hope
is there hope for us?
for when we hallowed the breezes
in the belly of a frenzy wind
and fanned them into the embers of our pains
they became fire
and more pains...
do we hope again for hope?
when the wind is a traitor...
it kills the fire
in the wicks of our comforts
and fuels the fire
in the embers of our pains...
and today
that we looked up to for rains
hails hail of fire.
The Seventh Plague of Egypt -- John Martin
The Plagues of Egypt (Makot Mitzrayim) were 10 calamities inflicted by God to compel the pharaoh to release the Jews from slavery. Pharaoh capitulated after the tenth plague, triggering the Exodus of the Hebrew people. As a result, Moses led them into Canaan. In the prelude to the seventh plague, God explained his rationale for the gradualist campaign, rather than merely accomplishing his purpose via a single miracle. According to Exodus 9:13–24: "This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me, or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth. For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth. But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go. Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now. Give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every man and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die. […] The LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. So the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt; hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation." [New International Version] The Qur'an recounted the plagues a a single event (the Tuwfan) rather than 10 separate ones and included a blast, showers of stones, and an earthquakes but omitted the fiery hailstorm. Some archaeologists believe the plagues occurred at Pi-Rameses in the Nile delta, Egypt's capital in the 13th century BCE during the reign of Ramesses II the Great, the 3rd pharoah of the Nineteenth Dynasty. Immanuel Velikovsky pointed to the Ipuwer Papyrus as the Egyptian description of the plagues, but most historians date it some 800 years too early to be relevant. Most historians interpret the plagues as allegorical or inspired by accounts of disconnected natural disasters. The fiery hail may have been showers of rock and fire resulting from a volcanic eruption.
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