Exodus 10:23

10:21-29 The plague of darkness brought upon Egypt was a dreadful plague. It was darkness which might be felt, so thick were the fogs. It astonished and terrified. It continued three days; six nights in one; so long the most lightsome palaces were dungeons. Now Pharaoh had time to consider, if he would have improved it. Spiritual darkness is spiritual bondage; while Satan blinds men's eyes that they see not, he binds their hands and feet, that they work not for God, nor move toward heaven. They sit in darkness. It was righteous with God thus to punish. The blindness of their minds brought upon them this darkness of the air; never was mind so blinded as Pharaoh's, never was air so darkened as Egypt. Let us dread the consequences of sin; if three days of darkness were so dreadful, what will everlasting darkness be? The children of Israel, at the same time, had light in their dwellings. We must not think we share in common mercies as a matter of course, and therefore that we owe no thanks to God for them. It shows the particular favour he bears to his people. Wherever there is an Israelite indeed, though in this dark world, there is light, there is a child of light. When God made this difference between the Israelites and the Egyptians, who would not have preferred the poor cottage of an Israelite to the fine palace of an Egyptian? There is a real difference between the house of the wicked, which is under a curse, and the habitation of the just, which is blessed.

Pharaoh renewed the treaty with Moses and Aaron, and consented they should take their little ones, but would have their cattle left. It is common for sinners to bargain with God Almighty; thus they try to mock him, but they deceive themselves. The terms of reconciliation with God are so fixed, that though men dispute them ever so long, they cannot possibly alter them, or bring them lower. We must come to the demand of God's will; we cannot expect he should condescend to the terms our lusts would make. With ourselves and our children, we must devote all our worldly possessions to the service of God; we know not what use he will make of any part of what we have. Pharaoh broke off the conference abruptly, and resolved to treat no more. Had he forgotten how often he had sent for Moses to ease him of his plagues? and must he now be bid to come no more? Vain malice! to threaten him with death, who was armed with such power! What will not hardness of heart, and contempt of God's word and commandments, bring men to! After this, Moses came no more till he was sent for. When men drive God's word from them, he justly gives them up to their own delusions.

Exodus 10:23 . Neither rose any from his place — This circumstance is one of the lively strokes in description which critics call picturesque: it strongly paints the horror and dismay which this palpable darkness cast upon their minds. Le Clerc, however, justly remarks, that we are not to understand the expression so strictly, as if not one of the Egyptians rose from his place; for the servants, at least, must have moved about the best way they could to find victuals for themselves and their masters. The expression denotes that there was a total inaction and cessation from ordinary business, that they were all confined to their houses, and that such a terror seized them, that few of them had courage to go even from their chairs to their beds, or from their beds to their chairs. Thus were they silent in darkness, 1 Samuel 2:9 . Now Pharaoh had time to consider, if he would have improved it. But the children of Israel had light in their dwellings — Not only in the land of Goshen, where most of them inhabited, but in the particular dwellings which in other places the Israelites had dispersed among the Egyptians, as it appears they had, by the distinction afterward appointed to be put on their door-posts. And during these three days of darkness to the Egyptians, if God had so pleased, the Israelites, by the light which they had, might have made their escape, and have asked Pharaoh no leave; but God would bring them out with a high hand, and not by stealth, or in haste.

(23) They saw not one another. —Heb., man did not see his brother. The darkness was absolute, equal to that of the darkest night. Neither rose any from his place.—Comp. Exodus 16:29. No one quitted his house. Mr. Millington imagines that they all sat “glued to their seats” (Plagues of Egypt, p. 159), but this savours of over-literalism. It is not necessary to suppose that they had no artificial light, or that they ceased to move from chamber to chamber. What the writer intends to note is that all business and all intercourse with neighbours was suspended. No one quitted the house in which he was when the darkness began. All the children of Israel had light in their dwellings.—The visitation, whatever it was, did not extend to the land of Goshen. (Comp. Exodus 8:22-24; Exodus 9:4-7; Exodus 9:26.)

