ויט אהרן את ידו על מימי מצרים ותעל הצפרדע “Aharon spread out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and a frog arose” (Shemos 8:2)
Rashi writes that initially, the plague of tzefardei’a [frogs] only consisted of one frog. The Egyptians apparently did not like the frog, so they hit it in an attempt to kill it or make it go away. Unbeknownst to them, the frog had the miraculous quality that every time it was stricken, it multiplied into more frogs.
While we can understand the first few people who innocently beat the frogs in their naïveté, after it became clear that each additional blow only produced more frogs, why did they continue beating them? Didn’t they realize that every successive strike was counterproductive and only made a bad situation worse? The Steipler answers that this question is fundamentally flawed. Although the question makes sense on a rational level, the Egyptians were attacking the frogs out of anger, and when a person is irate, common sense is the furthest thing from his mind. In a fit of rage, his emotional pain acts with a “logic” all its own.
More recently, a wealthy man and his wagon driver were once traveling through a secluded forest when the driver took out a knife and forced his boss to change clothes and switch places with him so that he could now present himself as the rich employer. When they reached the city of Prague, the new “wagon driver” ran to the house of the Rav – the Noda B’Yehuda – for help, explaining that he had been forcibly hijacked by his worker, while the real driver denied the charges.
The Noda B’Yehuda told them to come back the following morning at sunrise, but when they arrived, he was unavailable. As time passed, the Rav kept sending excuses apologizing for the delay and promising to see them shortly. By the time he finally came out late in the day, both litigants were quite impatient and hungry. After sitting down, the Rav said that the wagon driver should rise and state his case. Due to all his frustration, his guard was down, and the true wagon driver naturally stood up, thereby revealing his ruse. When asked for the secret behind his brilliant ploy, the Noda B’Yehuda explained that it was based on his knowledge that angry people do not act rationally, just as we learn from the frogs. (R’ Ozer Alport)
