Parshas Vaeira: The Wealth from the Plague of Blood

Rabbi Zweig opens with a detailed analysis of a Midrash on Parshas Vaeira discussing the plague of blood (Makas Dam). The Midrash states that the Jews became wealthy from this plague because when Egyptians and Jews shared the same household and drew from the same barrel, the Egyptian would get blood while the Jew got water. Even when drinking from the same cup through two straws, the Egyptian received blood and the Jew received water. Only when the Egyptian paid the Jew for the water would it become drinkable. This raises fundamental questions: Why did the Jews need to become wealthy at this point when they were still slaves? What value did money have to slaves? And how do we know from the pesukim that this actually occurred? The shiur undertakes a careful textual analysis of the pesukim describing the plague. The Torah (תורה) states: "All the water that was in the river became blood, and the fish that were in the river died, and the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink water from the river." Rabbi Zweig notes the unusual structure—why does the pasuk mention the fish dying and the stench before stating that the Egyptians couldn't drink? Logically, it should say the water became blood and therefore they couldn't drink. The insertion of the fish dying and the stench suggests these elements are integral to understanding what actually happened.