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Catholic Commentary
The Plagues upon Egypt (Part 1)
28He sent darkness, and made it dark.29He turned their waters into blood,30Their land swarmed with frogs,31He spoke, and swarms of flies came,32He gave them hail for rain,33He struck their vines and also their fig trees,34He spoke, and the locusts came35They ate up every plant in their land,
Psalms 105:28–35 recounts God's plagues against Egypt during the Exodus, describing darkness, water turning to blood, frogs, flies, hail, and locusts that destroyed the land's vegetation. The psalmist reorders these plagues from the Exodus account, beginning with darkness to emphasize spiritual blindness and reversing Egypt's created order as divine judgment for enslaving Israel.
God doesn't just defeat enemies—He exposes the impotence of the gods they worship, stripping away every false security until nothing remains but His sovereignty.
Verse 33 — "He struck their vines and also their fig trees" This verse expands the hail plague's agricultural destruction. Vines and fig trees represent the height of agricultural civilization and prosperity in the ancient Near East — they require years of cultivation and are emblems of blessing (Micah 4:4; 1 Kings 4:25). Their destruction signals not just crop failure but the collapse of long-established security and blessing. Egypt's fruitfulness, its boasted prosperity, is stripped away.
Verses 34–35 — "He spoke, and the locusts came / They ate up every plant in their land" The eighth plague (Exodus 10:1–20) again arrives by divine speech alone — the repetition of "He spoke" (as in v.31) creates a liturgical drumbeat of divine sovereignty. The locusts achieved what the hail had begun: total agricultural annihilation. "Every plant" — nothing remained. The land that had enslaved Israel to build its granaries and cities was itself emptied. This total devastation is the logical conclusion of a judgment against a society that had built its power on the forced labor of God's people.
Typological and Spiritual Senses In the Catholic exegetical tradition, which follows the fourfold sense of Scripture (literal, allegorical, moral, anagogical), these plagues carry layered meaning. Allegorically, the darkness that opens this passage typifies the spiritual blindness of sin, and the waters-turned-to-blood foreshadow the Blood of Christ, which unlike the Nile brings life rather than death. Morally, the plagues warn every believer of the consequences of hardening the heart before God. Anagogically, the total stripping of Egypt's abundance points to the eschatological judgment when all that is built on injustice will be brought to nothing (Revelation 16).
Catholic tradition illuminates this passage with remarkable depth through several interlocking lenses.
The Plagues as Christological Prefiguration: The Church Fathers consistently read the Exodus plagues as foreshadowings of Christ's redemptive work and of the sacramental life. St. Augustine in his City of God (Book X) reflects on how God's sovereign acts in history converge toward the City of God. More directly, the darkness of verse 28 is read by Origen (Homilies on Exodus) as the darkness that covered the land at the Crucifixion (Luke 23:44–45) — both moments mark the decisive confrontation between the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world.
Blood and Baptism: The Catechism of the Catholic Church explicitly identifies the Exodus as a prefiguration of Baptism (CCC §1221): "the crossing of the Red Sea literally prefigures Christian Baptism." The waters-turned-to-blood extend this typology: the Nile, source of Egypt's life and the instrument of Israel's oppression (the drowning of Hebrew infants, Exodus 1:22), becomes death — just as the waters of Baptism put to death the old self (Romans 6:3–4). The blood of the Nile, a sign of judgment, anticipates the Blood of Christ poured out for salvation.
Divine Sovereignty and Providence: The Catechism teaches that God "governs all things" and that His providence extends even over the permitted evil of human sin (CCC §302–303). The plagues demonstrate this concretely: Pharaoh's hardened heart is not outside God's governance but becomes the occasion for the manifestation of His glory and power (Romans 9:17, citing Exodus 9:16). St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae I, q.22) affirms that divine providence does not destroy secondary causes but orders them toward His ultimate end.
The Word as Creative and Judicial Power: The repeated formula "He spoke" (vv.31, 34) resonates with the Catholic understanding of the divine Logos. The Catechism affirms that the same Word by whom all things were made (John 1:3; CCC §291) is the Word by which creation is governed and — in judgment — corrected. The plagues are not arbitrary; they are the Word of God meeting the word of Pharaoh's refusal with sovereign authority.
