to heed all the warnings G’d had extended to Pharaoh and his people. The first 3 plagues דצ'ך, demonstrated mastery of G’d over the two “heavy” components of the four basic elements the universe is made of, i.e. water and earth, The three plagues, abbreviated under the heading of עד'ש by Rabbi Yehudah Hanassi, demonstrates G’d’s control not only over inert parts of nature but also over living creatures. The third category בא'ח, demonstrated G’d complete control of the air, the atmosphere including the other two basic elements known as רוח and אש, air, wind, and fire. In each group the first two plagues were preceded by warnings, whereas the third was not. The matter has been alluded to in Job 33,29 הן כל אלה יפעל א-ל, פעמים שלוש עם גבר. “Truly, G’d does all these things, two or three times to a man.”

In the Septuagint it says σκνῖφες,¹skniphes and Philo of Alexandria in his book “On the Life of Moses” (Book 1:9) wrote that it is a flying insect, very small and very annoying in its sting, and also enters the ears and nostrils, and it requires great care to protect the eyes. And maybe this is Linnæus’s²Well-known taxonomist, formalizer of the standard binomial name format Culex pulicaris³One common variety of Egyptian biting midge, or Culex molestus⁴Commonly called the London Underground mosquito recorded by Forsskål⁵Peter Forsskål, a Swedish-speaking Finnish naturalist and a disciple of Linnæus as found in Egypt, which greatly pains those sleeping at night. And Eichhorn⁶Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, late Enlightenment era theologian, orientalist, and Biblical critic says that in the word kinnim there is no yod and the mem isn’t marking plural, but rather khnem or ch'nef is the name of an insect in the Egyptian language.⁷The standard Egyptological form of this word is ḫnws or ḫnms. The modern Coptic word is ϣⲟⲗⲙⲥ̄ šolmes Personally, I think that after Israel left Egypt and came to a land where this insect did not live, they referred to it the name kinnim to teach that it was like a different kind of insect that stings the flesh, and thus Onkelos says qälmta (vermin), and similarly in the Syriac Peshitta it says qälma. And the word is found in the Talmud (Berakhot 51b) — “From wanderers come words, from rags come qälmei” — and in the Tosafot on Shabbat 12a:5 where Rabbi Joseph of Orleans and Rabbeinu Tam debate if the kinnah is white and the par’ush is black or the other way around. And in the Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni 182:3) it says many kinds of kinnim came upon them, the smallest the size of a chicken egg and the largest the size of a goose egg. But in the Talmud (Sanhedrin 67b) it says: “And the court-mages said to Pharaoh, “The finger of God is this!” Said Rabbi Eliezer, from here we determine that a demon cannot make anything smaller than a barley-corn.

