24 Jan PARASHAT BO: THE PLAGUES OF HAIL AND LOCUSTS

Parashat Bo begins
with the message that
Hashem commanded
Moshe to bring to
Pharaoh before the
eighth plague, the

plague of hail. In in-
troducing this message, Hashem told Moshe

that Beneh Yisrael will one day relate to their
children and grandchildren “Et Asher Hit’alalti
Be’Misrayim” – “how I made a mockery of
Egypt” (10:2).

A number of commentators raised the ques-
tion of why this was said specifically in refer-
ence to the plague of locusts. Did not all the

plagues “make a mockery of Egypt,” by show-
ing Pharaoh that he was powerless, and not the

Hashem-like figure which he claimed to be?

The Ben Ish Hai (Rav Yosef Haim of Bagh-
dad, 1833-1909) explains the particular

“mockery” that was brought about by the
plague of locusts. The Torah tells (10:15) that
the locusts consumed “all that the hail had
left.” The previous plague, the plague of hail,
had destroyed all the produce in Egypt, except
the wheat and “Kusemet,” two staple grains
which survived. As the Torah explains (9:32),

these two species withstood the hailstorm be-
cause they ripen later, and they were thus still

in their earlier stages of growth such that they

were soft and capable of surviving harsh ele-
ments. The Egyptians ridiculed Moshe, noting

that had he brought the hail just several weeks
later, after these two species had ripened, the
job would have been complete. They mocked
Moshe for what they perceived as foolishness,
bringing the plague of hail before it could
destroy all their produce. Hashem therefore
responded with the plague of locusts, which
“finished the job,” so-to-speak, consuming all
that had remained. And thus Hashem made a

true mockery of the Egyptians – they had ridi-
culed Him for failing to destroy the wheat and

“Kusemet,” yet in the end, He destroyed those,
as well.

This explains an otherwise perplexing pas-
sage in the Haggadah, which tells of Rabbi Ye-
huda’s “Simanim” – the acrostic he made for

the names of the ten plagues. After we list the
plagues, we then mention that Rabbi Yehuda
would refer to them as “Desach,” “Adash”
and “Be’ahab,” forming three words out of
the first letters of the plagues’ names, the first
two words consisting of three letters each,
and the final word consisting of four letters.
Many commentators addressed the question
of why Rabbi Yehuda made this acrostic, and
why this is noteworthy. Seemingly, it does not
take any special wisdom or creativity to form
such an acrostic. One answer is that Rabbi

Yehuda formed these words in this particu-
lar arrangement to show that the seventh and

eighth plagues – hail and locusts – are inte-
grally connected. The final word in his acrostic

is “Be’ahab,” which represents the final four
plagues – “Barad” (hail), “Arbeh” (locusts),
“Hoshech” (darkness) and “Bechorot” (the
firstborn). Intuitively, we would have grouped

the final three plagues separately from the pre-
vious plagues, because the final three plagues

are related together in Parashat Bo, whereas
the first seven are described in Parashat Vaera.
Rabbi Yehuda therefore created his acrostic

to teach that in truth, the seventh and eighth
plagues – hail and locusts – are closely linked.
Although we happen to read about them in
two different Parashiyot, they are actually
to be seen as two stages of a single process.
The plague of hail ended with false hope for

the Egyptians, which led them to ridicule
Hashem, but then plague of locusts came
and proved them wrong. Together, these two
plagues proved to the Egyptians the fallacy
of their beliefs and made a mockery of their
 arrogant sense of power and invincibility.