va'eira

The posuk says ותעל הצפרדע ותכס את ארץ מצרים: the frog emerged & covered the land of Egypt. Rashi says that one frog arose from the river, they hit it, and swarms of frogs streamed out of it. The סטייפלער asks, once the Egyptians saw that every time they hit the frog swarms of frogs came out, shouldn't they have stopped hitting it? Why would they continue to hit it until the entire land was filled with frogs? Also, asks רב טוביה לסיצין, why did 'ה make the plague of frogs in that way, that just one came up & multiplied when it was hit?
The אוצרות התורה brings down from the sefer הכל בו that there was a minhag for the women to go to the well to draw water right after shabbos. It was rumored that the בארה של מרים was in the sea of טבריה & every מוצאי שבת the waters would run through all the wells & streams, & if one happened on the right water & drank from it, it would cure all their ills immediately.
There was a story of one such woman whose husband's body was terribly disfigured, with boils & scabs over his entire body. One מ"ש she went out on a quest to find this water, & after a long search she came upon the water from בארה של מרים. She filled her jar & came home to her husband, who was livid that she was so late coming home. Before she could say anything, he started yelling at her. She got so nervous that the jug fell & broke, spilling all the water! The few drops that hit him cleared up his skin, but only where the water hit. The rest of him was still hideously disfigured.
The סטייפלער says that of course, rationally speaking, once they hit the frog & more frogs came out they should have stopped. However, once they hit it & it multiplied, they got angry & hit it again. This caused it to multiply more, which made them angrier. The hitting intensified, for when anger takes over, there's no rational thinking. The סטייפלער says that from here we have to learn to control our emotions. If when someone gets angry at us we don't retaliate, then the anger will slowly slip away, however if we answer back, the other one will too, & the fight will just intensify. Had the woman's husband just waited for his wife to say why she was late, & not blown up at her, he could have been healed. So too, had the Egyptians not continuously hit the frog in fits of anger, they could have avoided the mass influx of frogs in their land. Maybe this is why 'ה did it this way with just one frog, to teach us this lesson. A small problem could just stay small & will go away, but we are the ones who bring it upon ourselves by getting angry & fighting with one another. All that does is intensify the problem instead of each person taking a step back & letting it go away. We have to learn from here not to get angry, not to retaliate, & to use rational thinking instead of gut reaction, which will in turn minimize our problems, helping us to lead happier lives!