So why is "Frogs" a plague?

Odradek

Locusts I get. Boils I get. Fiery hale I really really get. But too many frogs just seems like a nuisance.

Toolsie

Frogs = witchcraft and witchcraft = plague and plague = associated with the devil and therefore bad(?)

Salix Babylonika

at the time the Old Testament was written no one had ever conceived of "the Devil".

In any case, they were thought to carry diseases in the olden days, that's probably why.

Odradek

Jane said:

at the time the Old Testament was written no one had ever conceived of "the Devil".

In any case, they were thought to carry diseases in the olden days, that's probably why.

Well it depends on what part.

There's a "Satan" in Job but he's more of a prosecuting attorney against mankind.

I read an article once that what made the idea of a satanic opposing force to God possible was the rule of Antiochus Epiphanes, who punished the Jews for adhering to their traditions. Beforehand, Jewish sources had always interpreted calamities as God using the Assyrians or the Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar as his servant to punish the Jews for not adhering to their traditions. But it was impossible to do this with Antiochus, because he was the kind of fucker who would make a mother watch her three sons die in front of her for refusing to eat pork.

Fossilmaiden

Well, having your main water source and your food full of frogs probably isn't the greatest of times.

Klinotaxis

Wikipedia said:

To the Egyptians, the frog was a symbol of life and fertility, since millions of them were born after the annual inundation of the Nile, which brought fertility to the otherwise barren lands. Consequently, in Egyptian mythology, there began to be a frog-goddess, who represented fertility, named Heget (also Heqet, Heket), meaning frog. Heget was usually depicted as a frog, or a woman with a frog's head, or more rarely as a frog on the end of a phallus to explicitly indicate her association with fertility.[1]

The Ogdoad are the eight deities worshipped in Hermopolis. They were arranged in four male-female pairs, with the males associated with frogs, and the females with snakes

Hapy, was a deification of the annual flood of the Nile River, in Egyptian mythology, which deposited rich silt on the banks, allowing the Egyptians to grow crops. In Lower Egypt, he was adorned with papyrus plants, and attended by frogs, present in the region, and symbols of it.

The Biblical plague of frogs sent to curse ancient Egypt, like the nature of the other plagues, was intended to show the sovereignty of the God of Moses over the gods of Egypt.

Kinda sucks imo...

Odradek

Wait I thought that was just Jack Chick's weird theory

Haven

Maybe the [1] links to a Chick tract.

Klinotaxis

Well, let me see if I can find a proper citation

Klinotaxis

Matthew Henry said:

Pharaoh is plagued with frogs; their vast numbers made them sore plagues to the Egyptians. God could have plagued Egypt with lions, or bears, or wolves, or with birds of prey, but he chose to do it by these despicable creatures. God, when he pleases, can arm the smallest parts of the creation against us. He thereby humbled Pharaoh.

Seriously, fuck frogs. --Matthew Henry

Klinotaxis

The Reformation Study Bible says it's the Heket thing, though Calvinist

"The second plague (8:1-15) reveals God's power over the amphibian and reptilian world. The Egyptians gave special reverence to animals that could live in two different environments. They did this because they were eager to be able to live in the environment of the underworld after death." is some Wesleyan thing... starting to think these exegeses suck

KilgoreTrout

I like to think that God spun a wheel with all kinds of random stuff on it and it happened to land on frogs. One more space and the Egyptians would have been drowning in Skittles, which God would have summoned from the future to plague them with.

glennmagusharvey

> So why is "Frogs" a plague?

because ancient Judeochristians were anti-wildlife

[/not serious]

Tachyon

maybe they were poison dart frogs?

Klinotaxis

Amazonian frogs would die pretty fast on the Nile I think

Odradek

Anyway this is metal

Bee

Prince of Egypt in general was pretty metal.

Anyway, I'd assume frogs happened because most of the plagues were airborne and polluting water sources with slimy things was just one more prong of offense.

Alduin

The Plagues were mockeries of all the Egyptian gods; they showed that God had greater power of the Egyptian gods' domains than the Egyptian gods did. Frogs were intended as a mockery against Heqet, the Egyptian god of fertility. 

Alduin

https://hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/Ten-Plagues-For-Ten-Gods

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