On this day, Ezekiel prophesied that Egypt would be destroyed, as punishment for failing to keep their repeated promises to assist the Israelites.
So says the L‑rd G‑d: Behold I am upon you, O Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great serpent that crouches in the midst of its rivers, who said, “My river is mine, and I made myself.” I will put hooks in your jaws and will cause the fish of your rivers to cleave to your scales; and I will drag you out from your rivers….I will scatter you in the desert, you and all the fish of your rivers…to the beasts of the earth and the birds of the heaven I have given you to be devoured. (Ezekiel 29:3–5)
Links: Haftorah Reading for Va’eira; Va’eira Haftorah in a Nutshell; Action Is the Main Thing
As a young boy, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak (the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe) would go with his father on walks through the woods. One time, as they talked, the boy absent-mindedly plucked a leaf off a tree and began to shred it between his fingers.
His father saw what his son was doing, but he went on talking. He spoke about the Baal Shem Tov, who taught how every leaf that blows in the wind—moving to the right and then to the left, how and when it falls and where it falls to—every motion for the duration of its existence is under the detailed supervision of the Almighty.
That concern the Creator has for each thing, his father explained, is the divine spark that sustains its existence. Everything is with divine purpose, everything is of concern to the ultimate goal of the entire cosmos.
”Now,” the father gently chided, “look how you mistreated so absent-mindedly the Almighty’s creation.”
”He formed it with purpose and gave it a Divine spark! It has its own self and its own life! Now tell me, how is the ‘I am’ of the leaf any less than your own ‘I am’?”