The Lord Resolves to Deliver Israel

v. 23. And it came to pass: in process of time that the king of Egypt died, the Pharaoh on whose account Moses had found it necessary to flee; and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. This was many days, about forty years, after the flight of Moses. The oppression of the children of Israel continued also under the new Pharaoh, and since they had hoped for some relief, their crying arose to heaven with all the greater fervency.

v. 24. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. He had, of course, never forgotten it, but He took occasion to reflect and to act upon it.

v. 25. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them. He looked into the case and was constrained to interfere in behalf of His people. When God’s hour of deliverance has come, He always sees to it that the temptation is speedily brought to a close.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

EXPOSITION.

Exo 2:23-25

DEATH OF THE PHARAOH FROM WHOM MOSES FLED CONTINUANCE OF THE OPPRESSION OF ISRAEL–ISRAEL‘S PRAYERS GOD‘S ACCEPTANCE OF THEM.

After a space of forty years from the time of Moses’ flight from Egypt, according to the estimate of St. Stephen (Act 7:30), which is not, however, to be strictly pressed, the king whose anger he had provoked Rameses II., as we believe died. He had reigned sixty-seven years about forty-seven alone, and about twenty in conjunction with his father. At his death, the oppressed Israelites ventured to hope for some amelioration of their condition. On his accession, a king in the East often reverses the policy of his predecessor, or at any rate, to make himself popular, grants a remission of burthens for a certain period. But at this time the new monarch, Menephthah I., the son of Rameses II., disappointed the hopes of the Israelites, maintained his father’s policy, continued the established system of oppression, granted them no relief of any kind. They “sighed,” therefore, in consequence of their disappointment, and “cried” unto God in their trouble, and made supplication to him more earnestly, more heartily, than ever before. We need not suppose that they had previously fallen away from their faith, and “now at last returned to God after many years of idolatrous aberration” (Aben Ezra, Kalisch). But there was among them an access of religious fervour; they “turned to God” from a state of deadness, rather from one of alienation, and raised a “cry” of the kind to which he is never deaf. God therefore “heard their groaning,” deigned to listen to their prayers, and commenced the course of miraculous action which issued in the Exodus.

(This section is more closely connected with what follows than with what went before, and would better begin ch. 3. than terminate ch. 2.)

Exo 2:23

In process of time. Literally, “in those many days.” The reign of Rameses II. was exceptionally long, as previously explained. He had already reigned twenty-seven years when Moses fled from him (Exo 2:15). He had now reigned sixty-seven, and Moses was eighty! It had seemed a weary while to wait. The children of Israel sighed. If the time had seemed a weary while to Moses, how much more to his nation! He had escaped and was in Midian they toiled on in Egypt. He kept sheep they had their lives made “bitter” for them “with hard bondage, in molter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field” (Exo 1:14). He could bring up his sons in safety; their sons were still thrown into the river. No wonder that “an exceeding bitter cry” went up to God from the oppressed people, so soon as they found that they had nothing to hope from the new king.

Exo 2:24-25

God heard their groaning. God is said to “hear” the prayers which he accepts and grants; to “be deaf” to those which he does not grant, but rejects. He now “heard” (i.e. accepted) the supplications of oppressed Israel; and on account of the covenant which he had made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob a covenant always remembered by him he looked upon his people, made them the objects of his special regard, and entered on a course, which was abnormal, irregular, miraculous, in order to carry out his purposes of mercy towards them It is observed that anthropomorphic expressions are here accumulated; but this is always the case when the love and tenderness of God towards man are spoken of, since they form the only possible phraseology in which ideas of love and tenderness can be expressed so as to be intelligible to bureau beings. And God regarded them. Literally, “and God knew.” God kept the whole in his thoughts bore in mind the sufferings, the wrongs, the hopes, the fears, the groans, the despair, the appeal to him, the fervent supplications and prayers knew all, remembered all-counted every word and sigh gathered the tears into his bottle noted all things in his book and for the present endured, kept silence but was preparing for his foes a terrible vengeance for his people a marvellous deliverance

HOMILETICS.

Exo 2:23

Death comes at last, even to the proudest monarch.Rameses II. left behind him the reputation of being the greatest of the Egyptian kings. He was confounded with the mythical Sesostris, and regarded as the conqueror of all Western Asia, of Ethiopia, and of a large tract in Europe. His buildings and other great works did, in fact, probably excel those of any other Pharaoh. His reign was the longest, if we except one, of any upon record. He was victorious, by land or sea, over all who resisted his arms. Yet a time came when he too “went the way of all flesh.” “It is appointed unto all men once to die, and after that the judgment.” After eighty years of life and sixty-seven of regal power, the Great Rameses was gathered to his fathers. Of what avail then was all his glory, all his wealth, all his magnificence, all his architectural display, all his long series of victories? Could he plead them before the judgment-seat of an all-righteous God? He could not even, according to his own belief, have pleaded them before the tribunal of his own Osiris. A modern writer says that every stone in the edifices which he raised was cemented with the blood of a human victim. Thousands of wretches toiled incessantly to add to his glory, and cover Egypt with building, obelisks, and colossi, which still show forth his greatness. But what is the result of all, what advantage has he gained by it? On earth, he is. certainly not forgotten; but History gibbets him as a tyrant and oppressor one of the scourges of the human race. In the intermediate region where he dwells, what can be his thoughts of the past? what his expectations of the future? Must he not mourn continually over.his misspent life, and unavailingly regret his cruelties? The meanest of his victims is now happier than he, and would refuse to change lots with him.

Exo 2:24-25. God is never deaf to earnest prayer for deliverance.It was eighty years since the cruel edict went forth, “Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river” (Exo 1:22) ninety, or perhaps a hundred, since the severe oppression began (ib. 11-14). Israel had sighed and groaned during the whole of this long period, and no doubt addressed many a prayer to God, which seemed unheard. But no earnest faithful prayer during the whole of the long space was unheard. God treasured them all up in his memory. He was “not slack, as men count slackness” He had to wean his people from their attachment to Egypt he had to discipline them, to form their character to prepare them to endure the hardships of the desert, and to face the fierce tribes of Canaan. When this was done when they were fit-he gave effect to their prayers “heard their groaning” and just as they were on the point of despairing, delivered them. The lesson to us here is, that we never despair, never grow weary and listless, never cease our prayers, strive to make them more and more fervent. We can never know how near we are to the time when God will show forth his power grant and accomplish our prayers.

HOMILIES BY J. ORR

Exo 2:23-25. The hour of help.1. It was long delayed.(1) Till tyranny had done its worst. (2) Till the last hope of help from man had disappeared.Improvement may have been looked for at death of king.2. It came at last.(1) When the bondage had served its ends. (2) When the people, in despair of man, were crying to God.3. When it did come (1) The man was found ready who was to bring it. (2) God was found faithful to his promise. J.O.

Exo 2:1-25. Moses and Christ.Compare in circumstances of early life.1. Obscurity of birth. 2. Peril in infancy. 3. Protection in Egypt. 4. Rejected by brethren 5. Humble toil. The carpenter’s shop keeping sheep. 6. Long pencil of silent preparation.See F. W. Robertson’s striking sermon on “The Early Development of Jesus” (‘Sermons,’ vol. 2.). The period was not so long in Christ s case as in the case of Moses, but had a like significance preparation for future work. J.O.

HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG

Exo 2:23-25. A groaning Israel and an observant God.

I. THERE WAS SIGHING AND CRYING YET NO REAL PRAYER.

There was no supplication for help, no expression of confidence in a helper; seeing there was no real sense of trust in One who could keep, and therefore no possibility of real expectation from him. These Israelites did not wait as they that watch for the morning, sure that it will come at last (Psa 130:6), but rather as those who say in the morning, “Would God it were even!” and at even, “Would God it were morning!” (Deu 28:67). Their right attitude, if only they had been able to occupy it, was that which Jesus is said to have occupied (Heb 5:7). They should have offered up prayers and supplications along with their strong crying and tears to him that was able to save them. But the God who had been so near to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, seemed now removed to a distance. No one appeared with whom the Israelites in their despair could wrestle until they gained the blessing of deliverance. And thus it has been in every generation, and still continues. The misery of the world cannot be silent, and in it all the saddest feature is, that the miserable have no knowledge of God, or, if they have, it is a knowledge without practical use. They are without hope in the world, because they are without God in the world. They go on groaning like a sick infant that neither knows the cause of its trouble nor where to look for help. And in the midst of all this ignorance, Jesus would lead men to true prayer to intelligent and calm dependence upon God for things according to his will.

