Exodus 10:21 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

Darkness which may be felt— The supreme objects of the Egyptian worship were the sun, moon, and stars: therefore, to demonstrate his authority over these exalted parts of nature, Jehovah suspended their lights and emanations, and covered all the land of Egypt with thick darkness for three days, a darkness which might be felt, it was so gross and palpable; and a darkness which could not be removed by the common methods then used to supply the absence of the sun: a phenomenon the more portentous to the Egyptians, as their sky was naturally clear and serene to a remarkable degree. Hardly any thing can be conceived more terrible than this punishment: during the continuance of which, the terrified Egyptians sat in deep silence and anguish of heart, strongly pictured by the emphatic phrase, neither rose any from his place: a circumstance of their distress, selected with so much justice by the sacred writer, that it fills the land with a train of striking ideas. It is not, I suppose, to be understood in the strictness of the letter; it denotes only a total inaction and cessation from business; a terrible stilness and silence, which prevailed amidst this palpable and supernatural obscurity; when gross fogs, most probably, infected the air, and men might even feel that darkness which so terribly surrounded them. Still to add more horror to this gloom, this palpable darkness, which blotted out three days, as Milton strongly expresses it, they were troubled, as the author of the Book of Wisdom informs us, with strange apparitions and frightful visions; while an heavy night was spread over them; an image of that darkness which should afterwards receive them: but yet were they unto themselves more grievous than the darkness, Wis 17:3-4; Wis 17:21. See Psalms 78:49. Diodorus Siculus relates, that, in the country of the Troglodites on the frontiers of Egypt, the air is sometimes so choaked up with vapours, occasioned by excessive heat, that, even at noon-day, it is impossible for two persons to discern each other, though ever so near. And Cicero tells us, that the darkness was so great from an eruption of Mount AEtna, that, for two days, men could not know one another: per biduum nemo hominem homo agnosceret. Some expositors, however, have thought that darkness which might be felt is too strong an idea, and that the Hebrew phrase may signify a darkness, wherein men went feeling for every thing they wanted. The author of the Life of Moses understands it in this sense: "in this darkness," says he, "they who were in bed durst not get up; and such as were obliged to do so, went about feeling by the walls, or any other thing they could lay hold on, as if they had been blind."