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[a]For they deserved to be deprived of light and imprisoned by darkness,
    they had kept your children confined,
    through whom the imperishable light of the law was to be given to the world.(A)

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Footnotes

  1. 18:4 The discussion of physical light climaxes with a reference to the “imperishable light” of the torah.

13 So the Egyptians reduced the Israelites to cruel slavery, 14 making life bitter for them with hard labor, at mortar[a] and brick and all kinds of field work—cruelly oppressed in all their labor.

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Footnotes

  1. 1:14 Mortar: either the wet clay with which the bricks were made, as in Na 3:14, or the cement used between the bricks in building, as in Gn 11:3.

And on the next day the Lord did it. All the livestock of the Egyptians died,(A) but not one animal belonging to the Israelites died.

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Ninth Plague: The Darkness. 21 (A)Then the Lord said to Moses: Stretch out your hand toward the sky, that over the land of Egypt there may be such darkness[a] that one can feel it. 22 So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and there was dense darkness throughout the land of Egypt for three days. 23 People could not see one another, nor could they get up from where they were, for three days. But all the Israelites had light where they lived.

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Footnotes

  1. 10:21 Darkness: commentators note that at times a storm from the south, called the khamsin, blackens the sky of Egypt with sand from the Sahara; the dust in the air is then so thick that the darkness can, in a sense, “be felt.” But such observations should not obscure the fact that for the biblical author what transpires in each of the plagues is clearly something extraordinary, an event which witnesses to the unrivaled power of Israel’s God.