Disasters of Biblical Proportions: The Ten Plagues Then, Now, and at the End of the World

How people have reimagined the story of the ten plagues of Egypt, from antiquity to our own era of relentless catastrophe

People have been telling and retelling stories about disasters for as long as they have been telling stories. One of the oldest of such stories is the ten plagues in the book of Exodus, the series of disasters that forced the Egyptians to liberate the Israelites. These plagues packed enough catastrophe to fill a series of summer blockbusters--rivers of blood, invasions of frogs and insects, mass disease, fiery hail, smothering darkness, and a midnight massacre of the firstborn.

The story of the ten plagues resonates today, as we try to make sense of such calamities of modern life as pandemics, climate change, and war. In Disasters of Biblical Proportions, Steven Weitzman explores how people of later ages--artists, writers, activists, philosophers, believers and unbelievers alike--have reshaped the story of the ten plagues to give expression to their own trauma, outrage, guilt, humor, and hope.

Tracing the interpretation and retelling of each plague across time and space, Weitzman uncovers how this ancient tale found new meaning among Jews, Christians, and Muslims and continues to shape how people today understand the present and envision the future. Even as it recounts the history of how the ten plagues have been reimagined, Disasters of Biblical Proportions is also a history of people’s search for shelter from the calamities of their own times--and of humanity’s striving for justice, freedom, and redemption.

Steven Weitzman is the Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pennsylvania, where he also serves as the Ella Darivoff Director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. He is the author of Solomon: The Lure of Wisdom and The Origin of the Jews: The Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age (Princeton), the winner of a National Jewish Book Award. He is also a coeditor of The Princeton Companion to Jewish Studies (Princeton).