The third plague is lice — venomous insects that emerge from the dust. Again Aharon must wield the rod, not Moses. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 8:12 gives the breathtaking reason: it shall not be by thee that the ground shall be smitten, because therein for thee was (the means of) safety when thou hadst slain the Mizraite and it received him.

This is the second great gratitude of Moses. The first was to the Nile, which carried his basket. The second is to the sand of Egypt itself, which had once swallowed the body of the taskmaster Moses killed in his youth (Exodus 2:12). The dust hid him. The dust shielded him from discovery long enough for him to flee to Midian. Now Moses will not wield the rod that turns that dust into lice. A man does not strike his own hiding place.

The meturgeman is teaching a staggering principle. Gratitude is not limited to people. Moses owes a debt to the ground, and he pays it by stepping back and letting Aharon lift the rod. If dust deserves such careful respect, how much more the teachers, the friends, the small favors that let us survive until we could stand.

The takeaway: Jewish ethics extends to rivers, to dust, to the inanimate world that sustained us when we needed it. Redeemers are gentle even to the soil.