II. NOTICE THE REASON GIVEN FOR THE SIGHING AND CRYING.

They sighed by reason of the bondage. Bodily restraint, privation, and pain in these lay the reasons for their groaning. Their pain was that of the senses, not that of the spirit. Little wonder then that they were not susceptible to the presence of God. Contrast their painful experiences with those recorded in the following Psalms, 32., 38., 39, 51., 119:136. Jesus made it evident by his dealings with many of those who came to him that the bulk of men, like the Israelites of old, are sighing because of some temporal bondage. They think that pain would vanish, if only they could get all sensible comforts. The poor man thinks what a comfort wealth and plenty must be, yet a rich man came to Jesus, still unsatisfied in spite of his wealth, and was obliged to go away again, sad, because of what Jesus had said, deeply disturbed and disappointed; and all because he had great possessions. There was no chance of doing much good to Israel, as long as they were sighing simply because of the bondage. The pain of life which comes through the senses would sink into a matter, of superficial insignificance, if only we felt as we ought to do the corruption and danger which come through sin. We should soon come to the true remedy for all our pains, if only we learnt to cry for the dean heart and the right spirit.

III. THOUGH THE SIGHING AND CRYING DID NOT AMOUNT TO A REAL PRAYER, YET GOD ATTENDED TO IT.

God made allowance for the ignorance of the people. He knew what was wanted, even though they knew not. The father on earth, being evil, has to make the best guess he can at the interests of his children; our Father in heaven knows exactly what we want. God does not expect from the ignorant what can only be presented by those who know him; and he was about to deal with Israel so that they might know him. And first of all they must be made to feel that Egypt was in reality a very different place from what it appeared to Jacob and his sons, coming out of famine-stricken Canaan. The time had long past when there was any temptation to say, “Surely Egypt is better than Canaan; we shall be able to take our ease, eat, drink, and be merry.” There had not only been corn in Egypt, but tyrants and taskmasters. We have all to find out what Egypt really is; and until we make the full discovery, we cannot appreciate the nearness of God and profit by it. God can do much for us when we come to the groaning-point, when the dear illusions of life not only begin to vacate their places, but are succeeded by painful, stern, and abiding realities. When we begin to cry, even though our cry be only because of temporal losses and pains, there is then a chance that we may attend to the increasing revelations of the presence of God, and learn to wait upon him in obedience and prayer. Y.

HOMILIES BY G.A. GOODHART

Exo 2:23-25

As in streams the water is attracted to and swirls round various centres, so here the interest of the narrative circles about three facts. We have

I. THE KING‘S DEATH.

Who the king was may be uncertain. [Some say Aahmes I. . see Canon Cook, in ‘Speaker’s Commentary;’ others, Rameses II. see R. S. Poole, In Contemporary Review,’ March, 1879.] What he had done is sufficiently evident. Confronted with an alien people, of whose history he knew little and with whom he had no sympathy, he had treated them with suspicion and cruelty. Walking by sight he had inaugurated a policy which was sufficiently clever but decidedly unwise; he had hatched the very enmity he dreaded, by making those whom he feared miserable. Nevertheless, he, personally, does not seem to have been the loser in this life. He left a legacy of trouble for his successor, but probably to the last he was feared and honoured. Such lives were to the Egyptians, and must still be, suggestive of immortality. If evil can thus ,prosper in the person of a king, life must indeed be a moral chaos if it end with death and there be no hereafter. “The king of Egypt died:” what about the King of Heaven and Earth?

II. THE PEOPLE‘S CRY.

The inheritance of an evil policy accepted and endorsed by the new king. Results upon an oppressed people: 1. Misery finds a voice. “They sighed” a half-stifled cry, which however gathers strength; “they cried.” Forty years of silent endurance seeks at length relief in utterance. The king’s death brings the dawn of hope; the first feeling after liberty is the cry of anguish which cannot be suppressed. Such a cry, an inarticulate prayer which needed no interpreter to translate it an honest and heartfelt prayer of which God could take cognizance.2. The voice of misery finds a listener. The cry was a cry with wings to it it “came up unto God.” Too many so-called prayers have no wings, or at most clipped wings. They grovel on the earth like barn-yard fowls, and if they chance to pick up solace, it is, like themselves, of the earth earthy. Winged prayers, even when winged by sorrow, go up, and for a time seem lost, but they reach heaven and find harbour there.

III. GOD‘S RESPONSE.

1. Attention secured and the covenant remembered. God had not been deaf before, nor had he been forgetful of his promise. For practical memory, however, there must be a practical claim upon that which is remembered. So long as the people are indifferent, their indifference suspends the fulfilment of the covenant. All the while God, by permitting the tyranny, had been stirring up their memory that they might stir up his. When they are aroused, he shows at once that he is mindful.2. The children of the covenant beheld, and respect paid to their necessities. So far, God had looked upon a people of slaves, trying hard to make themselves content with servitude. Now that misery has aroused them to remember who and what they are, he sees once more the children of Israel offspring of the wrestling Prince. People have to come to themselves before God can effectually look upon them. Content with servitude, he sees them slaves. Mindful of the covenant, he sees them as children. God is ready to help them directly they are ready to claim and to receive help from God.Application: Evil in this world often seems to triumph, because men submit to it, and try to make the best of it, instead of resisting it. The general will not fight the foe single-handed; in the interest of those who should be his soldiers, he must have them ready to fight under him. When we realise our true position, then God is ready at once to recognise it. Indifference, forgetfulness, delay, all really due to man, God the deliverer only seems to be that which man the sufferer is. G.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

Exo 2:23. Came to pass in process of time That is, about forty years afterwards; see ch. Exo 7:7 compared with Act 7:23. This king of Egypt who died was Rameses, according to Bishop Usher, who places his death in the year of the world 2494. His successor was Amenophis, who was drowned in the Red-sea about nineteen years afterwards. How Moses spent his time in these forty years retirement, say the Authors of the Universal History, save that he kept Jethro’s flocks, is what he has not thought fit to acquaint us with. Those who suppose that he wrote the book of Job during this interval, have certainly this strong argument on their side, that it appears to have been written before the deliverance of the Israelites out of Egypt: otherwise, it were absurd to suppose, that either Job or his friends, considering what kindred and country they were of, could be either so ignorant of the wonders which God had wrought in favour of that oppressed people, or so forgetful of them, as not to have urged them in the strongest terms during their long and intricate controversy about the various dispensations of Providence.

They cried; and their cry, &c. Perhaps this might be rendered, the children of Israel sighed from amidst, or for a deliverance from, bondage: And they cried [i.e. they applied to GOD by fervent and incessant prayer] and their cry unto God amidst, or for deliverance from, bondage, ascended up. The Syriac renders what we have translated they cried, “they prayed;” with which some of the other versions agree: and in answer to their prayer, four expressions are used in the two next verses, declarative of God’s tenderness and regard towards them: he heard their groaningremembered his covenant,looked upon the children of Israeland had respect unto them.

REFLECTIONS.The Israelites, who had neglected their deliverer, now groan under aggravated bondage. God will often long and severely rebuke his own people, for their humiliation. Hereupon,

1. They cry unto God. Had they thought more of him before, probably they had not groaned so long. It is a sign that God is beginning to save, when he pours out a spirit of prayer and supplication.
2. We have God’s attention to them, and his remembrance of them. No prisoner’s sighs are unnoticed, no burdened sinner’s groans disregarded by him; he will hear their cry, and will help them.
We may observe on this chapter, which contains an account of the deliverance of Moses, and his hardships in a foreign land; that God was pleased so to order it, that he who was to be the deliverer of Israel, should himself be rescued providentially from the fury of the oppressor, to be animated by this reflection with the more zeal for the deliverance of his suffering brethren: while the hardships he endured in a desert land, and the virtues he learned in this school of adversity, distant from the pleasures of that court where he had been educated, served greatly to qualify him for the part he was afterwards to act. And when we consider how long and how severe the slavery of the Israelites was, we are instructed not to be disheartened either by the duration or severity of our sufferings. God is sometimes pleased, for wise and good ends, to leave those whom he loves, long in adversity, before he stretches forth his saving arm to help them: but those whom he loves, shall, unquestionably, be helped by him. This, therefore, in adversity or prosperity, should be our only care: for those who love the Lord, and of course are loved by Him, shall want no manner of thing that is good.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

Observe, the children of Israel had long been oppressed, and groaned under oppression, but we do not hear of their crying unto God until now. Reader! till this blessed effect be accomplished, we can never say that our affliction is sanctified. Job 35:9-10 ; Num 20:14-15 .

