Vaera

📜 The Story

God speaks to Moses again and promises to free the Israelites from Egypt. He uses four different phrases: 'I will take you out,' 'I will save you,' 'I will redeem you,' and 'I will take you as My people.' Because of these four phrases, the Sages taught us to drink four cups of wine at the Passover Seder.

Next the Torah lists the family of Moses and Aaron and shows they came from the tribe of Levi. Moses was eighty years old and Aaron was eighty-three when they first stood before Pharaoh.

God sent Moses and Aaron to ask Pharaoh to let the people go and serve God in the desert. In front of Pharaoh, Aaron threw down his staff and it turned into a snake. Pharaoh's magicians did the same trick with their staffs. But then Aaron's staff swallowed all of theirs.

Pharaoh still would not let the people go, so God sent plagues on Egypt. In this parsha there are seven of them: blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, sickness of the animals, boils, and hail. Each plague punished Egypt and showed the whole world that God is in charge of everything.

After almost every plague, Pharaoh promised to let the people go. But as soon as the plague stopped, he made his heart hard and changed his mind. The parsha stops in the middle of the plagues, and the story goes on in the next parsha, Bo.