God aimed the first of ten plagues against the Egyptian gods, the river Nile and idols that were made of wood and stone,
and aimed the second against Pharaoh, whom Ezekiel called a crocodile, fierce beast confronted by a plague of frogs.
The third was lice, a plague God aimed against all the Egyptians. Smart magicians also conjured lice like virus that was grown
in laboratories by smart Chinese virologists, a fact that is disputed by undemocratic demagogues.
The first plague, blood, was a plague against the Egyptian gods, as, Christoph Berner of Kiel University, explained in “Blood, Frogs, and Impurity” (thetorah.com)
The second plague, frogs, was against Pharaoh, whom Ezekiel 29:3 describes as a crocodile, the frogs waging war against the Big Crocodile, like mice who anecdotally scare elephants.
The third plague, lice, notorious transmitters of infectious diseases, was aimed against all the Egyptians. Exod. 8:14 points out that this plague was not only produced by Aaron, following God’s directions, but by Pharaoh’s magicians, described in this poem as the predecessors of Chinese virologists.
Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.