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

V

MOSES AT THE BURNING BUSH

Exo 2:23-5:14

Our chapter commences with Exo 2:23 : “And it came to pass in the course of those many days, that the king of Egypt died [the king from whom Moses fled was Rameses II]; and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them.”

I quote these concluding verses to show that one of the obstacles in the way of Moses’ coming back to Egypt was removed, the death of the king that sought his life. Secondly, to show that God, seeing all the oppression perpetrated upon this race, hears their groanings; that he remembered every promise of every covenant that he ever made. How, when he saw their piteous condition and heard their prayers and groanings, he recalled the covenants that he had made with Abraham. The time was now passing rapidly and the very day was approaching that he promised to deliver them. So we have now to consider how God answers those prayers which they sent up to him. In the first place, he has to prepare an earthly deliverer, and that is Moses. Then he has to prepare the people to receive Moses. He next has to prepare Pharaoh to receive Moses. These are the three great preparations.

Our chapter has to do, first, with Moses. In certain seasons of the year the best pasturage in the Sinaitic Peninsula is to be found on the slopes of the highest mountains. So we find Moses bringing the flocks of Jethro to Mount Horeb. Horeb is a range like the Blue Ridge, and Sinai is a peak of that range. Sometimes the word Horeb is used, and sometimes Sinai. You will notice that this mountain is already called “the Mount of God.” It had that reputation before the days of Moses. Right on the supposed spot where this burning bush appeared was afterward a convent, which is still standing, and in that convent is to be found the great Sinaitic manuscript. See how things connect with that mountain. Now in that mountain God begins to prepare Moses by appealing to his sight and to his hearing and to his heart. The sight was an acacia bush on fire and yet not consumed. This was a symbol of the children of Israel in Egypt; though in the fiery furnace of affliction, they were not destroyed. This truth is set forth in Daniel, where the three Hebrew children were thrown into the fiery furnace, and God was with them and preserved them from destruction. The burning bush is one of the most comforting symbols in all the Bible to the people of God. The thought is expressed in a great hymn: “How firm a foundation, Ye saints of the Lord!” God is always with his people, in sickness, in flood, in fire. He is with them to care for them. This sight attracted Moses, and he drew near to see why that bush did not burn up with such a large fire. Then a voice came from the bush, telling him to take his sandals off; that he was standing on holy ground, and then to draw nigh, telling him who it was talking to him; that he was the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob; that he had seen the awful oppression of the Jewish people in Egypt; that he had heard all their prayers; and now he was come down to deliver them out of all those troubles, and to give them a good country, a land flowing with milk and honey. And thus winds up Exo 3:10 : “Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.” He was to select a human deliverer: “I will send thee.”

It is an interesting study, whenever God calls people to do great things, to note the varied attitudes of these people to these calls. God appeared to Isaiah in a vision and Isaiah instantly responded: “Here am I; send me.” God appeared to Jeremiah, and he said, “O Lord God, I cannot go, I am but a little child.” He appears to Moses. Just look at the objection made by Moses: “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” Moses takes a look at himself and sees nothing in himself competent to do that great work. We all do that way if we look at ourselves. What was God’s answer to that objection? “Certainly I will be with thee.” If God is with us then any objection based on our littleness of whatever kind is a poor objection. God then gives him a token which is this: that when he had brought those people out, he was to bring them right to that mountain where he was talking, where the bush was burning, right there, to worship him. God practically said, “There is a token that you can bring them out; if I am with you and you get back to this mountain with that great crowd of people assembled at the foot of it, then you will look back and say, Why did I say to God, Who am I that I should do this great deed?”

Moses raises this objection: “When I come to the children of Israel, and say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?” He is looking ahead at difficulties. “When I go back to those millions of slaves and say, The God of your fathers sent me to deliver you, they will say, What is his name? Who is the God of our fathers?” The Lord gives him an answer and takes that objection out of the way: “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you. This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.” Jehovah means a Covenant-God; & manifesting God; and he tells Moses what to say to them. You gather them together and tell them that Jehovah says, “I come to bring you out of Egypt and to give you a land flowing with milk and honey.” And he says, “They will hearken. Then you take the elders of Israel with you and go to the king of Egypt and make this demand of him: that you may go three days’ journey in the wilderness to make a sacrifice to Jehovah.” Now God forewarned him, saying, “I know that Pharaoh will not give his consent,” and gives him at least one explanation, viz.: “I will harden the heart of Pharaoh that he shall not let them go.” In the next chapter we take up that question of hardening. There are twenty places in this connection where the hardening is mentioned; in ten Pharaoh hardens his own heart; and in the other ten God hardens it. To this you will find some references in Romans II. It is a subject we need to study: how we harden our hearts; and how God hardens them. The reason that God tells Moses that he is going to harden Pharaoh’s heart is to prevent him from being disappointed. He says: “Don’t be discouraged, I have a hand in it myself, and am letting you know about it beforehand. I will bring you forth, and you will say to him, that if he does not let Israel, my firstborn, go, I will take his firstborn.”

Now comes the next objection of Moses: “You tell me to go, but I am nothing. You say you will go with me. When I object that the people will ask for your name you will give me the name and I will tell them what you tell me. But they will not believe, nor hearken unto my voice. They will say Jehovah hath not appeared unto me.” Now Jehovah gives three signs in answer to that objection. (1) “What is this in your hand?” “A rod, a shepherd’s staff.” “Throw it on the ground.” It became a serpent and Moses fled from it. “Take it by the tail,” and it again became a rod in his hand. That is a sign. Egypt is called Rahab; that is, a serpent. Now God is going to attack Egypt on the line of the serpent. Reference to this can be found in Job, and in several of the prophecies. The first sign, then, is the converting, at pleasure, of the rod into a serpent, and of the serpent back into a rod. (2) The second sign is for the benefit of the people: “Put your hand into your bosom.” It becomes white with leprosy. “Put it back into your bosom,” and it becomes whole again. That means that God will heal his people. (3) Now, the third sign was: “Take a little of the water of the Nile; throw it up and it will turn to blood.” That was a stroke at the gods of Egypt. These were the three signs to confirm the fact that Moses was accredited of God to the children of Israel.

Now, we will see the next objection: “Oh, Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant; for I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exo 4:10 ). That meant neither that he was a stammerer, like Demosthenes, nor that he had no ready command of language, like Oliver Cromwell and John Knox, originally, and like Senator Coke when he first started out to be a public speaker. The reply to that objection is: “Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh a man dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? is it not I, Jehovah? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt speak.” In other words, he says, “Your being eloquent or not being eloquent has nothing to do with it. You have to deliver a message. If you had to write a composition that would charm Pharaoh so that he would let the children of Israel go, it would be a different matter.” Moses replied: “Oh, Lord, send, I pray thee, by the hand of him whom thou wilt send.” It is hard to understand what Moses meant by that. It has generally been supposed to mean: “Send by anybody you please, so you let me alone.” But I question whether that is the meaning.’ It seems rather to have this meaning: “I have told you my incompetency, and now I will do it if you want me to, but if this business turns out badly, remember that I knew better than you did about it and I protested.” That made the Lord angry. So far as we know he never was angry at Moses but twice; the next time he gets angry it will cost Moses the right to enter the Promised Land in the flesh. But God meets that objection by telling him about Aaron, the older brother. “He is eloquent and he cometh forth to meet thee.” God had sent Aaron to meet him right there at that very mountain. “I will give you an eloquent man, but after a while your eloquent man may introduce a golden calf to your people.”

There was another objection in the mind of Moses, though he did not state it: “I am employed by my father-in-law, having charge of his sheep, and I must close up this business before I can go into Egypt.” So he goes to Jethro and states the case: that he wants to go to Egypt and look into the condition of his people to see if they are alive. But he does not tell what God said. Jethro consents. Every year of my life I strike somebody who is not ready to do the Lord’s will on account of some business he can’t turn loose.

There is still another objection revealed in Exo 4:19 : “All the men are dead that sought thy life.” Moses has waited until God spoke to him again and reveals another objection in his mind. There is still another trouble; he starts with his wife and two children, and he has not complied with the covenant of God. He has not circumcised that last child, and God meets him by the way to slay him, and Moses knows why. His wife knows why. God puts the case before the woman this way: “You have objected to the circumcision of this child, and now if you persist in your objection you will lose your husband. He cannot go to deliver this people and be a covenant-breaker himself.” So she circumcised the child. Moses then sent back Zipporah and the two children to Jethro. When he gets back to Sinai with the children of Israel, Jethro brings them back to him.

