Ps. 78.45 (spilling into Egypt)

He sent against them / a swarm / and it devoured them
and frogs / that ruined them. 

One thing we noted in the previous reflection but did not draw a great deal of attention to is the fact that plagues begin in blood and death. These are the “signs and wonders” established in Egypt and Zoan. It can, surprisingly, go unnoticed in the flurry of activity. But we see it from the beginning directly up to the final most devastating and explicitly mortal of all the plagues, the death of the first-born. As we will see, death is creeping up the ‘chain of being’, from water, to vegetative life, to animal life and finally to human life. In the first plague death comes simply by a ‘turning’ of the river into blood. Here, the act becomes more overtly violent. A swarm and frogs are ‘sent against them’. Their effect is ‘devouring’ and ‘ruin’. For each plague, the power of chaos begins to spill into Egypt. This momentum will continue.