Darkness
Easton's Bible Dictionary
The plague (the ninth) of darkness in Egypt (Exod 10:21) is described as darkness “which may be felt.” It covered “all the land of Egypt,” so that “they saw not one another.” It did not extend to the land of Goshen (ver. 23).
When Jesus hung upon the cross (Matt 27:45; Luke 23:44), from the “sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour.”
On Mount Sinai, Moses (Exod 20:21) “drew near unto the thick darkness where God was.” This was the “thick cloud upon the mount” in which Jehovah was when he spake unto Moses there. The Lord dwelt in the cloud upon the mercy-seat (1 Kgs 8:12), the cloud of glory. When the psalmist (Ps 97:2) describes the inscrutable nature of God’s workings among the sons of men, he says, “Clouds and darkness are round about him.” God dwells in thick darkness.
Darkness (Isa 13:9, 10; Matt 24:29) also is a symbol of the judgments that attend on the coming of the Lord. It is a symbol of misery and adversity (Job 18:6; Ps 107:10; Isa 8:22; Ezek 30:18). The “day of darkness” in Joel 2:2, caused by clouds of locusts, is a symbol of the obscurity which overhangs all divine proceedings. “Works of darkness” are impure actions (Eph 5:11). “Outer darkness” refers to the darkness of the streets in the East, which are never lighted up by any public or private lamps after nightfall, in contrast with the blaze of cheerful light in the house. It is also a symbol of ignorance (Isa 9:2; 60:2; Matt 6:23) and of death (Job 10:21; 17:13).
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
Blackness
(kimririm, "obscurations"; qadhruth, "darkness"; gnophos, "darkness" zophos "blackness"): Terms rarely used but of special significance in picturing the fearful gloom and blackness of moral darkness and calamity. Job, cursing, the day of his birth, wishes that it, a dies ater ("dead black day"), might be swallowed up in darkness (Job 3:5). Because of Israel's spiritual infidelity Yahweh clothes the heavens with the blackness of sackcloth (Isa 50:3), the figure being that of the inky blackness of ominous, terrifying thunder clouds. The fearful judgment against sin under the old dispensation is illustrated by the appalling blackness that enveloped smoking, burning, quaking Sinai at the giving of the law (Heb 12:18; compare Exod 19:16-19; Exod 20:18). The horror of darkness culminates in the impenetrable blackness of the under-world, the eternal abode of fallen angels and riotously immoral and ungodly men (Jude 1:13; see also Jude 1:6 and 2 Pet 2:4; 2 Pet 2:17). Human language is here too feeble to picture the m oral gloom and rayless night of the lost: "Pits (the King James Version "chains") of darkness" (compare the ninth plague of Egypt, "darkness which may be felt" (Exod 10:21)). Wicked men are "wandering stars," comets that disappear in "blackness of darkness .... reserved for ever." In art this figurative language has found majestic and awe-inspiring expression in Dore's illustrations of Dante's Purgatory and Milton's Paradise Lost.
Dwight M. Pratt
Kilde: Easton's Bible Dictionary (M.G. Easton, 1897) og International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (red. James Orr, 1915/1939), public domain. Translated into Danish with AI and not yet proofread (fully or partially). Links to people and places: Theographic Bible Metadata (CC BY-SA 4.0).