“For this time, I shall send all

My plagues to your heart, and on your

servants, and on your people, so that you

will know that there is none like Me in

all the earth.” (9:14)

Why was the plague of hailstones referred to as “all My plagues”?

The Gaon of Vilna explains

that in exacting retribution from the

wicked, the Holy One, Blessed Is

He, generally makes use of one of

three agents of destruction—either

fire, wind, or water. Sodom for instance, was destroyed by fire; the

generation of the Tower of Babel

was dispersed to the four corners of

the earth, that is, by wind; and the

generation of the Great Flood fell

victim to water. The plagues visited

upon the Egyptians also followed

this pattern, with each of them falling into one of these three general

categories: Water was the medium

by which the blood and frogs were effected. Wind brought the locusts.

The fiery ashes of the furnace precipitated the plague of boils. And so on.

The plague of hailstones,

however, was unique in this respect,

in that it manifested a confluence of

all three destructive agents. The

hailstones themselves consisted of

an outer shell of frozen water and

an inner core of fire. And they were

driven by the wind, as evidenced by

the thunderclaps which accompanied them. Therefore, “for this time,” only in the plague of hail-

stones, “I shall send all My plagues,” all the Divine agents of destruction—water, fire and wind.

Rabbi Yechezkel Abramsky

focuses on the words “to your heart.”

Why of all the plagues, are the hailstones considered sent “to your heart”?

It is because the plague of hailstones was directly related to the

dictates of the heart. Moses had

warned the Egyptians that the hailstones would soon be falling and that all the animals should be brought

indoors. The Torah (9:20-21) tells us how a number of Pharaoh’s servants

took Moses’ warning “to heart” and

saved their livestock by bringing them

inside, while others chose to ignore

the word of G-d and left their animals

in the fields. The heart, then, was a

determining factor in the plague.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Jonathan Horowitz