Social Justice and Structural Sin: Catholic Social Teaching, particularly as articulated in Gaudium et Spes (§29) and in Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, recognizes that systemic oppression — such as the slave labor of Israel in Egypt — constitutes a grave social sin that cries to God for justice. The plagues are divine vindication of those crushed by unjust structures, a theme echoed in the Magnificat (Luke 1:51–53) and in the prophets.
For the contemporary Catholic, Psalm 105:28–35 is not a relic of ancient history but a living word about how God acts in a world still marked by darkness, injustice, and idolatry.
First, the passage calls us to honest examination of our own "Egypts" — the structures in our personal and social lives that we have made into gods. What are the equivalents of the Nile in our lives? Career, comfort, security, digital distraction? The plagues stripped Egypt of what it trusted. God may strip us of false securities not in cruelty but in mercy, that we might find our life in Him alone.
Second, the repeated phrase "He spoke" is a call to contemplative faith. We live in an age of noise and activity; we easily forget that the same Word that commanded locusts and darkness also speaks in our prayer, in the Eucharist, in Scripture. Sitting with this psalm in lectio divina, we are invited to hear that voice — the voice before which all Egypt trembled — and to entrust to it the injustices, hardships, and darknesses of our own moment.
Third, for Catholics engaged in social justice work, this passage is a powerful reminder that God hears the cry of the oppressed (Exodus 3:7). The plagues vindicated enslaved Israel. This should animate both our advocacy and our hope: systems of oppression are not permanent; God is not indifferent.
Commentary
Verse 28 — "He sent darkness, and made it dark" The psalmist departs from the Exodus sequence (Exodus 7–10) by listing darkness first, before the plague of blood, a deliberate liturgical and theological reordering. By beginning with darkness, the psalmist evokes the primordial chaos of Genesis 1:2 — tohu wabohu, the formless void — suggesting that God is, in effect, un-creating Egypt, reversing the gift of light that sustains life and civilization. The darkness of Exodus 10:21–23 was no mere eclipse; it was palpable, something that could be "felt." Placing it first in the psalm's retelling underscores Egypt's spiritual blindness: before the physical plagues could be understood, Egypt had to be confronted with its darkened heart. The phrase "and made it dark" (Hebrew: wayyaḥšāk) intensifies the completeness of the act — this is no partial obscuring but a total deprivation of light.
Verse 29 — "He turned their waters into blood" The first historical plague (Exodus 7:14–24) is described with majestic economy. "Their waters" — the Nile, sacred to Egypt and the source of all its agricultural life — became death. The Nile was worshipped as a god (Hapi); its transformation into blood was therefore simultaneously an ecological catastrophe and a theological confrontation. God does not merely defeat armies; He exposes the impotence of idols. The fish died, the stench arose, and the Egyptians could not drink — the very lifeblood of their civilization was made lethal.
Verse 30 — "Their land swarmed with frogs" The second plague (Exodus 8:1–15) brought frogs from the Nile into every corner of Egyptian domestic life — beds, ovens, kneading bowls. The frog (Heqet) was itself a deity of fertility in Egypt, now multiplied into an overwhelming curse. The verb "swarmed" (šāraṣ) echoes Genesis 1:20 and the swarming of living creatures at creation — again, creation is being weaponized against those who worshipped it.
Verse 31 — "He spoke, and swarms of flies came" The fourth plague (Exodus 8:20–32) arrives here by divine word alone: "He spoke." This is a profound theological accent the psalmist inserts. God does not labor or struggle; He speaks, and reality obeys. This mirrors the creation account where God spoke the cosmos into being (Genesis 1). The "swarms" (Hebrew: ʿārōb) likely refer to biting flies or a mixed swarm of insects. Critically, Goshen — where the Israelites lived — was exempted, demonstrating that these plagues were not natural disasters but targeted divine judgments.
The seventh plague (Exodus 9:18–35) is rendered with bitter irony: where Egypt expected the Nile's waters to bless their fields, God sent — destruction instead of nourishment. Hail and fire (lightning) fell together, a phenomenon described in Exodus as unprecedented in Egyptian history. The word "gave" () is the same word used for God's gifts and blessings, here turned to judgment. Egypt received what it had refused to give Israel: not freedom, but devastation.