The Light of Darkness

A number of years ago we did a series of posts analyzing two types of 'silence' as portrayed in the Chronicles of Narnia. To quickly recap, one type of silence is that of nothingness, the silence of dread, the silence that signifies complete isolation and profound loneliness. For example, when the Dawn Treader enters the sphere of influence of the Dark Island, “Though the rowing made a good deal of noise it did not quite conceal the total silence which surrounded the ship.” This type of silence is not just a lack of noise, it is being cut off from all that is good. 

The second type of silence is what we might call the expectant silence. It is the silence that enables you to hear something else. The prophet Habakkuk (2:20) demands this second type of silence from his listeners, "And God is in His holy Abode — be silent before Him, all the earth!" Edmund also experiences such a silence as he is forced to try and move the sleigh of the White Witch. “In that silence Edmund could at last listen to the other noise properly.” The momentary silence when the Witch and Dwarf are not shouting, enables him to hear as Winter turns into Spring and as his own religious transformation begins to unfold. 

I thought of these posts as we read in this week's Torah reading about the plague of darkness. Darkness is the ninth of the ten plagues God brings upon the Egyptians, and to me, it doesn't really seem to have the same power as some of the previous ones. Fireballs of hail, billions of locusts, those are plagues! A few days of Darkness? Well, I'm sure it's not comfortable, but it seems a bit weak for the penultimate plague. 

But then I thought as follows. If silence, namely the lack of hearing, has two types, then darkness, meaning lack of sight should also have two types. One type would be the darkness of dread, fear, and isolation as the verse (Exodus 10:23) says, "People could not see one another, and for three days no one could move about..." Similar to the darkness of the Dark Island, no human interactions, none of what we expect to see. It is what is meant when we might (R"L) say, "there are dark days ahead," That doesn't mean the sun won't come out, or that it will be cloudy, but that the usual goodness of life we expect won't be there. 

But there's another type of darkness, the darkness that allows you to see something better. It's why the lights are turned off in a movie theater - because you can see the movie better without them. So, maybe the plague of darkness was not meant to be the first type of darkness. Perhaps it was meant to be the second type. In other words, the goal of the plague was not the punishment of isolation and psychological warfare. No, the goal of the plague of darkness was to have the Egyptians see something else.

What?

Actually, the bible seems to say so explicitly (Exodus 10:23), "And for all the Israelites there was light in their dwellings." The only light in Egypt was in the dwellings of the Jews, the dwellings of the people who were slaves. Which meant that these dwelling were the only thing the Egyptians were capable of seeing.  

What did the Egyptians see?

Well, presumably they saw, maybe for the first time, the lives of the slaves. Their aches and pains, their grief and sorrow. Their attempts at family life and trying to raise their children in extreme poverty. No doubt it was nothing that they did not already know, but it was a way of life that they had never seen.

The plague of darkness was not a plague at all. It was God's last-ditch effort to pull on the heartstrings and persuade the Egyptians to see the errors of their ways. "Here," God was saying, "this is the misery you have caused. You have one final chance to repent."

Of course, we know what happened. Pharoah and the Egyptian did not repent and the final plague finally forced their hand.

But interestingly enough, our Sages say there was one day of darkness left... We'll have to see what happens with that one.