You see how in preparing that man to do a work the difficulties, had to be gotten out of the way. When he was in Egypt he knew he was to deliver the people, and in his own way rushed out to bring it about, and met with a repulse which threw him farther off than before. He comes now prepared, and Aaron meets him at Mount Sinai. These two brothers, separated for forty years, start out across that desert to Egypt to deliver millions of people from bondage. I will read what a poet, Dr. W. G. Wilkinson, in his Epic of Moses, says about that. The Epic of Moses, Part 1, page 43, reads thus:

Those two wayfarers through the wilderness

Unconsciously upon their shoulders bore

The trembling weight of boundless destinies;

Not only did the future of their race .

Hang on them, but the future of the world.

From east to west, from north to south, nowhere

Within the round earth’s wide horizon lived

Any least hope for rescue of mankind

Entangled sliding down a fatal slope

That ended in the open-jawed abyss

Of utter ultimate despair and death

Nowhere, save with those Hebrew brethren twain. That on those two Jewish brethren rested the destinies of the world is a fine thought admirably expressed. Don’t forget this book and its value in interpretation.

Moses and Aaron get to the place and they assemble the elders of the people. That doubtless took some little time, as they were scattered. Word was sent rapidly to the heads of the different tribes. In Exo 6:14 , the sons of Simeon and then the sons of Levi are taken up. Then from the heads of the Levites it traces down to Moses and Aaron, showing that Moses and Aaron were not the heads of the tribe of Levi. They were the descendants of one of the heads of the tribe of Levi. So they have no tribal authority over those people, but have a God-given authority. When the heads of all the tribes were assembled, they fairly state the message and naturally, questionings come up: “How do we know that God sent you? What is his name? What signs do you use?” In the presence of all the elders they give all the signs; the elders accept them and report to the people; and the people believe them.

They are now prepared to go to Pharaoh. God has prepared Moses to accept the work; he has prepared the people to accept Moses in the leadership of the work; now he must send Moses and Aaron and the elders of the people to prepare Pharoah to hear them. We will take up their interview. “And afterward Moses and Aaron came, and said unto Pharaoh, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah that I should hearken unto his voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go. And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days’ journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice unto Jehovah our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword. And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their works? get you unto your burdens. And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land are now many, and ye make them rest from their burdens.”

And he commanded their taskmasters that the people should do an equal amount of work and gather the straws for themselves, and if they did not succeed their Hebrew officers were to be beaten publicly. They were beaten and they appealed unto Pharaoh, and he referred them to Moses and Aaron. They charged Moses and Aaron with having brought this extra oppression upon them. You see these people are not ready. These head men, just as soon as a little trouble came, were ready to repudiate Moses and Aaron whom they have just accepted as leaders. Moses takes the case to God in prayer; and Jehovah replies to him by telling him that he knew that Pharaoh would not let them go. Now they must go before Pharaoh and demonstrate to him that Jehovah is God, and in the next chapter we will take up this whole transaction between Moses and Pharaoh, or as Paul says, “Jannes and Jambres, the priests that withstood Moses.”

Our next chapter will consider that double hardening. Let each reader look out the twenty passages that refer to the hardening ten in which God hardens Pharoah’s heart, and ten where Pharaoh hardens his own heart. Then we will take up the ten plagues one after another.

QUESTIONS

1. Give circumstances and object of Jehovah’s meeting Moses.

2. What of the symbolism of the burning bush?

3. State in order the several objections of Moses to becoming the deliverer of Israel, and Jehovah’s reply thereto.

4. Meaning of the name: “I am that I am”?

5. Cite from the New Testament the words of Jesus claiming this name.

6. What token did Jehovah give Moses to assure him of success in delivering Israel?

7. What three attesting signs and their significance?

8. What two preachers have great sermons on “What is in thy hand?” and “Take it by the tail,” and what book has the substance of both sermons? Answer: The book is Pentecost’s Deliverance from Egypt, or Bible Readings on the First Twelve Chapters of Exodus.

9. Give and illustrate the heart of the meaning of “What is in thy hand?”

10. What part has eloquence in the salvation of men and distinguish between true and rhetorical eloquence of what says Paul of the latter? Answer: 1Co 2:1-5 .

11. What troubles later came through the “eloquent” brother of Moses?

12. Why did God meet Moses on his way to deliver Israel to kill him, and explain, applying the whole incident in Exo 4:24-26 .

13. Where is the scripture showing that after this incident Moses sent back his wife and children to the father-in-law?

14. What three scriptures seem to indicate the marriage of Moses with Zipporah was unfortunate? Answer: (1) Exo 4:24-26 , shows that his wife had no sympathy for his faith; (2) Num 12:1-2 , shows that she had no sympathy for his sister and brother, and was the occasion of their revolt; (3) Jdg 18:30 , according to the Hebrew text, has Moses, not Manasseh, as the grandfather of the Levite Jonathan, who served as priest for the Danite idolaters.

15.Num 12:1-2 , refers to Zipporah; how do you explain her being called an “Ethiopian”? Answer: The Hebrew word rendered “Ethiopian” in the Common Version is “Cushite,” and the descendants of Cush were not confined to Ethiopia in Africa. Many of them were on the Euphrates and in Arabia. Doubtless Zipporah’s mother was an Arabian Cushite certainly not a Negress.

16. In Exo 3:18 , we have God’s first message to Pharaoh, given at the bush, but give the form of the message repeated to Moses as when later he set out from Jethro’s home

17. How does a prophet, long afterward, and the New Testament still later, use this message to prove that Israel, as a nation, was a type of our Lord? Answer: See Hos 11:1 . and Mat 2:15 .

18. What infidel criticisms have been offered on the morality of “spoiling the Egyptians” as commanded by Jehovah in Exo 3:21-22 repeated in Exo 11:1-3 , and obeyed in Exo 12:33-36 ? Answer: The criticisms were based on the rendering “borrow” in the Common Version of Exo 3:21 , but ASV rendering clears the difficulty. The jewels are given freely because God had given his people favor with the Egyptians that dreadful night when the firstborn were slain. In this way Israel received compensation for years of uncompensated slave labor.

19. What much later story has Josephus about this matter? Answer: He tells that when Alexander the Great was master of Jerusalem the Egyptians presented a claim against the Jews for these borrowed jewels, and the Jews agreed to pay the claim if the Egyptians would settle their claim in offset for the years of enforced and unpaid slave labor.

20. Give an account of the meeting of Moses and Aaron, and why should Aaron come to seek Moses?

21. What great epic of Moses commended to the class and what excellency pointed out as compared with other poems on Biblical themes?

22. Cite the passage in this epic on Moses and Aaron setting forth from Sinai to deliver Israel.

23. Tell of the meeting of Moses and Aaron with the elders of Israel and the result.

24. Tell of the meeting of Moses and Aaron with Pharaoh and the result.

Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible

Exo 2:23 And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.

Ver. 23. Sighed by reason of the bondage. ] They had changed their masters, but not their miseries; , but seldom comes a better. Job’s “stroke was heavier than his groaning.” Job 23:2

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

the king of Egypt. See App-37.

children = sons.

sighed. Hebrew. ‘a nach, under pressure of evil.

cried. Hebrew. zeak: with a loud voice, from sorrow or fear.

cry. Hebrew. shav`a, for help in distress. Note the Figure of speech Synonymia (App-6), to emphasise the greatness of the distress; see also Exo 2:24 and Exo 2:25.

Can it be that (according to Lightfoot II, 22, Pitman) Psalm 88 and Psalm 89 come in here? If so, the latter is a wondrous prophecy, containing “Maschil” = instruction. For Heman and Ethan, see note on 1Ch 6:44, and compare 1Ki 4:31.

