Vaera

 בס״ד

Vaera

Why wasn’t there a plague of snakes,

That slithered from their marshy brakes,

To bite and wound with poisoned fang,

Injecting fear in Pharaoh’s gang?

Why frogs and lice and wild beasts,

To interrupt their pagan feasts,

Common things that men don’t dread,

As much as cobra’s hooded head?

When Aaron and Moshe raised their staffs,

God could have lifted waves of asps,

To crash upon the Nile’s shore,

And Pharaoh would have begged, “No more”!

But slow and steady was the game,

As He, of whom they would not name,

Gave them time and lots of rope,

’Til, at the last, their firstborn smote.