5 min read

Hanina's Frog Taught Him Seventy Languages

A poor man obeyed his dying father and bought a sealed casket, then fed a frog that grew into a teacher of Torah and all seventy human tongues.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Last Instruction
  2. The Creature That Ate Everything
  3. The Teaching Buried Inside the Test
  4. What the Seventy Tongues Cost

The Last Instruction

Hanina's father was dying and he had almost nothing left to give his son except one instruction. On the first day of Passover, go to the marketplace. Whatever is offered to you first, buy it. Whatever the price, pay it.

His father died. Passover came. Hanina went to the market with nearly everything he owned in his hands. A man approached him carrying a sealed silver casket. Hanina paid for it without asking what was inside.

He brought the casket home. His wife looked at the thing and shook her head. He opened it. Inside was another casket. He opened that one too. Inside the second casket was a frog.

The Creature That Ate Everything

The frog needed to eat. Hanina's wife fed it scraps from the Passover table. The next day it was larger. She fed it more. By the end of the festival week it had grown so large it required its own shed. By the following month it required a larger shed. By the end of the year, Hanina had sold most of his possessions to buy food for a creature that would not stop growing.

He built a larger shed. The frog outgrew it. He built a house around the frog. The frog filled the house. Hanina's wife, who had watched their savings and their furniture and their grain supply disappear into the frog's mouth, reached her limit. Either the frog goes into the wilderness, she said, or I go.

Hanina opened the door and led the frog to the edge of the town. The creature sat in the open air and looked at him. Then it opened its mouth for the first time and spoke.

The Teaching Buried Inside the Test

It said: You have cared for me faithfully. I will give you what you have earned. Ask for one thing.

Hanina said: Teach me the Torah.

He could have asked for his money back. He could have asked for enough food to last the year, or a house large enough for his family, or simply some explanation for what had happened to him. He asked for Torah.

The frog taught him. It taught him the entire Torah, the written law and the oral law both. Then it taught him the seventy languages of humanity, the tongues that had scattered at Babel when the builders stopped understanding each other and the nations divided. The frog knew all of them. When it was done teaching, it turned and walked into the wilderness and Hanina never saw it again.

What the Seventy Tongues Cost

The seventy languages are not simply a number. Jewish tradition counts the nations of the world from the table of nations in Genesis and arrives at seventy, one tongue for each. At Babel, according to Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, the division was violent. The divine presence descended with seventy angels, one per nation-to-be, and the builders could no longer comprehend one another. The Targum does not soften what happened next: neighbors who could not understand each other did not simply walk away confused. They attacked.

Hanina had now moved through all of it. He carried the original tongue of Torah and every tongue that came after the fracture. He had paid for the knowledge with everything his father owned, everything he owned, and a year of watching his household shrink around a creature he could not explain.

The lesson in Legends of the Jews is explicit: every creature God made has a purpose. The frog was not a joke or a punishment. It was a delivery mechanism for a gift too large to hand a man directly, because a man handed the gift directly might not understand what he held. Hanina understood. He had worked for it.

RabbisCreaturesWisdomLanguagePassover
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From the tradition

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends, The Fairy FrogJewish Fairy Tales and Legends (Landa, 1919)

Hanina spent almost everything he owned on a sealed silver casket because his dying father told him to buy the first thing offered in the marketplace.

It was the day before Passover. Hanina opened the casket at the festival meal and found another casket inside it. Then another. Then a frog jumped out.

His wife fed it. The frog ate everything. By the end of the festival it had grown enormous. Soon Hanina had to build it a shed. Soon after that, he and his wife were selling their possessions just to keep the creature alive. The commandment of honoring a parent's final words had become a test that emptied the house.

Then the frog spoke. Since they had cared for it without throwing it away, it would repay them. Hanina asked not first for gold, but for wisdom. The frog wrote the Torah and the seventy known languages on strips of paper and told Hanina to swallow them. He did, and knowledge entered him like food.

Only after that did the creature summon birds, insects, beasts, roots, herbs, and jewels from the forest. Hanina and his wife received wealth, healing knowledge, and honor. The frog then revealed itself as a hidden child of Adam, able to take any form, and vanished into a stream.

The strange gift had looked worthless. It was not worthless. It was waiting to see whether obedience could survive disappointment.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis 11:8Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Genesis

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on (Genesis 11:8) does not describe a gentle scattering. It describes a massacre.

The Word of the Lord, the Memra, that favorite Targumic circumlocution for the active divine presence, descends over Babel with seventy angels, one for each nation-to-be, and the builders suddenly cannot understand one another. Each speaks a different tongue and possesses a different script. Each asks a question his neighbor cannot answer. And the Targum does not soften what happens next: one slew the other.

This is a devastating addition to the Hebrew Bible's quieter version. Scripture says only that they ceased building. The Targumist tells us why. They ceased because they began killing. A civilization that had moments earlier spoken with one mouth turned its tools into weapons the instant it lost its shared vocabulary.

