I will put hooks in your jaws, make the fish of your rivers stick to your scales, and pull you out of your rivers with all the fish of your rivers sticking to your scales.
Ezekiel 28:25-29:21
va'era “Hashem spoke to Moses” Exodus 6:2 – 9:35
Charged with confronting Pharaoh, Moses who stuttered from a childhood incident where he chose a burning coal over a piece of gold and put it in his mouth, now is with his brother Aaron who will speak for him. Knowing intimately the etiquette of the court having been raised here, Moses approaches where Pharaoh goes to urinate. Here Pharaoh is no longer a god-king but just another man eliminating. Told to “let my people go” Pharaoh scoffs and as a result the first plague begins with turning the Nile into blood. It is Aaron who places his staff into the river but Moses whose hands are the channel of the will of Hashem.
On the wall of the Egyptian palace in the background are the sun god Ra with the head of a falcon and the red sun disk above him – this was the king of their gods who each day dies to night. The god with the black head of the jackal is Anubis who was god of embalming and part of the Egyptian death culture.