Exodus 10:21,22; Matthew 27:45,46
And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days.
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? that is to say, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): Moses is commanded to bring the ninth plague of extraordinary darkness over all the land of Egypt, Exodus 10:21.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): “He sent darkness, and made it dark,” Psalm 105:28. It was no natural or common darkness.
THOMAS S. MILLINGTON (1821-1906): It was an horror of great darkness—a darkness “which may be felt,” more oppressive and intolerable the longer it continued; “felt” upon their bodies as a physical infliction, and “felt” even more in their souls in agonies of fear and apprehension.
JAMES GRACEY MURPHY (1808-1896): There is an awful significance in this plague of darkness.
ALEXANDER MacLAREN (1826-1910): What was the significance?
A. W. PINK (1886-1952): It is easily interpreted. God is Light: darkness is the withdrawal of light. Therefore, this judgment of darkness, gave plain intimation that Egypt was now abandoned by God. Nothing remained but death itself. The darkness continued for three days—a full manifestation of God’s withdrawal.
THE EDITOR: Surely that Egyptian darkness has a connection to the darkness at Calvary: it was the ninth Egyptian plague, and it continued for three days; the darkness that fell upon the land while Christ hung on the cross began at noon, the sixth hour, and continued three hours until the ninth hour. And that terrible darkness was certainly “felt,”—but only by Christ Himself, when His Father withdrew His presence, and hid His face, and Jesus cried out in the agony of His soul, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
MATTHEW HENRY (1662-1714): During the three hours this darkness continued, we do not find that He said one word, but passed this time in a silent retirement into His own soul, which was now in agony, wrestling with the powers of darkness, and taking in the impressions of his Father’s displeasure—not against Himself, but the sin of man, which He was now making his soul an offering for sin.
THE EDITOR: Something similar is also seen in a prophetic figure of Christ’s atonement in Genesis 15:12, when Abram laid out sacrifices according to Jehovah’s instruction. “When the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him.”—“And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, behold a smoking furnace, and burning lamp that passed between those pieces” of the sacrifices, verse 17. It is “a lamp of fire,” in Hebrew—these sacrifices were burnt offerings, consumed in the fire of God’s wrath against sin, “for our God is a consuming fire,” Hebrews 12:29.
CHARLES SIMEON (1759-1836): That this darkness was foretold, we cannot doubt. Note Amos 8:9, “And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord GOD, that I will cause the sun to go down at noon, and I will darken the earth in the clear day.”
THE EDITOR: After God delivered the Jews from Egypt, Moses warned that “it shall come to pass, that if thou wilt would not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all His commandments…the LORD shall smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart: and thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind gropeth in darkness,” Deuteronomy 28:15,28,29. Were Christ’s adversaries smitten by madness and blindness? See their furious mocking and spiritual blindness. And astonishment of heart? From noonday, the sixth hour, a supernatural darkness reigned for three hours.
This warning was given in the second person singular—thou, as to an individual, but yet to the whole nation of Israel. Jesus gave similar personal and national warnings to the Jews, even a universal warning: “Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light,” John 12:35,36.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): Our Lord here warns the Jews of the things to be feared, if they neglected His advice. Darkness would overtake, catch, and come upon them. He would leave the world, and return to His Father. They would be left in a state of judicial darkness and blindness as a nation, and with the exception of an election, would be given over to untold calamities, scattering, and misery. How true these words were we know from the history of the Jews written by Josephus, after our Lord left the world. His account of the extraordinary state of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, during the siege of the city by Titus, is the best commentary on the text before us. The state of the Jews, as a nation, during the last days of Jerusalem, can only be described as “darkness that might be felt.”
THE EDITOR: As God hardened Pharaoh’s heart after he rejected Moses’ counsel, Genesis 10:24-27, so also, after the Jews rejected Christ’s counsel, God hardened their hearts, and judicial darkness came upon them: “These things spake Jesus, and departed, and did hide himself from them. But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him: That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them,” John 12:36-40.
C. H. MACKINTOSH (1820-1896): There is no darkness so gross or so terrible as that judicial darkness which settles down upon the heart governed by self-will while professing to have light from God. This will be seen in all its horrors, by-and-by, in Christendom.
C. H. SPURGEON: If you refuse to believe on Christ Jesus, fearfulness and dismay will lay hold on you in the day when “He shall come to judge the world in righteousness,” Acts 17:31.
THOMAS S. MILLINGTON: Joel speaks of the day of God’s vengeance as “a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness,” Joel 2:2; and Zephaniah 1:15 employs nearly the same language.
THE EDITOR: “Think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?” Christ asks, “I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish,” Luke 13:4,5. Those who reject Christ’s counsel must face a day of judicial darkness that will also be felt: “And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds,” Revelation 16:10,11.
THOMAS COKE (1747-1814): And hereafter they shall be driven into eternal darkness, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.
ADAM CLARKE: Confess your sins and turn to Him, that these sore evils may be averted. “Give glory to the LORD your God, before he cause darkness, and before your feet stumble upon the dark mountains, and, while ye look for light, he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness,” Jeremiah 13:16.
