Frogs Vs. Fire

The Gemorah Pesachim (53a) says that Channenya, Mishael and Ezaria learned a kal v’chomar from the frogs (or some other amphibious creator or crocodiles depending on which Rishon you take, ) that weren’t commanded to give up their life, yet they jumped into the ovens, for sure they should give up their lives.  There are numerous questions that the commentators ask on this Gemorah.  The most basic one is that one is obligated to give up their life not to serve avodah zarah, why do you need to learn this from frogs?  One approach of Tosfos is that it wasn’t an avodah zarah, it was merely a statue to honor Nebuchadnezzar, it wasn’t part of the commandment not to serve avodah zarah.  However, they learnt from the frogs to go above and beyond the call of duty and give up their lives for the glory of Hashem.  [In Perek Shirah, the song of the frog is ברוך שם כבוד מלכותו לעולם ועד.  In the intro to Perek Shirah, it is the frog which speaks to Dovid and says my songs are greater than all of your Psalms.  It is the frogs that teach us the lesson of ברוך שם, which we have written about here and here and now it is a hat trick.  It is the lesson to live a life to give glory to Hashem’s name, it is not limited to the strict laws, it is a perspective of living.]  However, this leads us to another question.  How is it a good kal v’chomar from the frogs, they were commanded to jump into the ovens as opposed to Channenya, Mishael and Ezaria who were not?

The following is stolen from my father’s blog, Divrei Chaim, in a post entitled Free choice and the Plague of Frogs.  "The simple approach is that the question is incorrect.  There was no commandment for the frogs to jump into the ovens, the Torah is just describing what they decided to do.  The Shagas Aryeh (cited in Maharil Diskin) says the frogs as a group had to be everywhere. However, no one said that any individual frog had to enter an oven as opposed to a bedroom, or vice versa. The fact that a frog would choose to jump into an oven was a choice of self-sacrifice which Chananya Misha’el and Azarya imitated.  Maharil Diskin is troubled by this answer. If every frog had a choice whether it wanted to be the one to jump into an oven, it is entirely possible that all the frogs could choose to not jump into ovens. How then would the command that frogs be everywhere – including in the ovens – be fulfilled? The will of all frogs cannot be greater than the sum of their individual decisions.  The debate between the Shagas Aryeh and Maharil Diskin parallels a debate between the Rambam and Ra’avad. The Rishonim ask why the Egyptians deserved punishment for enslaving Bnei Yisrael when Hashem had already told Avraham in the bris bein ha’besarim that his descendants would be slaves. Rambam (Hil Teshuvah 6:5) answers that while the Egyptian nation as a whole was destined to enslaved Bnei Yisrael, each individual Egyptian had a choice whether he/she would be part of that victimization. Ra’avad disagrees and argues that if each individual Egyptian could potentially choose to not participate in the enslavement, how could it be guaranteed that the Egyptian nation as a whole would enslave Bnei Yisrael? The whole cannot be greater than the sum of those individual choices. Ra’avad therefore offers a different answer: the Egyptians went above and beyond in their persecution of Bnei Yisrael and were therefore culpable. (There is another answer as well – ayen sham.)In a nutshell, it seems like the issue here boils down to whether we allow for some form of soft determinism in our conception of bechira. (What bothers me is how the Ra'avad's rejection of the Rambam here fits with what sounds like his own form of soft determinism at the end of Ch. 5 of Hil Teshuvah.)"

I would add that the punishment here is middah c’neged middah.  Each one of the Egyptians had an individual decision to make if they would enslave bnei Yisroel or not, and they chose wrong.  Therefore, the punishment is individual frogs making the right decision. However, this opens its own can of worms, for how can we view the frogs as making their own decision if they don’t have bechira?  Or maybe a frog has bechira?  Rav Shteinman (Yemaleh Peh Tehilosecha pg. 45) explains that yes, the frogs were programmed to go into the fire.  However, in this instance they were programmed to go against their natural nature, to avoid fire, and instead entered the fire.  Why in this case where they commanded to go against their nature, a frog is programmed with natural instincts to fulfill its mission, so why was there an override here?  Because that would bring out a kiddush Hashem.  If so, we see the point of a being’s creation is to create kiddush Hashem and therefore it was fitting for Channenya, Mishael and Ezaria to give up their lives.

Another problem with the kal v’chomer is that a frog has no commandment of וחי בהם, they have no obligation to live so they can be moser nefesh.  However, Channenya, Mishael and Ezaria have a commandment of וחי בהם, so maybe they can’t give up their lives (see Maharsha in Pesachim?)  Possibly in light of Rav Shteinman we can suggest that we see that Hashem wanted the frogs to die in order to increase kiddush Hashem, so such conduct is fitting for humans as well.