God= Elohim the Creator in heaven, not yet revealed to them as the Covenant Jehovah.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

am cir, 2504, bc cir, 1500

in process: Exo 7:7, Act 7:30

the king: Exo 4:19, Mat 2:19, Mat 2:20, Act 12:23, Act 12:24

sighed: Gen 16:11, Num 20:16, Deu 26:6, Deu 26:7, Psa 12:5

cry: Exo 3:7-9, Exo 22:22-27, Gen 4:10, Gen 18:20, Gen 18:21, Deu 24:15, Jdg 10:11, Jdg 10:12, Neh 9:9, Psa 18:6, Psa 81:6, Psa 81:7, Psa 107:19, Psa 107:20, Isa 5:7, Isa 19:20, Jam 5:4

Reciprocal: Exo 1:14 – their lives Exo 3:9 – the cry Exo 3:17 – I will bring Exo 16:3 – flesh Exo 22:27 – when he crieth Lev 25:43 – rule Num 16:13 – out of a 1Sa 9:16 – looked upon 1Sa 12:8 – cried 1Ch 17:9 – as at the 2Ch 10:4 – grievous Job 24:12 – groan Job 34:28 – they Job 35:9 – they make Psa 44:24 – forgettest Psa 79:11 – sighing Psa 94:5 – afflict Psa 102:1 – let my Psa 102:20 – To hear Psa 105:25 – to hate Psa 107:10 – bound Psa 107:12 – he brought Psa 107:39 – oppression Ecc 4:1 – and considered Isa 52:5 – make Isa 54:11 – thou afflicted Isa 58:3 – labours Jer 31:2 – The people Lam 3:32 – General Eze 16:4 – for Act 7:34 – I have seen

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

THE CALL OF MOSES

The Egyptian records refer to Moses. Rameses, said by many to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus, built a great monument on which he made an inscription naming the nobility who were present when it was erected. Toward the end of the list he mentions The ra-Moses, Child of the Lady and Priestess of the Sun God Ra.

Note the peculiarity of the description. The ra-Moses means some distinguished ra-Moses, while Child of the Lady describes a situation and relation not unlike that of Moses and Pharaohs daughter. There are other corroborative data we have no space for, mentioned as a further hint concerning what archaeology reveals on the historicity of the Old Testament.

THE BURNING BUSH (Exo 2:23 to Exo 3:10)

Observe the prelude to the oratorio of power and grace the next chapter reveals, which is found in the language of the closing verses of the present chapter: God heard, God remembered, God looked, God had respect unto, or took knowledge of them. His spiritual apprehension is limited who finds nothing for his soul to feed upon in this.

Observe in the burning bush a type of Israel afflicted but not consumed, because God was in the midst of her. Observe in Moses action (Exo 3:3) an illustration of the purpose God has in a certain kind of miracle which He performs. This purpose is simply to arrest the attention of men to listen to His voice, that they may be convinced. Observe the name by which God reveals Himself (Exo 3:6), and the identity it establishes with Israels past, awakening hope and confidence in Him as the God of promise.

What does God now propose to do for Israel (Exo 3:8)? Why (Exo 3:9)? How (Exo 3:10)? To what extent is Moses to be used, that is, shall he bring Israel out and in, or only out (Exo 3:10)?

THE GREAT NAME (Exo 3:11-22)

It is not surprising that when Moses, hesitates to accept His command (Exo 3:11), God should encourage him with a token (Exo 3:12), but is it not singular that the token shall not be realized upon until after the command has been fulfilled (same verse, last clause)? Did God mean that the burning bush was the token, or are we to suppose that the token was the event itself? In the latter case, it were as though God said, Go, and try, and you shall find in the trial and its result that I have sent you. The former view accords better with the Hebrew accents in the case and with our ordinary idea of a sign, but the latter is corroborated by later Scriptures, such as Isa 7:14.

Have we ever met with this name of God before (Exo 3:14)? It is the expression of what God is, the sum of His being and the greatest of all His names. A commentator paraphrases the verse thus: If Israel shall ask: What are the nature and attributes of Him who hath sent thee to bring us out of Egypt? Tell them it is the eternal, self-existent, immutable Being who only can say that He always will be what He always has been.

Compare Christs words concerning Himself in Joh 8:58 and observe the identity of expression as well as the application of it made by the Jews, who understood Christ to appropriate this name to Himself.

Are you troubled about the ethics of Exo 3:21-22? If so, you will wish to know that borrow does not imply a promise of return but signifies simply to ask or demand (compare Psa 2:8). The Israelites were but receiving at last the fair wages for their toil which their oppressors had denied them. They shall not be ashamed who wait for God.

MOSES HESITANCY AND DISTRUST (Exo 4:1-17)

Moses long tutelage in Midian has developed caution. He is a different man from the one who slew the Egyptian in haste forty years before (Exo 4:1)! What is the first sign now given him (Exo 4:2-5)? The second (Exo 4:6-8)? Were these simply for his own assurance or that of Israel? What power was bestowed upon him with reference to a third sign? Doubtless there was an adaptedness of these signs to the purpose for which they were to be used in Egypt, but space will hardly permit a discussion of that feature.

In what does the backwardness of Moses approach the danger point of unbelief (Exo 4:10-13)? Light is thrown on the answer to this question if we reflect that Exo 4:13 amounts to this: Choose another, a better man to send. No wonder God was angered, and yet how does He express His patience (Exo 4:14-16) ? Nevertheless, Moses may have forfeited a certain privilege because of his waywardness. A rendering of Exo 4:14 could read: Is not Aaron thy brother the Levite? By which we may understand that in consequence of Moses act the honor of the priesthood and of being the official head of the house of Levi was denied him and conferred on Aaron. If this be true, it teaches that those who decline the labor and hazard connected with the call of God to a special service may lose a blessing of which they little dream.

THE START FOR EGYPT (Exo 4:18-28)

How is Moses encouraged (Exo 4:19)? What peculiar designation is given Israel (Exo 4:22)? You will recall the harmony between this and what we have learned as Gods purpose in calling Israel for her great mission. She was favored beyond other nations not for her own sake but that of those nations to which she was to minister.

What mysterious incident occurred on this journey (Exo 4:24-26)? We do not know the meaning of this, but following we give the views of James G. Murphy in his commentary on Exodus:

The Lord had charged Moses with a menace of the gravest kind to Pharaoh and it was well that Moses himself should feel acutely the pang of death in order to comprehend the meaning of this threat. It appears that his youngest son had not been circumcised through some fault of his; the neglect of which was a serious delinquency in one who was to be the leader and lawgiver of the holy people. It was therefore meet that the perfection of the divine holiness should be made known to him and that he should learn at this stage of his experience that God is in earnest when He speaks, and will perform what He has threatened. Hence the Lord sought to kill him probably by some disease or sudden stroke. It is also probable from her promptitude in the matter that Zipporah was in some way the cause of the delay in circumcising the child. Her womanly tenderness shrunk from the painful operation, and her words seem to imply that it was her connection with Moses that had necessitated the bloody rite. It was doubtless a salutary and seasonable lesson to her as well as Moses. The Lord, who sought to put the latter to death, remitted the penalty when the neglected duty had been performed.

QUESTIONS

1.How does archeology testify to Moses in Egypt?

2.What is Gods purpose in certain miracles?

3.How would you define I Am That I Am?

4.Give an argument from Joh 8:58 for Christs deity.

5.How would you explain the word borrow (Gen 3:21-22)?

6.How does Murphy explain Gen 4:24-26?

Fuente: James Gray’s Concise Bible Commentary

Exo 2:23. The king of Egypt died And, after him, one or two more of his sons or successors. And the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage Probably the murdering of their infants did not continue; that part of their affliction only attended the birth of Moses, to signalize that. And now they were content with their increase, finding that Egypt was enriched by their labour; so they might have them for their slaves, they cared not how many they were. On this therefore they were intent, to keep them all at work, and make the best hand they could of their labour. When one Pharaoh died, another rose up in his place, that was as cruel to Israel as his predecessors. And they cried Now at last they began to think of God under their troubles, and to return to him from the idols they had served, Eze 20:8. Hitherto they had fretted at the instruments of their trouble, but God was not in all their thoughts. But before God unbound them, he put it into their hearts to cry unto him. It is a sign God is coming to us with deliverance when he inclines us to cry to him for it.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Exo 2:23 to Exo 3:15. The Call of Moses (first account). Exo 2:23 a, J, Exo 2:23 b Exo 2:25 P, Exo 3:1 E, Exo 3:2-4 a, J, Exo 3:4 b, E, Exo 3:5 J, Exo 3:6 E, Exo 3:7-9 a J, Exo 3:9 b Exo 3:14 E, Exo 3:15 Rje.

