“He sent darkness and made the land dark;

They were not rebellious to His Word.”

(Psalm 105:28)

In verses 28-36, we find a retelling of the account of the Ten Plagues brought on Egypt. What is striking about this list is twofold. First, they are not listed in order and second, two of the plagues are absent (the 5th and 6th plagues). Given the detail of this psalm, the omission stands out and given the orderly nature of the account, beginning with the covenant God made with Abraham, again, it seems to be odd that the order has been rearranged. Further, as this psalm contains 48 verses, brevity hardly seems to provide an answer to these questions. What adds to the question is that Psalm 78, which also records the events of the To Plagues, records a different listing, that time, only seven.

Answers abound amongst the commentators. Many see the Exodus account as a redacted body of ancient texts, seeking to offer a composite account of the Exodus. The obvious problem with that reading is twofold. First, it makes the Exodus deliverance more of a folktale and not a historical account. Second, neither Psalm 78 nor Psalm 105 contain the language of the boils…so where did it come from if not from a these psalms? Arguably, then, the answer to these questions must rest within the text, which we will explore across these next verses.

Another point of interest is found here in verse 28. What does it mean that the people did not rebel against God’s Word when he sent the plague of darkness. Curiously, the Septuagint, when translating the Hebrew into Greek, deletes the word “not” and simply states that they “rebelled” against God’s Word. Surely, this cannot refer to the Egyptians, who did not submit to releasing the Israelites until after the 10th plague. So, of whom can it refer? The best answer seems to be that it refers to Moses and Aaron, the subject of the previous verses. They performed the signs of His Word (as verse 27 records) and thus, they did not rebel against His Word. While this might seem to be an odd reading as we look at the chronology of the Exodus event, as we see the chronology of Psalm 105, it makes good and logical sense that Moses and Aaron did not recoil from issuing plagues of judgment against Egypt (yet, how often we shirk from pronouncing judgments against the wicked of our land!).

So, why begin with the ninth plague? Here, we speculate, but it is worth noting that the king of the Egyptian pantheon was Amun-Ra, the god of light. Given that each of the plagues were uttered against the various things that the Egyptians worshipped, it makes sense to see the psalmist begin with this and then end the account with the death of the Pharaoh’s son, the one considered the embodiment of their god. And thus, the false gods fall before the wrath of the one True God.