Image Details
British Library, London, UK/Bridgeman Art Library
The plagues are an important part of the Haggadah, the midrashic retelling of the Exodus that is read aloud every year during the Passover Seder. And many illustrated Haggadot are enlivened by graphic depictions of the punishments God inflicted on Egypt. Most (but not all) depict the fourth plague as vicious beasts.
The Hebrew name for the fourth plague—‘arov—is not so precise, however; it simply means “mixture.” Rabbis as early as the second century C.E. debated what this meant.