They saw not one another, because these gross and moist fogs and vapours did not only quite shut out the light of the heavenly bodies, but also put out their candles, or other artificial lights, or at least so darken them that men could have no benefit by them. From his place. Place here may be taken, either, 1. More strictly and particularly; so the sense is, The horror of that darkness was so great that they durst not remove at all, but stood or sat where the darkness found them, like men astonished or affrighted, and therefore unmovable, having their minds disturbed, being terrified with their guilty consciences, which most affect men in the dark, and with the dreadful noises which they heard, /APC Wis 17:5 , and with the apparitions of evil angels, as may seem from Psalm 78:49 where the plague of evil angels is put instead of this plague of darkness, which therefore is omitted in that place where all the rest are reckoned up. Or rather, 2. More largely, for their own houses or dwellings, for so the Hebrew word is certainly used, Exodus 16:29 . So the sense is, They did not stir abroad out of their houses upon their most necessary occasions. Object. He saith not that they could not go, but that they could not rise from their place, which may seem to limit this expression to their particular places. Answ.

The word to rise is commonly put for going about any business; and here it is a pregnant word, as they call it, and implies going in it, none arose , viz. to go or remove from his place. And rising cannot be properly taken here for that particular posture, unless we will suppose that this darkness found all men sitting, which is absurd to imagine. The children of Israel had light in their dwellings, whereby they might have conveyed themselves, and families, and goods away, as afterwards they did in haste; but they waited for Moses’s orders, and he for God’s command; and God intended to bring them forth, not by stealth, but in a more honourable and public manner, in spite of all opposition.

Verse 23. - They saw not one another . Or, "Man did not see his brother." The descriptive phrases previously used are poetic, and might imply many different degrees of obscurity. This seems distinctly to shew that pitch darkness is meant. Such absolute obscurity is far beyond anything which the khamsin produces, even when it is most severe, and indicates the miraculous character of the visitation. Neither rose any from his place for three days . It is not meant that no one moved about his house, but that no one quitted it. (Compare Exodus 16:29 , where the phrase used is similar.) No one went out into the unnatural darkness out of doors, which he dreaded. All stayed at home, and did what they had to do by the artificial light of lamps or torches. All the children of Israel had light in their dwellings . It is not explained how this was effected. Some suppose that the sand-storm did not extend to the land of Goshen. But in that case, such Egyptians as lived among the Israelites - their neighbours. ( Exodus 11:2 ) - would have shared the benefit, which seems not to have been the case. I should rather suppose that the storm was general, and that the Israelites were supplied with a light, not that of the sun, by miracle. Exodus 10:23

23 . but , &c.] What is here described is evidently miraculous: but it is said that the sand-clouds of the Ḥamsîn (see below) sometimes travel in streaks, so that parts of the country may escape them. The darkness was no doubt occasioned really by a sand-storm , produced by the hot electrical wind called the Ḥamsîn , which in Egypt blows in most years intermittently,—usually for two or three days at a time,—from the S., SE., or SW. during some 50 days in spring (hence its name, ḥamsîn = fifty). These winds spring up for the most part suddenly: they are violent, and often as hot as ‘the air of an oven’; and they frequently raise such an amount of sand and dust as to darken the sun, and even to conceal objects a few yards off. Men and animals like are greatly distressed by the sand and heat: the sand penetrates everywhere; and while the storm lasts, people are obliged to remain secluded in their houses. On account of the sand and dust, the darkness is really such as ‘can be felt.’ See R. Pococke, Description of the East (1743), i. 195; Volney, Voyage en Syrie et en Égypte (1787), i. 55–7; DB. iii. 892a; A. B. Edwards, A thousand miles up the Nile 2 (1889), ch. 5, p. 76 f.; Rosenm. Schol. ad loc. (a sandstorm, c. 1100, producing darkness so intense that it was thought the end of the world had come); Denon [above, p. 79], i. 285 f.; and a photograph in the Ill. London News , Feb. 17, 1906.

Ex 10:21-29. Plague of Darkness. 21-23. Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness—Whatever secondary means were employed in producing it, whether thick clammy fogs and vapors, according to some; a sandstorm, or the chamsin, according to others; it was such that it could be almost perceived by the organs of touch, and so protracted as to continue for three days, which the chamsin does [Hengstenberg]. The appalling character of this calamity consisted in this, that the sun was an object of Egyptian idolatry; that the pure and serene sky of that country was never marred by the appearance of a cloud. And here, too, the Lord made a marked difference between Goshen and the rest of Egypt.