Exodus 10:21–23

Exodus 10:21 — "Stretch out your hand… darkness which may be felt" The plague is initiated by Moses' gesture of outstretched hand — a posture that recurs as the instrument of divine power throughout the Exodus narrative (cf. Ex 7:19; 8:5; 14:21). The phrase "darkness which may be felt" (Hebrew: ḥōshekh 'ăpēlâ, thick or oppressive darkness, rendered in the Septuagint as skotos palpētón, "palpable darkness") is extraordinary. This is not the natural darkness of nightfall but a darkness with physical weight and texture. The verb māshash ("to feel/grope") elsewhere describes the blind groping in Deuteronomy 28:29 — a curse for covenant infidelity. Egypt, which has repeatedly refused to "let go" of Israel, is now itself made unable to move. The intensification from prior plagues is deliberate: Egypt's luminous civilization, built around the Nile and the sun, is now deprived of both water (plague one) and light (plague nine).

Theologically, this plague strikes at the heart of the Egyptian pantheon. Ra, the sun god, was the supreme deity of Egypt, the divine patron of pharaoh himself. The Aten, the solar disc, was not merely a natural phenomenon but the face of divine power. By extinguishing the sun for three days, Yahweh does not simply inconvenience Egypt — He humiliates Egypt's highest god in his own domain. The plagues follow a pattern of escalating assault on specific Egyptian deities (cf. Ex 12:12: "against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments"), and this ninth plague represents the penultimate blow, reserving the death of the firstborn — which strikes at pharaoh's divine status as son of Ra — for last.

Exodus 10:22 — "There was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days" Moses' obedient action is instantaneous in its effect, and the darkness is total and universal — "in all the land." The three-day duration is significant. Three days is the period that recurs in Scripture as a time of trial, death, and transformation: Jonah's three days in the whale (Jon 1:17), the three-day journey into the wilderness that Israel requests of Pharaoh (Ex 5:3; 8:27), and preeminently, the three days between Christ's death and resurrection. The darkness that covered Egypt for three days foreshadows the three hours of darkness at the crucifixion (Lk 23:44–45) and, by extension, the three days in the tomb. Egypt experiences a kind of living death — immobilized, lightless, suspended.

The phrase "thick darkness" (ḥōshekh 'ăpēlâ) also resonates with the primordial darkness of Genesis 1:2 ("darkness was over the face of the deep"), suggesting a kind of de-creation: Egypt, under the power of idolatry and oppression, regresses toward formlessness and void. God is unmaking what Egypt has built against His order.

Exodus 10:23 — "All the children of Israel had light in their dwellings" The contrast is stark and theologically charged. The same divine act that plunges Egypt into darkness simultaneously floods Israel's dwellings with light — without any described natural source. This is not a partial shadow falling unevenly; it is a miraculous differentiation within the same geography. God distinguishes between His people and their oppressors by the quality of light itself. The Hebrew môshāb (dwelling, seat, habitation) suggests not merely physical shelter but the place where one belongs — one's proper ordered existence. Israel, even in slavery, inhabits a space of divine luminescence.

This differentiation prefigures the pillar of cloud and fire (Ex 13:21–22) that would simultaneously guide Israel and terrify Egypt during the Exodus proper. It also anticipates baptismal theology: those who belong to God are not merely spared from darkness but positively given light as their native condition.

Catholic tradition finds in this passage a constellation of meanings that illuminate the whole economy of salvation.

Against Idolatry and the Powers of Darkness: The Catechism teaches that "the history of Israel's faith is in the first place a history of the combat against idolatry" (CCC §2112). The darkness plague is the most concentrated expression of this combat: it is not just punishment but the dramatic public refutation of Egypt's greatest god. Pope Benedict XVI, in Verbum Domini (§18), notes that God's word is always an "event" that reshapes reality — here, the divine word spoken through Moses literally restructures the order of creation in Egypt.

Typology of the Passion: Church Fathers consistently read this plague as a type of the darkness at Calvary. Origen (Homilies on Exodus, Homily 5) identifies the Egyptian darkness with the blindness of those who refuse to recognize the Word of God, while the light in Israel's dwellings prefigures the illumination of the Church. St. Maximus of Turin explicitly connects the three days of darkness with the three days of Christ's death and burial, calling it a "rehearsal of the paschal mystery in shadow." St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I-II, Q. 102, A. 5) treats the plagues as belonging to the ceremonies of the Old Law insofar as they are signs foreshadowing the deliverance wrought by Christ.

Light and Darkness as Moral-Spiritual Realities: The Catechism (§1216) describes Baptism as phōtismos — illumination — drawing directly on this Exodus typology. Those baptized into Christ pass from the "Egypt" of sin into the light of God's dwelling. The darkness that can be "felt" in Egypt corresponds to what the tradition calls the tenebrae exteriores — the outer darkness — the condition of a soul cut off from the light of divine truth and love.

Contemporary Catholic life unfolds in a culture that frequently experiences what might be called a "palpable darkness" — a moral and spiritual disorientation so pervasive that, like the Egyptians, people find themselves unable to rise from their place, paralyzed by relativism, distraction, or despair. This passage is a call to examine what gods we are defending when we resist God's liberating work. Egypt did not suffer darkness because God was cruel, but because it had organized its entire civilization around a counterfeit light.

For Catholics today, the contrast of verse 23 is a summons: your dwelling — your home, your family, your interior life — is meant to be a place of genuine divine light, even when surrounded by cultural darkness. This is not achieved by spiritual isolation but by fidelity: daily prayer, Scripture, sacramental life, the practice of examining what idols (status, comfort, technology, political identity) we have allowed to become our "Ra." The Liturgy of the Hours, with its daily prayer at dawn and dusk, is itself a ritual re-enactment of this truth — placing oneself on God's side of the light/darkness divide, day after day, deliberately.