Set against that darkness, the eighteenth chapter tells how Israel had light on the night the firstborn of Egypt died, when God's people kept the Passover and sang the songs of the fathers. The author pictures the almighty word of God leaping down from the royal throne like a stern warrior to carry out the sentence, filling the land with death. He recalls too a later plague in the wilderness, stayed when Aaron stood between the dead and the living and turned back the destroyer by prayer and incense. Placing judgment and deliverance side by side, the chapter shows the same night saving one people and condemning another.