Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Plagues

We've never been asked, but I figured it would be good to memorize the ten plagues of Egypt.  On first go, we got them all except 'lice' and 'hail fire.'

Here's a nice visual set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/17025280@N00/sets/72157600038845249/detail/

More details:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Plagues

Here's a breakdown of how I've known them and what Wikipedia says:
Blood - (Exodus 7:14-25) rivers and other water sources turned to blood ('Dam')

Frogs - (Exodus 7:26-8:11) amphibians (commonly believed to be frogs) ('Tsfardeia')

Lice - (Exodus 8:12-15) Gnats ('Kinim') -Gnats seem like a pretty lame plague, especially when flies arrives next.  

Flies - (Exodus 8:16-28) Flies, ('Arov')

Cattle Disease - (Exodus 9:1-7) disease on livestock ('Dever') - Maybe I totally remember this wrong and it's livestock disease.  I thought maybe it was Pestilence, but I think that might be one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse - (pestilence, war, famine, and death - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Apocalypse)

Boils - (Exodus 9:8-12) unhealable boils ('Shkhin') - We left out the word "unhealable" at the Passover Seders...though the truth is, the word "boils" is plenty disgusting.

Hail - (Exodus 9:13-35) hail mixed with fire ('Barad') - I didn't remember the fire part.  I think it might have been cool to split these two and ditch gnats.

Locusts - (Exodus 10:1-20) locusts ('Arbeh')

Darkness - (Exodus 10:21-29) darkness ('Choshech')

Slaying of the First Born (Exodus 11:1-12:36) death of the firstborn ('Makat Bechorot') - This is of course where the term "Passover" comes from (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passover).

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