Exo 2:23 a J. many will refer to the 67 years reign of Rameses II, unless it is a gloss by a scribe (Old Latin omits) or editor (so Baentsch) to suit Ps view of Moses as 80 years old (77). In J (Exo 4:20; Exo 4:25) Gershom is still an infant at the return. It is likely that Exo 4:19 f., Exo 4:24-26, should follow here but have been displaced by the compiler. The death of the king is clearly mentioned as removing the obstacle to Mosess return. But after the solemn call a merely negative reason seems inadequate. If this view be correct, the appearance at the bush will have been placed by J (Exo 3:2) on the way back to Egypt or in Goshen itself.

Exo 2:23 b Exo 2:25. The sequel in P of Exo 1:14. Gods remembering and His covenant are favourite ideas with this writer, and have passed into the devotional language of the Church. In Gen. all the sources agree in linking the patriarchs by bonds of purpose and promise with a God who was their faithful and watchful friend.

Exo 2:25. The last words are strictly and God knew, and are usually taken in an intensified sense of interested and sympathetic knowing, as frequently (cf. Exo 3:7 below). But the omission of the object is strange, and has led some to correct the text. The LXX and made Himself known unto them only requires a slight alteration of the vowel points (p. 35), and gives a good sense.

Exo 3:1-10. The Revelation at the Bush.According to E (Exo 3:1; Exo 3:4 b, Exo 3:6) Moses had led the flock to the back of the wilderness, i.e. the W., since the E. was always regarded as being in front (as the N. is with us), N. and S. being left and right. The flock belonged to the priest of Midian, a term not used elsewhere by E. but which suits the representation of Jethro in Exo 3:18 (E), and need not be a gloss from Exo 2:16 J. Thus, accidentally, Moses came to the mountain of God, and learnt that it was such by the voice of God (out of the midst of the bush is probably a gloss from J). By this discovery, it is implied, Horeb became a sacred mountain, i.e. a place where God was peculiarly at home, and, therefore, where man was specially susceptible to Divine influences, even as the medival candidate for knighthood would be most likely to see visions or hear voices during his midnight vigil before the altar. In primitive thought the tie with locality was no doubt crudely conceived, but not a few OT references show that the association of places with Gods special presence long retained its value, as symbolising and concentrating an aspect of reality to which the abstract doctrine of omnipresence fails to do justice. Moderns, who reckon it unspiritual to call any place sacred, because God is everywhere, may condemn themselves to finding Him nowhere. It has been usual to identify Horeb (Exo 3:1) with Sinai, or at most to distinguish the former as covering the district in which the latter was placed, and to locate the whole region in the Sinaitic peninsula, where Christian tradition has loved to find it. Recently, however, it has been sought by Sayce and others to prove that Sinai was not in the peninsula at all, but N.E. of it, near Edom; and by MNeile to show that, as in regard to other places, the sources differ, and that while Sinai was rear Kadesh, N. of the head of the gulf of Akaba, Horeb was S.E., on the E. shore of the gulf. Horeb is mentioned only by E (here and in Exo 17:6, Exo 33:6) and by D, while J and P refer only to Sinai. Really the evidence is conflicting and obscure, and it matters little which identification is adopted (p. 64).As E told how Horeb became sacred, sowe must supposeoriginally J related here how Sinai also was shown to be holy by the revelation at the bush (Seneh). Fire is constantly a symbol of Gods presence (cf. Exo 13:7, the pillar of fire, Exo 19:18, Exo 24:17, Eze 1:27; Eze 8:2). In view of the large number of undoubted cases, like that of Joan of Arc, in which visions and voices have been authentically reported by the original subjects of the abnormal experiences, it is reasonable to suppose that it was so in this case, though, in view of the long oral transmission, it would be rash to assert it positively. In any event the story embodies a lofty and suggestive symbolism. The unconsumed bramble bush may signify Israel. burnt by the Divine wrath yet spared destruction (cf Keble, quoted by MNeile); or Moses, the fleshly pole or contact-point for the transmission of the stream of redemptive energy, unclean (like Isaiah), yet not slain by the Divine holiness, which was then conceived under quasi-physical representations. Only once (Deu 33:16) is the sacred bush again mentioned in OT (cf. Mar 12:26).The angel of Yahweh is sometimes distinguished from Yahweh and sometimes (as here, Exo 3:2) identified with Him (Gen 16:7*). But the phrase always marks some sensible manifestation of the Divine. As the term is missing in Exo 3:4 and Exo 3:7, probably the angel of is here a gloss due to the reverence of a later age. It is never found in P.The removal of the shoes or sandals (Exo 3:5) was a traditional mark of reverence, arising more probably from ancient custom than from fear of soiling the sanctuary, and is maintained by Mohammedans (Gen 35:2*). The place was already holy ground, and did not merely become so through the manifestation. So now worshippers do not wait for service to begin before removing their hats.Moses is sent by no new God, but by the God of the patriarchs (Exo 3:6). Each advance in revelation or redemption is due to the same Being; and the religious experience of to-day is continuous with the experience of yesterday out of which it has been developed. In Mar 12:26 Christ further draws from this verse the inference that God will not allow death to break the conscious fellowship He has established with His creatures.That Moses hid his face (Exo 3:6) was a sign of reverence parallel with the baring of the feet noted in Exo 3:5 (J). In this source (cf. Exo 3:7) there is a fearless use of human terms (seen, heard, come down) to make Gods relations with man real and intelligible. Such language is for plain people more effectively true than coldly abstract words.In Exo 3:8 we first meet with the phrase, so frequent in J and D, a land flowing with milk and honey, see RV references. Honey, like the present-day Arabic cognate dibs, probably includes the grape-juice syrup, used with food, like jam. The lists of Palestinian peoples (as in Exo 3:8, cf. Gen 15:19-21*, and RV references), are common in JE and D, but have probably often been amplified. The term Canaanite is used (cf. Gen 12:6 J) generally of the pre-Israelitic inhabitants of Canaan, but has a narrower sense, of the dwellers on the sea coast and in the Jordan valley. It is a question whether the inclusion of the Hittites among the peoples conquered by Israel is justified by victories over some Hittite colony (cf. Num 13:29 JE, Genesis 23* P); for the main body of the nation was established N. of the Lebanon and was never subject to Israel. Amorite (p. 53, Gen 14:7*) also is used as a comprehensive term, but properly refers to a distinct people, ruled by Sihon, N.E. of the Dead Sea, and settled early N. of Canaan (Tell el-Amarna Letters, 1400 B.C.). For the Perizzites, see Gen 13:7*. The Hivites belonged to the centre, and the Jebusites held Jerusalem till David took it (2Sa 5:6-9).

Exo 3:4 a. The Heb. is And Yahweh saw . . . and God called, so that the division of the verse between J and E is grammatically natural.

Exo 3:11 f. Mosess First Difficultypersonal unfitness (cf. the cases of Gideon, Jeroboam, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel). Once Moses was rash and impulsive. Now he is older and sees the difficulties. All the sources agree in this representation. A fugitive, a shepherd, and unknown, how shall he interview the Pharaoh, or lead Israel? The promise, I will be with thee (omit certainly), draws aside the veil and shows him his Unseen Divine Companion; cf. RV references.The token or sign (Exo 2:12) is but a further promise that on the sacred mount (Exo 2:1*) the people should offer God worship; unless a reference to the rod or the pillar has been displaced.The awkward ye shall serve (Exo 2:12) becomes, by changing the Heb. initial t to y, they shall serve.

