Parashat Bo brings us to the last three plagues, all three of which are tied to darkness. The plague of locusts, we are told, “covered the face of the whole land, so that the land was darkened” (Exodus 10:15). After that, “there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days; they did not see one another, nor did any rise from his place for three days; but all the people of Israel had light where they dwelt” (10:23-24). Finally, “At midnight the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt” (12:29).

What is darkness? What role does it play and what does it signify?

Some commentators discuss the uniqueness of the plague of darkness. The verse speaks of ‘thick darkness,’ a special sort of darkness that Rashbam (R. Samuel b. Meir: France, c.1080-c.1158) describes as “great darkness,” and that his grandfather Rashi (France, 1040-1105) describes as “a murky darkness so that one person did not see another during those three days, and another three days of darkness twice as thick, in which no one was able to rise from his place. If he was sitting he could not stand and if he was standing he could not sit.” The special nature of this darkness is also described in the first-century pseudepigrahic Wisdom of Solomon: “And no power of fire was able to give light,
nor did the brilliant flames of the stars avail to illumine that hateful night” (17:5).  Yet, Abraham ibn Ezra (Spain, 1092-1167) did not see anything extraordinary in the darkness: “Sometimes in the great ocean there is a thick darkness in which a person cannot distinguish day and night. Sometimes it lasts for five days. I have experienced it on many occasions.”

Others, like R. Joseph. H. Hertz (U.S., England, 1872-1946) in his commentary to the Pentateuch, and Dr. Pnina Feller, see the darkness as connected to the defeat of Egypt’s gods, and to the overthrow of its cosmology. “The sun god was of such importance that the Egyptian king saw himself as the son of Ra” (Feller, Exodus – Reality or Illusion, 98). By means of the plague of darkness, the God of Israel defeats the sun god Ra, the Egyptian god of creation.

Another approach sees darkness, and all of the plagues, as punishment that fits the crime. Thus, Wisdom of Solomon views the darkness as suitable punishment for placing the  people intended to bring the light of Torah to the nations in the dark prison of slavery: “For their enemies deserved to be deprived of light and imprisoned in darkness, those who had kept thy sons imprisoned, through whom the imperishable light of the law was to be given to the world” (18:4).

As opposed to all of these, the midrash proposes a surprising explanation of the plague of darkness that seems to contradict the plain meaning of the text. It sees the darkness as a cover under which evil Israelites can be put to death and buried in secret:

…Because there were wrongdoers in Israel who had Egyptian patrons, and they enjoyed wealth and respect, and did not wish to leave. So the Holy One said: If I strike them down in public, the Egyptians will say that what happened to us is now happening to them. Therefore, He placed the Egyptians in darkness for three days, so that they could bury the dead without being seen by their despisers… (Exodus Raba 14).

1. Does the midrash condemn the ‘wrongdoers’ for collaborating with the Egyptians or for wishing to remain in Egypt?
2. The midrash presented in the Passover Haggadah as the story of the Four Sons is based upon verses from parashat Bo. In responding to the wicked son, the father says: “It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt (Exodus 13:8). For me and not for him. If he had been there, he would not have been redeemed.” What is the wicked son’s sin? Is there a connection between the sin of the wicked son who ‘would not have been redeemed,’ and that of the wrongdoers of the midrash? Why, as Dr. Joshua Kulp points out in his commentary to the Haggada, is this son described in terms of the moral quality of wickedness, while the other three are described on the basis of their intellect (Kulp, The Schechter Haggadah)?
3. Dr. Pnina Feller points out the parallels between the plagues and the Creation story. The ten plagues overturn and undo Creation (Feller, 104). But the parallel requires that we combine and rearrange the plagues. Examples of such rearranging can be found in Psalm 78:44-51, in which we find but seven plagues, and in Psalm 105:28-36, where we find just eight. Is the number itself important, or is does its importance derive from what it represents? Might the different numbers reflect not a different history but different symbolism, e.g., ten plagues vs. ten commandments, or seven plagues vs. seven days of Creation?