The Book of Exodus tells us, "Moses extended his staff toward the heavens and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down to the ground, and the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt" (Exodus 9:23). Okay, but how did it all work?

Well, Shemot Rabbah, a classic collection of rabbinic interpretations on the Book of Exodus, breaks it down for us in a fascinating way. It suggests a kind of divine division of labor. According to this Midrash, some plagues were brought about by Aaron, some by Moses, some by God Himself – the Holy One blessed be He – and one, rather unusually, by all of them together.

Specifically, the plagues that originated from the earth – blood, frogs, and lice – were brought about by Aaron. Hail, locusts, and darkness? Those were Moses’s domain, says the Midrash, because they were in the air. As the text puts it, Moses "had control over the earth and the heavens." Swarms, pestilence, and the devastating plague of the firstborn were directly from the Holy One blessed be He. And the agonizing boils? Those, apparently, were a group effort. (See Shemot Rabbah 11:5).

But it gets even more interesting when we look closer at the plague of hail. The verse says, "And the Lord [vaY-H-V-H] sent thunder and hail." Shemot Rabbah points out that every time we see the name vaY-H-V-H used, it indicates that God acted with His heavenly court. It's like when it says "And the Lord [vaY-H-V-H] remembered Sarah" (Genesis 21:1) – it wasn't just Him, but also "He and His advisory council."

And what about that “fire running down to the ground"? The Midrash interprets this as a judgment, a taste of Gehenna – the hellish place of punishment – for the wicked Egyptians. Ouch. If they were sitting, they were burned by the hail; if they were standing, they were burned by the fire (referring to Exodus 9:24).

The Torah tells us, "There was hail, and fire flaming within the hail, very severe, that there had not been in Egypt since it became a nation" (Exodus 9:24). "Hail, and fire flaming within the hail" – a miracle within a miracle! Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Neḥemya offer vivid descriptions. One says it was like a pomegranate seed, where you can see the pit from the outside. The other compares it to a lantern where water and oil are mixed, yet the fire still burns brightly within.

The Midrash offers an analogy: Think of two warring legions. When the king needed them for his own war, he made peace between them, and they worked together to accomplish his mission. Fire and hail are natural enemies, but when it came to punishing Egypt, the Holy One blessed be He brought them together to strike the land. The Hebrew word used here, mitlakaḥat, is particularly striking. It means "to take the dead [met lakaḥat]." According to this interpretation, the hail would strike a person, and then the fire would consume them.

The devastation was widespread. “The hail struck throughout the land of Egypt, everything that was in the fields, both man and animal; and the hail struck all the vegetation in the fields, and broke every tree of the fields” (Exodus 9:25). The hail even trapped the Egyptians’ livestock, so they couldn't escape. And if an Egyptian tried to slaughter an animal for food, a bird would swoop down and eat it! This is based on the verse in Psalms 78:48: “He consigned [vayasger] their cattle to the hail, and their livestock to fiery bolts [lareshafim].” The Midrash interprets lareshafim as birds, referencing Job 5:7: “As the sparks [uvnei reshef] fly upward.”

The trees weren't spared either. Psalm 78:47 says, "He killed their vines with hail, and their sycamore trees with frost [baḥanamal]." Rabbi Yehuda bar Rabbi Shalom explains baḥanamal as "it came [ba], rested [ḥana], cut [mal]." Rabbi Pinḥas adds that it descended like an axe, hewing the trees.

But amidst all this destruction, there was one place untouched: “Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, there was no hail” (Exodus 9:26). Why was Goshen spared? The Midrash tells us it was because its patron protected it. The very presence of the Israelites was enough.

So, what does this all mean? It’s a reminder that even within the chaos of the plagues, there was order, purpose, and divine orchestration. It shows us a God who works through many means – sometimes directly, sometimes through intermediaries, and sometimes by harnessing even the most unlikely of forces. And perhaps most importantly, it reminds us that even in the midst of destruction, there is always a place of refuge, a Goshen, for those who are protected.