Locusts and Darkness

Moses warns of locusts. Pharaoh's servants break ranks: "How long shall this man be a snare unto us? let the men go… knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?" Pharaoh offers to let only the men go. Moses insists: "We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters." Pharaoh drives them out.

An east wind blows all day and night, and in the morning it brings locusts. They cover the ground until it is dark and eat every plant and fruit the hail had left. "There remained not any green thing." Pharaoh calls in haste: "I have sinned… forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once." A strong west wind carries the locusts into the Red Sea.

Then, without warning, Moses stretches out his hand, and "there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days." No one can see anyone else or move from where they are, "but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings."

Pharaoh offers more: go, children too, but leave the flocks. "Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not an hoof be left behind." Pharaoh breaks off: "Get thee from me… in that day thou seest my face thou shalt die." Moses answers: "Thou hast spoken well, I will see thy face again no more."

Locust swarms

Desert locusts are one of the oldest plagues known. Under the right conditions they swarm in billions, can travel more than a hundred kilometers a day on the wind, and eat their own weight in vegetation daily. Swarms devastated the Levant as recently as 1915. Exodus' east wind bringing them and west wind removing them fits how swarms travel.

Darkness that may be felt

Egypt's spring khamsin winds can raise sand and dust storms so dense that day turns dark for hours, sometimes days. Some interpreters connect the ninth plague with such a storm. The darkness "which may be felt" and the light in Israel's dwellings are presented as signs, not merely weather.

The sun god

Ra, the sun god, was among Egypt's greatest deities, and Pharaoh was called "son of Ra." Darkening the sun was a direct challenge to that theology, which Exodus 12:12 makes explicit: "against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment."