The second plague that God brought upon Egypt in the Book of Exodus was the plague of frogs. Exodus 8:2 tells us that “Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt; and the frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt.”

I know how my wife reacted when just one frog made its way into our house while we were living in Florida – I can’t even imagine how much she would have panicked if they were everywhere like they were in Egypt! But the Hebrew version of this verse reveals that it didn’t start out that way. At first, there was only one frog.

The Hebrew word for “frog” is צפרדע, tzefardaya. The plural version of this word is צפרדעים, tzefardayim, which means “frogs.” But instead of saying that the tzefardeyim, the frogs, came up and covered the land, the verse tells us that the tzfardaya, just one frog, came up and covered the land.
How is it possible that one little frog covered all of Egypt?

According to Jewish tradition, at first only one frog came out of the water and onto the land. When the Egyptians saw it, they tried to kill the frog by hitting it. But when they struck that one frog, it split into two frogs. This angered the Egyptians, so they tried to kill it again. This time, when they hit the two frogs, they became four frogs. This continued happening – four frogs became eight, eight frogs became sixteen, and so on – until eventually there were so many frogs that they covered the entire land.

One might think when the Egyptians saw what was happening – that every time they hit a frog, it multiplied – they would have stopped hitting them. But they didn’t. The reason why they continued hitting the frogs is because the frogs made the Egyptians angry, and their anger caused them to act irrationally.

The roll of anger in creating the plague is hinted at in the Hebrew version of our verse. When the verse tells us that the frogs covered Egypt, it uses the word ותכס, vatichas, which means, “and covered.” This word is nearly identical to the word ותכעס, vatikas, which means, “and became angry.” One frog caused the Egyptians to become angry and as a result of that anger, the entire land became covered in frogs.

This teaches us an important lesson about anger, or in Hebrew, כעס, ka’as. Anger causes us to do irrational things and makes us behave in ways that are self-defeating. We usually end up regretting the things we say or do while we are angry.

Ecclesiastes 7:9 tells us that “anger rests in the bosom of fools.” One way to understand this is that foolish people have anger in their hearts. But another way to understand the verse is that being angry causes people to become foolish. We do things that we later regret.

Everyone feels angry sometimes. It’s a natural emotion. But we can choose not to act out of anger. We can think of the one frog that posed no real problem to the Egyptians, but because they acted in anger, ended up covering the entire land. We can choose to act only from a place of calmness and well-being – and when we do that, everyone is better off, most of all us.