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For your judgments are great, and hard to interpret; therefore undisciplined souls went astray.
Verse 1. Souls. The Egyptians, who were punished with horrible darkness, as they had followed an unjust, dark, and cruel policy against the Hebrews.
For when lawless men had supposed that they held a holy nation in their power, they, prisoners of darkness, and bound in the fetters of a long night, kept close beneath their roofs, lay exiled from the eternal providence.
Verse 2. Providence, and day-light, like incorrigible slaves, in prison. Calmet.—The Egyptians were three days in darkness, (Exodus 10:22) and the Gentiles continued without faith in God, till after Christ’s resurrection. Worthington.—Only few served him, before that glorious event.
For while they thought that they were unseen in their secret sins, they were divided from one another by a dark curtain of forgetfulness, stricken with terrible awe, and very troubled by apparitions.
Verse 3. Sins. This interior darkness was punished with the exterior one. Calmet.—Forgetfulness. Of each other, being concerned only for themselves, ( Bible.) or they seemed to be forgotten by Providence, or buried in Lethean, most dismal obscurity. The interpreter thus mentions Cocytus, without sanctioning poetical fables. Job 21:33. Menochius.—Exceeding. Greek, “spectres.” Calmet.
For neither did the dark recesses that held them guard them from fears, but terrifying sounds rang around them, and dismal phantoms appeared with unsmiling faces.
And no power of fire prevailed to give light, neither were the brightest flames of the stars strong enough to illuminate that gloomy night;
but only the glimmering of a self-kindled fire appeared to them, full of fear. In terror, they considered the things which they saw to be worse than that sight, on which they could not gaze.
Verse 6. Fire. Like lightning, which would not allow them leisure to distinguish objects. Calmet.
The mockeries of their magic arts were powerless, now, and a shameful rebuke of their boasted understanding:
Verse 7. Rebuked. Or chastised. Bible.—The magicians could not imitate this miracle, nor secure themselves from its horrors. Calmet.
For those who promised to drive away terrors and disorders from a sick soul, these were sick with a ludicrous fearfulness.
For even if no troubling thing frighted them, yet, scared with the creeping of vermin and hissing of serpents,
Verse 9. Fear. the Egyptians kept serpents in their houses, and fed them. But now, neglecting to shew this attention, they were affrighted with their hissing.—Air. Or could live. They seemed to wish for death, ( Calmet.) like the damned, but it fled from them. Bible.
they perished trembling in fear, refusing even to look at the air, which could not be escaped on any side.
Verse 10. Things. The wicked are most cowardly. Calmet.—“Crimes may be safe; they cannot be secure.” Sen. ep. xcvii.
For wickedness, condemned by a witness within, is a coward thing, and, being pressed hard by conscience, always has added forecasts of the worst.
Verse 11. Thought. And giving way to despair, when it is extreme.
For fear is nothing else but a surrender of the help which reason offers;
Verse 12. Expectation. Or fear. Such an one is filled with a mortal anxiety.
and from within, the expectation of being less prefers ignorance of the cause that brings the torment.
But they, all through the night which was powerless indeed, and which came upon them out of the recesses of powerless Hades, sleeping the same sleep,
Verse 14. Them. From the sight of spectres, and remorse of conscience.
now were haunted by monstrous apparitions, and now were paralyzed by their soul’s surrendering; for sudden and unexpected fear came upon them.
Verse 15. Irons. Darkness forced them to stay where they were. Calmet.
So then whoever it might be, sinking down in his place, was kept captive, shut up in that prison which was not barred with iron;
for whether he was a farmer, or a shepherd, or a laborer whose toils were in the wilderness, he was overtaken, and endured that inescapable sentence; for they were all bound with one chain of darkness.
Verse 17. Birds. Nothing can afford comfort to the affrighted. Menochius.
Whether there was a whistling wind, or a melodious sound of birds among the spreading branches, or a measured fall of water running violently,
or a harsh crashing of rocks hurled down, or the swift course of animals bounding along unseen, or the voice of wild beasts harshly roaring, or an echo rebounding from the hollows of the mountains, all these things paralyzed them with terror.
For the whole world was illuminated with clear light, and was occupied with unhindered works,
while over them alone was spread a heavy night, an image of the darkness that should afterward receive them; but to themselves, they were heavier than darkness.