Comentários de Citação sobre Êxodo 9:24

As fire burns something that melts because of it, and as fire causes water to bubble; when you put a coal or glowing metal into water, the water bubbles. All this You did in Egypt, as it is written (Ex. 9: 24): “And there was hail, and fire burning in the midst of the hail.” Jonathan, however, renders: “As fire burned materials that melt,” in reference to Elijah on Mount Carmel, concerning whom it is stated (I Kings 18:38): “and the water which was in the trench, it licked up.”

Go to Pharaoh, to his palace. Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi said: There were two plagues involving water, one that the river turned to blood and all the fish died, and one that the frogs came out of the river. There were two plagues on land, the lice and the mixture of wild animals, as the verse states (Bereishis 1:24): “Let the earth bring forth living creatures.” Two were in the air, for pestilence was abnormal heat or chill that caused countless livestock to die at once, since all life depends on the atmosphere. The second one was the plague of rash, for the Torah calls the sky above their head the heavens (and Moshe began the plague of rash by throwing the furnace soot heavenward). The seventh plague (hail) was a mixture of the sphere of storm and fire, as the Torah describes (9:24): “There was hail and fire flashing among the hailstones.” The eighth plague, locusts, came from far away by means of the wind. The ninth one was a wondrous plague, in which the light of the luminaries and the stars disappeared from the land of Egypt. In the tenth, the destroyer came down from the sphere of splendor to kill the first born”.

The first question- if, as it appears from the text and as the commentaries agree upon, this prophecy truly deals with the produce eaten by the locusts, we have to explain how the navi makes this a great mourning that is so intense. To the point that several times we see that all the food of the year is lost and there will be a destruction of the land. But in Shemot (10:14), the Torah tells us that the locust plague was unique in that there was never before like it and there will never be afterwards. And if so, we need to explain what Yoel says about this current plague that "like it there never was and afterwards there will not be in the years of all generations". A possible (rejected) explanation is that the quote in Shemot is referring to the plague of locusts being unique in the land of Egypt. This explanation is rejected due to the fact that the Torah says about the plague of hail (Shemot 9:24) that there was never like 'in the land of Egypt' specifically.

He gave over their animals to hail When the hail began to fall, the Egyptian drove his sheep (his animal) into the house, and the hail came before him like a wall. The Egyptian slaughtered it [the animal] and put it on his shoulder, to take it to his house to eat it, but the birds came and took it from him. That is [the meaning of] “and their cattle to the birds (לרשפים),” as (Job. 5:7): “but flying creatures (בני רשף) fly upward.” This is its midrashic interpretation (Mid. Ps. 78:14), but according to its simple meaning, רשפים are bolts of fire, as it is written (Exod. 9:24): “and fire flaming within the hail.”