First of all to consider, there was the incomparable Thoth who had worked out the system of placing all the stars, the sun and the moon in the heavens. He had arranged also the seasons, as they had been decreed by Ra. Although inferior to Ra and to Horus, nevertheless Thoth gave light by night, and on those days that the sun was not visible. He also gave Isis the power needed to raise the dead, and to offend him was to suffer eternal loss. Remembering that the Hebrews had lived under this culture and psychology for generations, and considering that they all must have been tinctured somewhat with these beliefs, many of them must have trembled indeed when Jehovah calmly engaged in battle with Thoth! So the Lord God not only smote the god of Egypt in this part of the conflict, but He also established His personal superiority in the minds of His own despairing people. Certainly, when this plague ended, the Hebrews hastened to follow His next commands without hesitancy, even though those commands laid them in danger of the death penalty under Egyptian law. [Illustration: Sekhmet] A lesser deity, but also a powerful one who suffered grievously in loss of prestige while the darkness reigned, was the fire-goddess Sekhmet. She was the divinity of fire, and thus also of artificial light. This darkness that covered the land during this plague was called “thick” darkness, and it was so impenetrable that for three days and nights, the Egyptians stayed in bed! They saw the face of no man in those dark days and dense nights, and it is evident that artificial light was useless. Only in the houses of Israel did any light shine, but in each dwelling in Goshen the light was undimmed. So it was demonstrated in the case of Sekhmet, the lioness-headed goddess of artificial light, that she was powerless when Jehovah invaded her realm. With what delight did Moses remember all this, when later he wrote the words of the First Chapter of Genesis. How his heart must have thrilled as he spoke of God commanding the light to shine on the first day of creation, and recorded the obedience of the light to the spoken word of Israel’s God. He had seen that when God commanded darkness all the gods of Egypt were powerless before Jehovah, and that it was therefore simple for God to reverse the process, and bring light to alleviate the darkness of the chaos.