Exo 3:13-15. Mosess Second Difficultyignorance of the Name under which Israel was to worship God. This is expressed in two of the sources (E here, and P in Exo 2:6). He must learn the name of the God who was sending him. In ancient religions generally the knowledge of the name was a necessity for prayer or sacrifice (Gen 32:29*), and its meaning was sometimes an indication of the nature of the God. Four points arise here: (i) the original pre-Mosaic meaning of the name Yahweh; (ii.) its meaning for Moses; (iii.) the idea of it in the mind of the author; (iv.) the identification of the author. As to (i.) there has been much discussion, but little agreement. Possibly it may have had reference to nature processesHe who comes down as the rain or the lightning-flash, or He who makes these come down. But the solution of this problem matters little. The greatest words may grow in meaning from the humblest seed of suggestion. Driver considers that there is enough Assyriological evidence to show that a West-Semitic deity, Ya-u, was known as early as c. 2100 B.C. Taking (iv.) next, it is clear that, for the prophetic writer E, the name Yahweh was regarded as unknown both to the Israelites in Egypt and also to the patriarchs. The text here and the usage of this source in Gen. prove this. Indeed, it is possible that the identification of Yahweh with the God of the fathers is due to a later editor, and that the contrast between old and new was originally thought of as a revolution, a passage from the worship of Elim (gods) to the worship of one God, Yahweh, greater than all else, and alone revered in Israel. Besides the link with the past through Jethro (Exo 18:12*) it has been suggested that one or more of the tribes may have been worshippers of Yahweh. (iii.) The diversity of views on the point of translation is shown by the four renderings of RV. For other alternatives, see MNeile, Ex., p. 22, or HDB ii. 199 (Davidson), or EBi. Exo 33:20 (Kautzsch). The third mg., I will be that I will be, is supported by Robertson Smith, Davidson, Driver, MNeile, and others. [The meaning would be more clearly conveyed to the English reader by the translation, I will be what I will be.A. S. P.] It brings out the implications both of the root and tense of the verb hayah. The root denotes rather becoming than being, and the tense (imperfect) marks uncompleted process or activity. AV and RV rendering (I am that I amthe unnamable and in expressible One) involves an amount of reflectiveness alien to the Hebrew mind. And so with others: I am because I am, I am who am. Heb. syntax and thought analogies favour decisively the beautiful rendering adopted above, found as early as Rashi (A.D. 1105), and now preferred by British scholars. The temper of noble adventure which belongs to faith is here shown to spring out of the very Name (i.e. Being) of Yahweh (= He will be): no one can limit the inexhaustibly fresh possibilities of One so named. The question (ii.) of the meaning of the name for Moses is too large for treatment here; but his must have been the parent conception which the historian has so grandly expressed here. In Exo 3:14 read the last clause, I-will-be hath sent me. The spelling Jehovah (at least as early as A.D. 1278) arose from misunderstanding the Jewish practice of placing under the four-lettered word (or tetragrammaton) Yhwh (or Jhvh) the vowels of the word Adonay (Lord) which they pronounced in place of it, out of mistaken reverence based on Exo 20:7 or Lev 24:11; Lev 24:16. The correctness of the form here adopted, Yahweh, is established, not merely by analogy with other names derived from verbs (Isaac, Jacob, etc.), but from the transliterations used by early Christian Fathers, before the tradition of substituting Adonay had become established; Theodoret, reporting Samaritan speech, and Epiphanius have , and Clement of Alexandria has (or , the occurrence in which of all the five vowels prompted certain magical uses).

Exo 3:15. Observe that in Exo 3:14-16 there are three instructions of identical or similar scope in regard to the announcement of the Divine Name. The simplest explanation of the repetition is that Exo 3:16 comes from J. and Exo 3:14 from E, Exo 3:15 being a link verse by the redactor of JE.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

2:23 And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they {h} cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.

(h) God humbles his by afflictions, that they should cry to him, and receive the fruit of his promise.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

CHAPTER III.

THE BURNING BUSH.

Exo 2:23 – Exo 3:1-22

“In process of time the king of Egypt died,” probably the great Raamses, no other of whose dynasty had a reign which extended over the indicated period of time. If so, he had while living every reason to expect an immortal fame, as the greatest among Egyptian kings, a hero, a conqueror on three continents, a builder of magnificent works. But he has only won an immortal notoriety. “Every stone in his buildings was cemented in human blood.” The cause he persecuted has made deathless the banished refugee, and has gibbeted the great monarch as a tyrant, whose misplanned severities wrought the ruin of his successor and his army. Such are the reversals of popular judgment: and such the vanity of fame. For all the contemporary fame was his.

“The children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried.” Another monarch had come at last, a change after sixty-seven years, and yet no change for them! It filled up the measure of their patience, and also of the iniquity of Egypt. We are not told that their cry was addressed to the Lord; what we read is that it reached Him, Who still overhears and pities many a sob, many a lament, which ought to have been addressed to Him, and is not. Indeed, if His compassion were not to reach men until they had remembered and prayed to Him, who among us would ever have learned to pray to Him at all? Moreover He remembered His covenant with their forefathers, for the fulfilment of which the time had now arrived. “And God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them.”

These were not the cries of religious individuals, but of oppressed masses. It is therefore a solemn question to ask How many such appeals ascend from Christian England? Behold, the hire of labourers … held back by fraud crieth out. The half-paid slaves of our haste to be rich, and the victims of our drinking institutions, and of hideous vices which entangle and destroy the innocent and unconscious, what cries to heaven are theirs! As surely as those which St. James records, these have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Of these sufferers every one is His own by purchase, most of them by a covenant and sacrament more solemn than bound Him to His ancient Israel. Surely He hears their groaning. And all whose hearts are touched with compassion, yet who hesitate whether to bestir themselves or to remain inert while evil is masterful and cruel, should remember the anger of God when Moses said, “Send, I pray Thee, by whom Thou wilt send.” The Lord is not indifferent. Much less than other sufferers should those who know God be terrified by their afflictions. Cyprian encouraged the Church of his time to endure even unto martyrdom, by the words recorded of ancient Israel, that the more they afflicted them, so much the more they became greater and waxed stronger. And he was right. For all these things happened to them for ensamples, and were written for our admonition.

It is further to be observed that the people were quite unconscious, until Moses announced it afterwards, that they were heard by God. Yet their deliverer had now been prepared by a long process for his work. We are not to despair because relief does not immediately appear: though He tarry, we are to wait for Him.

While this anguish was being endured in Egypt, Moses was maturing for his destiny. Self-reliance, pride of place, hot and impulsive aggressiveness, were dying in his bosom. To the education of the courtier and scholar was now added that of the shepherd in the wilds, amid the most solemn and awful scenes of nature, in solitude, humiliation, disappointment, and, as we learn from the Epistle to the Hebrews, in enduring faith. Wordsworth has a remarkable description of the effect of a similar discipline upon the good Lord Clifford. He tells–

“How he, long forced in humble paths to go,

Was softened into feeling, soothed and tamed.

“Love had he found in huts where poor men lie,

His daily teachers had been woods and rills,

The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills.

“In him the savage virtues of the race,

Revenge, and all ferocious thoughts, were dead;

Nor did he change, but kept in lofty place

The wisdom which adversity had bred.”

There was also the education of advancing age, which teaches many lessons, and among them two which are essential to leadership,–the folly of a hasty blow, and of impulsive reliance upon the support of mobs. Moses the man-slayer became exceeding meek; and he ceased to rely upon the perception of his people that God by him would deliver them. His distrust, indeed, became as excessive as his temerity had been, but it was an error upon the safer side. “Behold, they will not believe me,” he says, “nor hearken unto my voice.”

It is an important truth that in very few lives the decisive moment comes just when it is expected. Men allow themselves to be self-indulgent, extravagant and even wicked, often upon the calculation that their present attitude matters little, and they will do very differently when the crisis arrives, the turning-point in their career to nerve them. And they waken up with a start to find their career already decided, their character moulded. As a snare shall the day of the Lord come upon all flesh; and as a snare come all His great visitations meanwhile. When Herod was drinking among bad companions, admiring a shameless dancer, and boasting loudly of his generosity, he was sobered and saddened to discover that he had laughed away the life of his only honest adviser. Moses, like David, was “following the ewes great with young,” when summoned by God to rule His people Israel. Neither did the call arrive when he was plunged in moody reverie and abstraction, sighing over his lost fortunes and his defeated aspirations, rebelling against his lowly duties. The humblest labour is a preparation for the brightest revelations, whereas discontent, however lofty, is a preparation for nothing. Thus, too, the birth of Jesus was first announced to shepherds keeping watch over their flock. Yet hundreds of third-rate young persons in every city in this land today neglect their work, and unfit themselves for any insight, or any leadership whatever, by chafing against the obscurity of their vocation.

Who does not perceive that the career of Moses hitherto was divinely directed? The fact that we feel this, although, until now, God has not once been mentioned in his personal story, is surely a fine lesson for those who have only one notion of what edifies–the dragging of the most sacred names and phrases into even the most unsuitable connections. In truth, such a phraseology is much less attractive than a certain tone, a recognition of the unseen, which may at times be more consistent with reverential silence than with obtrusive utterance. It is enough to be ready and fearless when the fitting time comes, which is sure to arrive, for the religious heart as for this narrative–the time for the natural utterance of the great word, God.

