Commento su Esodo 9:32

כי אפילת הנה means FOR THEY WERE LATE in growing and they were still soft and able to resist the blow of anything hard. It is true that it is stated, (v. 25) “and every herb of the field did the hail smite”, but one must explain the real meaning of that verse as referring to herbs that stood on their stalks and were therefore liable to be broken by the hail. In the Midrash of Rabbi Tanchuma 2:2:16 some of our Rabbis differed in their explanation of this, and explained the words כי אפילת to signify that most remarkable wonders (פלאי פלאות) happened to them in that they were not smitten.

לא נוכו, to inform us that whatever the hail had not destroyed would be destroyed by the locusts. The hail demolished everything hard, the locust everything soft.

והחטה והכסמת, take note of the extent of the wickedness of Pharaoh and his servants. Even though the wheat and the spelt had not yet been destroyed, and Moses had prayed for the removal of the plague of hail, and Pharaoh had observed that all the destructive forces had ceased to be active as an immediate result of Moses’ prayer, something which made plain that but for Moses’ prayer the destruction would have continued, Pharaoh heaped more sins on top of the ones already committed, so as to make the ultimate retribution he would suffer even more terrible.

כי אפילות הנה. “for they ripen later in the season.” Rashi, offering also the view of the Midrash Tanchuma 16, writes that this was an exceptional miracle i.e. the word אפילות is a rearrangement of the word פליאות, ”miracles.” The Midrash quasi begs the question why we need to resort to miracles when the Torah itself had offered a rational explanation why these crops had not been destroyed by the hail. Perhaps, although these crops had not been ruined by the hail, they could have been ruined by some other natural disaster. The Torah therefore may have wanted to inform the reader that Pharaoh was aware that there had been no other reason to fear for that crop. Some people question that if we accept the view that the time frame of each plague, including the preceding warning, lasted for a month, and we count backwards from the plague of the dying of the firstborn which occurred in Nissan, that the plague of hail must have occurred in the month of Tevet, and how could any crop be sufficiently advanced at that time to suffer damage or even be ruined through hail? Even in the land of Israel only barley ripens by Nissan? In light of this calculation, most commentators came to the conclusion that each cycle involving any of the plagues could not have lasted longer than two weeks, including the preceding warning when such occurred. Accordingly, the hail would have occurred during the month of Adar. Possibly, seeing that Egypt’s crops never had to wait for irrigation, thanks to the river Nile and its canals, the grains ripen there at a time which for us is the deep of winter.

והחטה והכוסמת לא נוכו, “but the wheat and the spelt had not been ruined;” this is emphasized because later on (10,5) the Torah writes that the locusts will devour anything that the hail had not ruined. Somebody might have argued that what is written here has already been included in the words describing all the grass in the field as having been destroyed; in order to forestall such an interpretation, the Torah first exempts the wheat and the spelt by explaining why these species of plants had not been ruined by the hail; they had been too small and soft to be affected. Basically speaking, hail destroys hard plants and locusts consume soft plants.

The word אפילות, derived from אופל, “darkness,” means that the plants under discussion are as yet invisible, not have broken through to the air above the ground as yet.