From the latest New Yorker issue, of 3/30/26, this cartoon by Daniel Kanhai:
The energetic angelic figure of Moses, with his rather dubious angelic assistant (his brother Aaron? his successor Joshua? just an angel off some random cloud, pressed involuntarily into the frog toss?), lobs jumbo frogs down onto the Egyptians, meting out punishment to them for their Pharaoh’s offenses against the Lord and the Lord’s chosen people, the Israelites
It’s the Biblical second Plague of Egypt — not the disastrous swarming frogs of the book of Exodus, overwhelming entire cities, doomed to die in great stinking heaps; but instead adorable, perky frogs from children’s books and the cartoons (surely they are a pretty green). Moses gets them by the barrel.
In any case, the incongruity of the appalling — literally Godawful — frogs from Exodus and the cute frogs in the New Yorker made me laugh out loud.
The Plagues of Egypt. From Wikipedia:
In the Book of Exodus, the Plagues of Egypt were ten disasters that Yahweh [through Moses] inflicted on the Egyptians to convince the Pharaoh to emancipate the enslaved Israelites, each of them confronting the Pharaoh and one of his Egyptian gods; they served as “signs and marvels” given by Yahweh in response to the Pharaoh’s taunt that he did not know Yahweh: “The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord”. These Plagues are recited by Jews during the Passover Seder. [The plagues: the water of the Nile turned to blood, frogs, lice/gnats, flies, a pestilence of livestock, infection by boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the death of every firstborn]
… [now the text from Exodus 8:1-4; Wikipedia gives a translation I don’t recognize, so here’s the KJV:]
1 And the Lord spake unto Moses, Go unto Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord, Let my people go, that they may serve me. 2 And if thou refuse to let them go, behold, I will smite all thy borders with frogs: 3 And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs: 4 And the frogs shall come up both on thee, and upon thy people, and upon all thy servants.
[AZ: And so it came to be:] Exodus states that God ordered frogs to emerge from the Nile, which then jumped around virtually everywhere in Egypt. The magicians attempted to produce frogs from their secret arts, conjuring up a second wave of frogs. Even the private quarters of Pharaoh was infested with frogs. Three days passed before all the frogs died. The Egyptians had to do much work to rid themselves of the corpses, and the land stank of frog for long afterwards. When the decision came for Pharaoh about the slaves, the Pharaoh hardened his heart and decided that the slaves would not be freed.
Notes on frogs. From Wikipedia:
A frog is any member of a diverse and largely semiaquatic group of short-bodied, tailless amphibian vertebrates composing the order Anura.
… Adult frogs have a stout body, protruding eyes, anteriorly-attached tongue, limbs folded underneath, and no tail … Frogs have glandular skin, with secretions ranging from distasteful to toxic. Their skin varies in colour from well-camouflaged dappled brown, grey and green, to vivid patterns of bright red or yellow and black to show toxicity and ward off predators.
Cartoon frogs are typically green and cute. Kanhai’s frogs are in b&w, but they are decided cute — definitely cartoon frogs, not nightmare creatures. Meanwhile, large gatherings of frogs do occur — up to thousands of tiny frogs swarming in lakes after spring rains — but those are a far cry from the big nasty frogs crowding the bedrooms and kitchens of Pharaoh’s Egypt.
March 29, 2026 at 7:29 am |
Just in time for Passover, this Wednesday. Thanks–I’ll make copies of this cartoon for the table.
March 30, 2026 at 4:35 am |
I’m inclined to think that the figure is not Moses, as he was still alive and in Egypt at the time of the plagues.
March 30, 2026 at 6:13 am |
That would make the frog-lobber God, certainly a possibility; cartoonists have no compunctions about making God a figure in their work. It’s also true that cartoonists are not bound by the facts of real or historical life, so that it’s not necessarily relevant that Moses was still alive during the plagues.