We read that the angel of the Lord appeared to him–a remarkable phrase, which was already used in connection with the sacrifice of Isaac (Gen 22:11). How much it implies will better be discussed in the twenty-third chapter, where a fuller statement is made. For the present it is enough to note, that this is one pre-eminent angel, indicated by the definite article; that he is clearly the medium of a true divine appearance, because neither the voice nor form of any lesser being is supposed to be employed, the appearance being that of fire, and the words being said to be the direct utterance of the Lord, not of any one who says, Thus saith the Lord. We shall see hereafter that the story of the Exodus is unique in this respect, that in training a people tainted with Egyptian superstitions, no ‘similitude’ is seen, as when there wrestled a man with Jacob, or when Ezekiel saw a human form upon the sapphire pavement.

Man is the true image of God, and His perfect revelation was in flesh. But now that expression of Himself was perilous, and perhaps unsuitable besides; for He was to be known as the Avenger, and presently as the Giver of Law, with its inflexible conditions and its menaces. Therefore He appeared as fire, which is intense and terrible, even when “the flame of the grace of God does not consume, but illuminates.”

There is a notion that religion is languid, repressive, and unmanly. But such is not the scriptural idea. In His presence is the fulness of joy. Christ has come that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly. They who are shut out from His blessedness are said to be asleep and dead. And so Origen quotes this passage among others, with the comment that “As God is a fire, and His angels a flame of fire, and all the saints fervent in spirit, so they who have fallen away from God are said to have cooled, or to have become cold” (De Princip., ii. 8). A revelation by fire involves intensity.

There is indeed another explanation of the burning bush, which makes the flame express only the afflictions that did not consume the people. But this would be a strange adjunct to a divine appearance for their deliverance, speaking rather of the continuance of suffering than of its termination, for which the extinction of such fire would be a more appropriate symbol.

Yet there is an element of truth even in this view, since fire is connected with affliction. In His holiness God is light (with which, in the Hebrew, the very word for holiness seems to be connected); in His judgments He is fire. “The Light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame, and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day” (Isa 10:17). But God reveals Himself in this thorn bush as a fire which does not consume; and such a revelation tells at once Who has brought the people into affliction, and also that they are not abandoned to it.

To Moses at first there was visible only an extraordinary phenomenon; He turned to see a great sight. It is therefore out of the question to find here the truth, so easy to discover elsewhere, that God rewards the religious inquirer–that they who seek after Him shall find Him. Rather we learn the folly of deeming that the intellect and its inquiries are at war with religion and its mysteries, that revelation is at strife with mental insight, that he who most stupidly refuses to “see the great sights” of nature is best entitled to interpret the voice of God. When the man of science gives ear to voices not of earth, and the man of God has eyes and interest for the divine wonders which surround us, many a discord will be harmonised. With the revival of classical learning came the Reformation.

But it often happens that the curiosity of the intellect is in danger of becoming irreverent, and obtrusive into mysteries not of the brain, and thus the voice of God must speak in solemn warning: “Moses, Moses, … Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”

After as prolonged a silence as from the time of Malachi to the Baptist, it is God Who reveals Himself once more–not Moses who by searching finds Him out. And this is the established rule. Tidings of the Incarnation came from heaven, or man would not have discovered the Divine Babe. Jesus asked His two first disciples “What seek ye?” and told Simon “Thou shalt be called Cephas,” and pronounced the listening Nathaniel “an Israelite indeed,” and bade Zaccheus “make haste and come down,” in each case before He was addressed by them.

The first words of Jehovah teach something more than ceremonial reverence. If the dust of common earth on the shoe of Moses may not mingle with that sacred soil, how dare we carry into the presence of our God mean passions and selfish cravings? Observe, too, that while Jacob, when he awoke from his vision, said, “How dreadful is this place!” (Gen 28:17), God Himself taught Moses to think rather of the holiness than the dread of His abode. Nevertheless Moses also was afraid to look upon God, and hid the face which was thereafter to be veiled, for a nobler reason, when it was itself illumined with the divine glory. Humility before God is thus the path to the highest honour, and reverence, to the closest intercourse.

Meantime the Divine Person has announced Himself: “I am the God of thy father” (father is apparently singular with a collective force), “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” It is a blessing which every Christian parent should bequeath to his child, to be strengthened and invigorated by thinking of God as his father’s God.

It was with this memorable announcement that Jesus refuted the Sadducees and established His doctrine of the resurrection. So, then, the bygone ages are not forgotten: Moses may be sure that a kindly relation exists between God and himself, because the kindly relation still exists in all its vital force which once bound Him to those who long since appeared to die. It was impossible, therefore, our Lord inferred, that they had really died at all. The argument is a forerunner of that by which St. Paul concludes, from the resurrection of Christ, that none who are “in Christ” have perished. Nay, since our Lord was not disputing about immortality only, but the resurrection of the body, His argument implied that a vital relationship with God involved the imperishability of the whole man, since all was His, and in truth the very seal of the covenant was imprinted upon the flesh. How much stronger is the assurance for us, who know that our very bodies are His temple! Now, if any suspicion should arise that the argument, which is really subtle, is over-refined and untrustworthy, let it be observed that no sooner was this announcement made, than God added the proclamation of His own immutability, so that it cannot be said He was, but from age to age His title is I AM. The inference from the divine permanence to the living and permanent vitality of all His relationships is not a verbal quibble, it is drawn from the very central truth of this great scripture.

And now for the first time God calls Israel My people, adopting a phrase already twice employed by earthly rulers (Gen 23:11, Gen 41:40), and thus making Himself their king and the champion of their cause. Often afterwards it was used in pathetic appeal:–“Thou hast showed Thy people hard things,”–“Thou sellest Thy people for nought,”–“Behold, look, we beseech Thee; we are all Thy people” (Psa 60:3, Psa 44:12; Isa 64:9). And often it expressed the returning favour of their king: “Hear, O My people, and I will speak”; “Comfort ye, comfort ye My people” (Psa 50:7; Isa 40:1).

It is used of the nation at large, all of whom were brought into the covenant, although with many of them God was not well pleased. And since it does not belong only to saints, but speaks of a grace which might be received in vain, it is a strong appeal to all Christian people, all who are within the New Covenant. Them also the Lord claims and pities, and would gladly emancipate: their sorrows also He knows. “I have surely seen the affliction of My people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.” Thus the ways of God exceed the desires of men. Their subsequent complaints are evidence that Egypt had become their country: gladly would they have shaken off the iron yoke, but a successful rebellion is a revolution, not an Exodus. Their destined home was very different: with the widest variety of climate, scenery, and soil, a land which demanded much more regular husbandry, but rewarded labour with exuberant fertility. Secluded from heathenism by deserts on the south and east, by a sublime range of mountains on the north, and by a sea with few havens on the west, yet planted in the very bosom of all the ancient civilisation which at the last it was to leaven, it was a land where a faithful people could have dwelt alone and not been reckoned among the nations, yet where the scourge for disobedience was never far away.

Next after the promise of this good land, the commission of Moses is announced. He is to act, because God is already active: “I am come down to deliver them … come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth My people.” And let this truth encourage all who are truly sent of God, to the end of time, that He does not send us to deliver man, until He is Himself prepared to do so, that when our fears ask, like Moses, Who am I, that I should go? He does not answer, Thou art capable, but Certainly I will go with thee. So, wherever the ministry of the word is sent, there is a true purpose of grace. There is also the presence of One who claims the right to bestow upon us the same encouragement which was given to Moses by Jehovah, saying, “Lo, I am with you alway.” In so saying, Jesus made Himself equal with God.

And as this ancient revelation of God was to give rest to a weary and heavy-laden people, so Christ bound together the assertion of a more perfect revelation, made in Him, with the promise of a grander emancipation. No man knoweth the Father save by revelation of the Son is the doctrine which introduces the great offer “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Mat 11:27-28). The claims of Christ in the New Testament will never be fully recognised until a careful study is made of His treatment of the functions which in the Old Testament are regarded as Divine. A curious expression follows: “This shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.” It seems but vague encouragement, to offer Moses, hesitating at the moment, a token which could take effect only when his task was wrought. And yet we know how much easier it is to believe what is thrown into distinct shape and particularised. Our trust in good intentions is helped when their expression is detailed and circumstantial, as a candidate for office will reckon all general assurances of support much cheaper than a pledge to canvass certain electors within a certain time. Such is the constitution of human nature; and its Maker has often deigned to sustain its weakness by going thus into particulars. He does the same for us, condescending to embody the most profound of all mysteries in sacramental emblems, clothing his promises of our future blessedness in much detail, and in concrete figures which at least symbolise, if they do not literally describe, the glories of the Jerusalem which is above.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary