A few years ago, I took my family on a vacation to St. Louis. Along the way, we stopped at Meramec Caverns, a fantastic set of caves that descends deep into the heart of the earth.
When we reached the bottom, our tour guide instructed us to put our cell phones in our pockets and stand completely still. She turned off the lights, and for a few moments, we all stood in complete darkness.
There are two things I’ll remember about that moment. The first was when my (at the time) three-year-old daughter took a step and her light up shoes shot flashing pink and green lights through the darkness.
Once that stopped, the second thing I remember feeling was a very tangible fear of the unknown. I knew where I was, but with my vision gone, I couldn’t be sure that what I remembered seeing around me was still there. Or, if something else had moved into the scene. Or if anyone was even still down there.
That’s the thing about darkness: When the lights go out, you can’t really be sure of anything anymore. It’s why kids (and adults) are scared of the dark—if you don’t know what’s around you, how can you defend yourself?
In Scripture, darkness is used both physically and metaphorically to contain the same message. Before creation, the earth was “formless and void,” and “darkness was over the surface of the deep” (Genesis 1:2). The very first thing God did to establish life was to create light and separate it from the darkness. Without it, life can’t exist.
Metaphorically, darkness is used to represent ignorance, sin, and secrecy. It’s the opposite of clarity; in darkness, everything is obscured. Nothing is known, and nothing feels real.
Jesus told Nicodemus as much in John 3:20, when He said that the “darkness hates the light for fear that his deeds may be exposed.” When there’s darkness, you can operate in anonymity. When the lights come on, that’s when your actions are visible for the world to see.
Maybe that’s why God chose to shroud the nation of Egypt in total darkness for three entire days. Pharaoh has stubbornly refused to admit the supremacy of God for quite a while, so now, he is sent a literal manifestation of his spiritual condition. If you want to close your eyes and pretend like God isn’t real, He’ll send a physical darkness to make nothing real.
Perhaps the most striking feature of this darkness is that it can be felt. The Hebrew word for “felt” drives this point home, signifying that it is indeed a darkness that can be touched. God isn’t using a metaphor for something else; the Egyptians could feel this darkness.
It was so thick that nobody could see each other. And because nobody could see each other, nobody left their house for three days—ironically, the exact amount of time that Moses asked from Pharaoh to leave and worship God in the wilderness. Israel had light in their dwellings, but as for Pharaoh and his people, they sat in darkness.
If you can’t see anything around you and nobody’s leaving their houses, what most likely also came to the nation of Egypt was a profound stillness. Very few people moved—because they couldn’t see—and so I imagine there was quite a bit of silence as well.
What did the Egyptians think about for those three days? Most likely, they considered the weight of the plagues, and how this could have all been over if the Israelites were gone.
But, like Israel themselves, at the very least, I think they developed a deep understanding of the power of God. Even if they didn’t want to admit it, they still recognized that what they had seen in the plagues was something unusual—sent from God, even.
To his credit, Pharaoh allows the Israelites to leave with their families, but insists that the livestock stay behind. Moses refuses, Pharaoh’s heat is hardened, and the ninth plague is over. The tenth plague is the one that will finally set the people free.