The reading is dark, but it is honest. The Targum knows what happens when communication fails. The person across the table is no longer a partner in the project; he is a stranger, and strangers frighten us into violence. The building ends not because the Holy One removes the bricks, but because the builders remove one another.

There is a quiet instruction here for every generation that has ever shared a language and then lost it, a family, a community, a people. What we call building is only ever the fruit of understanding. When the understanding dies, the tower dies with it. The bricks had always been the easy part.

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Legends of the Jews 1:71Legends of the Jews

Legends of the Jews turns to Every Creature God Made Has a Purpose.

The text continues, drawing from sources like (Job 35:11), asserting that God "teacheth us through the beasts of the earth, and maketh us wise through the fowls of heaven." He endowed many animals with admirable moral qualities as a pattern for us to follow.

The Talmud (specifically, Eruvin 100b) suggests that if the Torah hadn't been revealed to us, we could have learned so much just by observing animals. We might have learned regard for the decencies of life from the cat, who instinctively covers its excrement. From ants, we could learn respect for the property of others, as they never encroach upon each other's stores. And even decorous conduct from the cock, who, before uniting with the hen, promises to buy her a cloak long enough to reach the ground. And when she reminds him, he essentially says, "I swear, I'll buy it when I can!"

The grasshopper, too, has a lesson. It sings throughout the summer until its belly bursts and it dies. Even knowing its fate, it sings on. What a powerful reminder that we should do our duty toward God, regardless of the consequences.

The stork, according to tradition, should be a model in two respects. He guards the purity of his family life zealously, and toward his fellows, he is compassionate and merciful.

And perhaps most surprisingly, even the frog can be our teacher. There are species that live by the water and subsist on aquatic creatures alone. When a frog notices one of them is hungry, it willingly offers itself as food, embodying the teaching from (Proverbs 25:21), "If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink."

So, the next time you see a seemingly insignificant creature, remember this teaching. Everything has value. Everything has a purpose. And everything, in its own way, can teach us something profound about life, morality, and our relationship with the Divine. What lessons might we be missing, if only we took the time to observe?

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Shemot Rabbah 10:2Shemot Rabbah

Shemot Rabbah turns to The Deeper Meaning Behind the Plague of Frogs.

Here, in Shemot Rabbah 10, the rabbis are unpacking the verse "Behold, I will smite [nogef]". Now, nogef can mean "to hurt" or "to push," but the Holy One, blessed be He, is saying “Get ready, because I’m unleashing all the plagues!” As Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi points out, every plague was accompanied by pestilence, a magefa, as it says, "Behold, the hand of the Lord is upon your cattle." (Exodus 9:3).

Let's “[I will smite] all your borders with frogs.” What’s so significant about the borders? Our Rabbis, of blessed memory, suggest something fascinating: the plagues actually brought peace! There was a border dispute between the Egyptians and the Kushites. But where the frogs went, that defined the border. "Your borders," the text says, "but not those of others." In other words, the plague acted as a divine surveyor.

The verse in (Exodus 7:28) gets pretty vivid: “The Nile will swarm with frogs that will ascend and come into your house, and into your bedchamber, and onto your bed, and into the house of your servants, and upon your people, and into your ovens, and into your kneading bowls.” Frogs everywhere!

Rabbi Yehuda bar Shalom adds an interesting layer. He says, "The most outstanding among them will be in your house." Why "ascend" [ve’alu]? Normally, when a king visits, dignitaries get residences based on their status. But Pharaoh lives in a palace, presumably not on a hill. So, the "ascending" refers to the most prominent frogs – they were heading straight for Pharaoh's place!

But the image of frogs in ovens and kneading bowls… that’s particularly striking. Imagine an Egyptian woman trying to bake. The frogs would jump into the dough, eat it, then hop into the oven, cooling it down, and sticking to the bread. Talk about a kitchen nightmare!

And here's a beautiful connection: Ḥananya, Mishael, and Azarya – Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as they're known in English – who famously refused to bow down to idols and were thrown into a fiery furnace (Daniel, chap. 3). The text says they drew strength from the frogs and descended into the furnace. If frogs could endure the heat of an oven, they reasoned, they could endure the furnace for their faith. What a powerful a fortiori argument!

Finally, the text brings us back to Pharaoh’s arrogance. He declared, "My river is mine!" (Ezekiel 29:3). The Holy One, blessed be He, responds: I’ll show you who controls the Nile. I decreed that the water should swarm at creation (Genesis 1:20), and it obeyed. Now, the Nile will obey My decree and produce frogs.

So, what does this all mean? The story of the frogs isn't just a bizarre plague. It's a lesson in divine power, humility, and even unexpected peace. It shows how God can use the most unlikely creatures to assert control, challenge arrogance, and even inspire faith. Next time you think about the plagues, remember the frogs – and the deeper story they tell.

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