ויאמר ה' אל משה ,אמור אל אהרן, “The Lord said to Moses: “say to Aaron, etc.” This time Pharaoh was not given a warning of the upcoming plague. We do not find any warnings prior to the sixth or ninth plague either. Each of these plagues was the third in a series. We have a rule (Maimonides Sanhedrin 18,4) that if someone twice in a row ignores the penalty of physical punishment administered for sins committed and persists in his conduct, he will be confined in a prison on a starvation diet which will result in his early death. Nachmanides writes that Moses did not issue warnings to Pharaoh concerning impending plagues unless the plague in question would involve the death of Egyptians, and it would have been unfair not to forewarn them of impending death for ignoring Moses’ request. The plague of blood, for instance, could have resulted in the death of Egyptians who could not dig near the Nile to obtain subterranean water. Similarly, the plague involving the frogs wrought havoc amongst the Egyptians as we know from Psalms The three plagues vermin, boils, and darkness however, did not pose any threat to the lives of the Egyptians. Some of the warnings of the plagues were given by Moses after G’d had instructed him to deliver the warning early in the morning on the banks of the river Nile, -This does not mean an ungodly hour in the morning, but what is called “morning” for Kings, who habitually are presumed to be late risers.- The King at such times, would be accompanied by a sizable entourage so that the issuing of the warning was overheard by many people and Pharaoh could not have denied having received the warning. G’d selected this method in the hope that some of Pharaoh’s servants after hearing the warning, especially after the first plague, would try and make their ruler change his mind and release the Israelites. In the event that the servants did not try and change their ruler’s mind, they would be just as guilty as Pharaoh himself, and would have brought their misery on themselves by their own obstinacy. When we do not find G’d instructing Moses to warn Pharaoh in the morning, he received the warning while in a private audience with Moses and Aaron. Warnings in public also were the case when G’d had instructed Moses with the words: בא אל פרעה, “come to Pharaoh.” When such opportunities for Pharaoh’s servants to show themselves as less obstinate were not taken advantage of, the reason for delivering these warnings in public no longer existed. The well known abbreviations of the three groups of plagues, i.e. דצ'ך, עד'ש, באח'ב may also be explained in terms of the type of warnings preceding them, or no warning preceding them at all.. According to the Midrash, the letters in these abbreviations were engraved on Moses’ staff to indicate which plagues would be preceded by which warning or by the absence of any warning. Others claim that the division is based on which plague was orchestrated by Aaron, which by Moses, and which by Moses and Aaron jointly. Others hold that they are hints as to which plagues originated in the atmosphere and which originated on earth or in the water. Yet other opinions draw attention to the purpose of each of these groups of plagues, a purpose spelled out clearly by the Torah before each group of plague, each time the operative clause begins with למען תדע, ”so that you will realize that, etc.” Ibn Ezra writes that the first three plagues used the least sophisticated phenomena in our universe, i.e. water and dust. These plagues were initiated by Aaron. The plagues that were brought about by phenomena in the upper regions of our universe were orchestrated by Moses, seeing that Moses represented the highest level attained by any of G’d’s creatures. These were: hail, and locusts, which is brought on by the wind, an almost non-physical phenomenon. Similarly, darkness was also a plague that was brought on by the air, the atmosphere, something intangible. The third group such a wild beasts, pestilence, and the slaying of the firstborn was brought on directly by G’d Himself. The remaining plague, the boils, was brought on jointly by both Moses and Aaron without the staff having been used at all. The three plagues brought on by Aaron alone were orchestrated by means of the staff, as were the three brought on by Moses alone. None of the other 4 plagues involved use of the staff. Rabbi Saadyah Gaon writes that between them the plagues made use of the 4 basic raw materials our physical universe is made of. Three plagues utilized the basic material עפר, dust, i.e. earth; they were: “boils,” which originated in the dust remaining after the furnace has burnt its course. The vermin and the wild beasts, the other two, also made use of that raw material as all bodies are made of earth and return to becoming earth when the life they supported terminates. Three further plagues were based on the second raw material our universe consists of, i.e. on water. They were: blood, frogs, and hail. Still another three plagues made use of the third of the four basic elements, i.e. air. They were 1) דבר, the pestilence which struck especially the livestock. We have a verse in Psalms 91,6 מדבר באפל יהלך, which is interpreted by Bamidbar Rabbah 12 as describing disorders in the domain of air. [birds would not fall from the air, their habitat, unless someone had interfered with that habitat. Ed.] 2) the plague of locust, which had been brought on by unusual changes in the air, i.e. a wind blowing constantly from the same direction. 3) The darkness. The atmosphere was made opaque instead of transparent, so that people felt as if they were in a narrow prison and could not move at all. Finally, there was one plague, which employed the fourth basic element, fire; this was used in orchestrating the simultaneous killing of all the firstborn in Egypt. Separation of body and soul is the result of a subcategory of fire, i.e. heat, which disturbs the equilibrium needed for body and soul to live side by side in harmony. The plagues utilizing the staff as the instrument that resulted in the onset of each plague also show variations in the way the staff was employed on each occasion. Sometimes Moses is commanded: “take your staff and incline it, etc.” other times he is commanded: “take your staff and raise your hand in which you hold the staff, etc.” Sometimes he is commanded to first employ his hand followed by the staff, other times the sequence is reversed. Some commentators feel that the basic example is the plague of blood, and that the same procedure i.e. extending the hand which was holding the staff, was followed invariably in bringing on all these plagues, but that the Torah did not bother to repeat this each time. The Torah merely employs part of the procedure on different occasions, particularly when describing the execution of the command. These commentators are concerned to have us realize that Moses and Aaron carried out their instructions without deviating from them in the slightest.

V. 12. Die beiden ersten, dem גרות und עבדות entsprechenden מכות der ersten Gruppe waren erfolglos vorüber; darauf tritt die dritte, ohne Warnung, als Strafe ein. — עפר. wir haben im Deutschen nur das eine Wort Staub für zwei ganz verschiedene Begriffe: אבק und אבק .עפר ist das Wertloseste, der eigentliche Staub; עפר ist das Wertvollste ( — אפר ,עור ,עֵבר ,עפר —) die äußere lose Decke des Erdkörpers, die fruchtbare Erde, der Humus. Nicht עפר הארץ ,אבק, die "Erde" des Landes soll geschlagen und lebendig werden. Bis dahin war ihnen גרות und עבדות durch Wasser fühlbar gemacht worden. Jetzt tritt ihnen der Boden entgegen. Die fruchtbare ägyptische Erde soll sich in Ungeziefer verwandeln.

והיו לכנים, “they will become vermin.” These are the kind of vermin that are products of the dust, but only rarely attack human beings. They emanated from their customary habitat, like the frogs and other plagues.

כנים, von כנן: feststellen, כַּן : Unterlage, verwandt mit גנן und קנן .קנן: ein nisten, גנן: ein Stück Land einfriedigen, um darin zu leben. גָן: ein großes Nest, ein Garten. Es ist nicht unmöglich, dass כנים deshalb so heißen, weil sie Parasiten sind, auf anderen lebenden Organismen leben, es sind "nistende" Tiere, Schmarotzertiere, die auf andern leben und sich von deren Schweiß und Blut nähren.

And strike the dust of the earth and it will be as lice. It seems to me that these are the black lice they call pedoux because it is their manner to come from the dust, while the lice they call puce only come from human sweat. And it was the manner of the plagues to come from their place of generation — frogs from the river, and rain and hail from the sky, and such with all of them, and accordingly these lice must generate from the dust, and maybe there were many kinds of worms and pedoux and other midges whose generation is from the dust.