Take the Exodus, for example. That final, earth-shattering plague—the death of the firstborn—struck at midnight. But why? Why not high noon? What’s so special about that inky blackness?
Shemot Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic interpretations on the Book of Exodus, offers a powerful analogy to help us understand. Imagine a king whose province goes rogue. They start treating their captives with extreme cruelty, imposing unbearable servitude. Not only that, but this province twists justice itself, perverting the very system meant to protect the innocent.
Now, the king, in his righteous fury, doesn’t just punish the guilty province, but does so in a way that mirrors their own transgressions. He, too, "diverted the course of justice" against them, meeting their darkness with his own decisive action. That's the setup Shemot Rabbah gives us.
Egypt, you see, had gone completely off the rails. They didn't just enslave the Israelites; they imposed impossibly harsh conditions, forcing them to work day and night, blurring the lines of gender and decency by assigning men's work to women and vice versa. It was a total perversion of order and justice.
So, what did God do? According to Shemot Rabbah, He, too, "diverted the course of justice against them and killed them at night, as it is stated: ‘It was at midnight.’" In other words, God met their twisted sense of order with a divine act of retribution that echoed their own actions but on a cosmic scale.
Think about that for a moment. Normally, judgments and executions are carried out during the day. Everything is open, transparent, subject to scrutiny. But Egypt’s crimes were so egregious, so deeply entrenched in darkness, that they demanded a different kind of response.
And it wasn't the first time. The destruction of Sodom, another instance of profound moral corruption, also happened at night. There's a pattern here, isn't there? A connection between darkness, wickedness, and divine intervention carried out under the cover of night.
This leads to a powerful question, doesn't it? A question that David himself posed in Psalms (76:8): “You, You are awesome; who may stand before You when You are angry?” The Psalmist isn't just talking about raw power. He’s acknowledging the awe-inspiring, even terrifying, nature of divine justice when it's unleashed against those who have truly crossed the line.
So, the next time you read about a pivotal biblical event happening at night, remember this story from Shemot Rabbah. It's a reminder that even in the darkest of times, when justice seems perverted and lost, there is a divine force that can step in, in ways we might not expect, to restore balance to the world. And perhaps, it's a call to each of us to be a force for light and justice, so that such a reckoning might never be needed.