From Darkness to Solidarity
The ninth plague, darkness (ḥoshekh), was qualitatively different from all the others:
And the Lord said to Moshe: “Stretch out your hand over the heavens, that there shall be darkness upon the land of Egypt, a darkness one can feel.” And Moshe stretched out his hand over the heavens, and there was pitch darkness in all the land of Egypt for three days. No one saw his fellow, and no one rose from where he was for three days; but all the Israelites had light in their dwelling places. (Exodus 10:21–23)
For each of the other plagues, the midrashic tradition found justification in the behavior of the Egyptian oppressors. In this respect, the plague of darkness stands alone. The earliest rabbinic account addressing this plague appears in the Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, a midrash on Sefer Shemot from the period of the Mishnah:
Rabbi Nehorai says: Upon my oath, not one in five hundred went out [from Egypt]. For it is written: “Numerous as the spouts of the field did I make you” (Ezekiel 16:7), and “The children of Israel were fruitful and swarmed” (Exodus 1:7) – one woman would bear six in one womb. And you say one in five hundred went out? When did they die? During the three days of darkness, of which it is written: “No one saw his fellow” (Exodus 10:23). They buried their dead and gave thanks and praise [to God] that their enemies could not see them and rejoice in their downfall. (Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, Bo 12; Horowitz–Rabin ed., pp. 41–42)
This midrash uses the ninth plague to explain why the Israelite population, otherwise described as extraordinarily prolific, was significantly diminished at the time of the Exodus. What is missing, however, is a rationale for what appears to be punishment directed inward, at Israel itself.
That question is taken up by a later midrash:
Why was darkness inflicted upon them? Because the King of Kings, the Holy One, blessed be He, shows no favoritism and searches the heart and probes the innermost thoughts of all. There were sinners among Israel who had Egyptian patrons, enjoyed honor and wealth, and were unwilling to leave Egypt. The Holy One, blessed be He, said: If I strike them publicly and they die, the Egyptians will say: Just as it passes over us, so it passes over them. Therefore, He brought darkness upon the Egyptians for three days, and “no one saw his fellow.” (Tanhuma Va’era 14)
On the surface, this later midrash reframes the plague of darkness as a polemic, likely directed at its own contemporaries. It symbolically critiques those Israelites who, out of comfort or self-interest, aligned themselves with Egyptian society rather than with their own people, a message that is anything but subtle.
Darkness functions here as a religious metaphor as well: both the wrongdoing and its punishment occur in concealment, deliberately hidden from view. Had the Egyptians witnessed Israelite deaths during the plague, they might have concluded that the catastrophe was not an act of divine judgment at all, but merely another indiscriminate disaster, one that failed to distinguish between oppressor and oppressed.
Ultimately then, this later midrash turns the plague of darkness into a bold message, reminding the Jewish world that redemption or, for that matter, survival, requires from us solidarity.
