Creation did not come perfectly formed from the hand of God.  First Yahweh made a formless, empty darkness, a formless dark emptiness.  Then He called for light.  Creation begins with darkness giving way to light, and in the Bible darkness is typically a signal that the process is running in reverse, that creation is being undone.  When the Bible describes an end, it describes it as a reversion to darkness (Isaiah 5:30; 8:22; 9:2; Zephaniah 1:15; Ezekiel 32:7).

When Judah’s lights go out, Yahweh preserves a remnant; Yahweh brings an end to Pharaoh and puts out the sun and moon, but Egypt is here still today.  Death is different.  Death is utter darkness.  Death is the shroud that lays over all people (Isaiah 25).  In the allegory of death at the end of Ecclesiastes, Solomon speaks of the sunlight and moon and stars being darkened as the old man moves toward death.  When Jesus speaks of people being handed over to eternal death, he describes it as a place of “outer darkness” where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.  Darkness is the darkness of un-creation.  All darkness is the darkness of death.

All this is happening at Golgotha, during the suffering and death of Jesus.  For three hours, in the middle of the day, Jesus hangs on the cross in utter darkness.  The sun is blotted out, and moon does not give her light.  The clock stops for the Jews and the Romans who have put Jesus on the cross.

Halfway up a gentle hill behind the farmhouse, the three of us—Nate, Richard (our father-in-law/host), and I—leaned on the pigsty railing. It was a clear, dry autumn day—the sky a hard, cloudless blue, the sun a searing light dipping west. Every corner of the pen had been rooted up. No grass grew; just lean patches of weeds, a gaunt fruit tree, and a thicket of ancient berry vines where the pigs reclined. I let the .22 rest along the top rail.

“See how they tear up the ground?” Richard pointed.“But look at that, they crap in only one place. They’re real tidy about that.” Richard had a pistol in his back pocket and a knife in a sheath. He’d do one, and I’d do the other. But first, the man looked at his animals. Just, it seemed, for the sake of looking at them.

“Well, wanna get ‘em over here, Nate?”

Nate tipped a busted-up bucket of apples thudding into the stall. One of the pigs grunted. The sound came out of the center of her head. Richard called to them. “Hyeeere, piiigs . . . hyeeeeeeere, pig pig pig . . .” The other lifted her head, then dropped it back down. Thus they remained, unmoved by the apples.