every man teaches him that each method has its own
impressiveness: the announcement of punishment awes, and a surprise
alarms, and when they are alternated, every possible door of access to
the conscience is approached. If the heart of Pharaoh was now beyond
hope, it does not follow that all his people were equally hardened. What
an effect was produced upon those courtiers who so earnestly supported
the recent demand of Moses, when this new plague fell upon them
unawares!

But not only is there no announcement: the narrative is so concentrated
and brief as to give a graphic rendering of the surprise and terror of
the time. Not a word is wasted:--

"The Lord said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that
there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness that 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: they saw not one
another, neither rose any from his place three days; but all the
children of Israel had light in their dwellings" (vers. 21-3). We are
not told anything of the emotions of the king, as the prophet strides
into his presence, and before the cowering court, silently raises his
hand and quenches the day. We may infer his temper, if we please, from
the frantic outbreak of menace and rage in which he presently warns the
man whose coming is the same thing as calamity to see his face no more.
Nothing is said, again, about the evil angels by which, according to
later narratives, that long night was haunted.[19] And after all it is
more impressive to think of the blank, utter paralysis of dread in which
a nation held its breath, benumbed and motionless, until vitality was
almost exhausted, and even Pharaoh chose rather to surrender than to
die.

As the people lay cowering in their fear, there was plenty to occupy
their minds. They would remember the first dreadful threat, not yet
accomplished, to slay their firstborn; and the later assertion that if
pestilence had not destroyed them, it was because God would plague them
with all His plagues. They would reflect upon all their defeated duties,
and how the sun himself was now withdrawn at the waving of the prophet's
hand. And then a ghastly foreboding would complete their dread. What was
it that darkness typified, in every Oriental nation--nay, in all the
world? Death! Job speaks of

"The land of darkness and of the shadow of death;
A land of thick