Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 4:31

And the people believed: and when they heard that the LORD had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshiped.

31. The people believe in Moses’ commission, as Jehovah had assured him that they would do (Exo 3:18 a, Exo 4:8-9); and bow the heads in reverence and gratitude when they hear that Jehovah has visited (Exo 3:16) His people.

and when, &c.] Heb. and they heard , and they bowed. LXX. for and they heard ( ) have and they rejoiced ( ); no doubt rightly.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Exo 4:31

The people believed.

Lessons

1. The peoples faith should closely follow upon Gods word ministered, and by His works confirmed. A good connection.

2. Where God promiseth success to His ministers in the faith of others, there they shall believe (Exo 3:18).

3. All professed believers, receive not Gods word with the same faith.

4. Hearing is the usual sense of bringing in faith and the fruits of it.

5. Gods gracious visitation of His Church, and providential sight of its afflictions, is very good to be heard by them.

6. Such hearing of Gods visiting love and redeeming providence must affect Gods Israel.

7. Faith working by this sense stirs up souls to suitable returns unto God.

8. The humblest and sincerest worship in body and spirit is the most suitable return to God for His redemption. (G. Hughes, B. D.)

Human and Divine attitudes

I. The attitudes predicated of the people.

1. Their belief.

2. Their reverence.

3. Their devotion.

II. The attitudes predicated of God.

1. He saw the affliction of Israel.

2. Visited Israel. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)

Faith easy when in the line of desire

People are a great deal more apt to receive a message as from God when it is in the line of their own longings. The Israelites were quick to receive from God a promise of relief from Egyptian brick-making, readier to worship than when they wanted water or meat on the desert and failed to find it ready at hand for them. And they were very much like the rest of us in all this. How we should bow our heads and worship if the one inner longing of our hearts at this moment were granted to us, or even promised of God, all of a sudden! But how is it while God keeps back from us that which we long for, and we know that He is prompted to His course by both wisdom and love? Do we bow our heads and worship, all the same? Well, we bow our heads; but not always to worship. (H. C. Trumbull.)

Confidence in God

The Roman noblemen could give no greater proof of their confidence in their city and army, than when they bought the land on which their Carthaginian enemies were encamped around the city. And we can give no greater proof of our confidence in God, than by trusting Him in the land which our enemies, darkness and sickness and trouble, seem to possess, and acting as if He were their master, and mightier than they all. (W. Baxendale.)

The believing people

I. God always furnishes sufficient evidence to justify belief. Moses was a stranger to the people; Aaron doubtless well known. He had a welcome message–deliverance. Miracles in outward form: miracles typical in character: rod changed to a serpent and back, Moses changed from a shepherd to a ruler; cleansing of leprosy, the purifying of the human for Divine use.

II. Hearing precedes believing. God sent Aaron to speak. Ministers sent to preach.

III. The Israelites manifest their faith publicly. We must confess Christ in token of faith.

IV. God prepares the way for the reception of His truth. Aaron called to meet Moses. Gods Spirit precedes and accompanies the truth we utter.

V. Faith secures deliverance. By it the Israelites secured theirs. So must we by ours. It is unto us according to our faith. (Dr. Fowler.)

Bowed heads

1. Some heads are bowed with business cares. During the last four years many homes have been broken, and others sadly reduced, not so much through mens own folly, as from the long and serious depression in trade.

2. Some heads are bowed with sorrow over sinful children. That never-fading picture of the Prodigal Son, painted by a master hand, is often too truly representative of our own families. Young men, think of all the pain and anguish you cause for those dear parents by your lives of sin.

3. Some heads are bowed with bereavement. To many of us there have come dark days of sorrow and pain. Roses have withered in our domestic gardens; buds have been nipped before they had time to bloom; lights we loved have gone out. (Charles Leach.)

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Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 31. The people believed] They credited the account given of the Divine appointment of Moses and Aaron to be their deliverers out of their bondage, the miracles wrought on the occasion confirming the testimony delivered by Aaron.

They bowed their heads and worshipped.] See a similar act mentioned, and in the same words, Ge 24:26. The bowing the head, c., here, may probably refer to the eastern custom of bowing the head down to the knees, then kneeling down and touching the earth with the forehead. This was a very painful posture and the most humble in which the body could possibly be placed. Those who pretend to worship God, either by prayer or thanksgiving, and keep themselves during the performance of those solemn acts in a state of perfect ease, either carelessly standing or stupidly sitting, surely cannot have a due sense of the majesty of God, and their own sinfulness and unworthiness. Let the feelings of the body put the soul in remembrance of its sin against God. Let a man put himself in such a position (kneeling for instance) as it is generally acknowledged a criminal should assume, when coming to his sovereign and judge to bewail his sins, and solicit forgiveness.

The Jewish custom, as we learn from Rabbi Maymon, was to bend the body so that every joint of the backbone became incurvated, and the head was bent towards the knees, so that the body resembled a bow and prostration implied laying the body flat upon the earth, the arms and legs extended to the uttermost, the mouth and forehead touching the ground. In Mt 8:2 the leper is said to worship our Lord, . but in Lu 5:12 he is said to have fallen on his face, . These two accounts show that he first kneeled down, probably putting his face down to his knees, and touching the earth with his forehead; and then prostrated himself, his legs and arms being both extended. See Clarke on Ge 17:3.

THE backwardness of Moses to receive and execute the commission to deliver the children of Israel, has something very instructive in it. He felt the importance of the charge, his own insufficiency, and the awful responsibility under which he should be laid if he received it. Who then can blame him for hesitating? If he miscarried (and how difficult in such a case not to miscarry!) he must account to a jealous God, whose justice required him to punish every delinquency. What should ministers of the Gospel feel on such subjects? Is not their charge more important and more awful than that of Moses? How few consider this! It is respectable, it is honourable, to be in the Gospel ministry, but who is sufficient to guide and feed the flock of God? If through the pastor’s unfitness or neglect any soul should go astray, or perish through want of proper spiritual nourishment, or through not getting his portion in due season, in what a dreadful state is the pastor! That soul, says God, shall die in his iniquities, but his blood will I require at the watchman’s hands! Were these things only considered by those who are candidates for the Gospel ministry, who could be found to undertake it? We should then indeed have the utmost occasion to pray the Lord of the harvest, , to THRUST OUT labourers into the harvest, as no one, duly considering those things would go, unless thrust out by God himself. O ye ministers of the sanctuary! tremble for your own souls, and the souls of those committed to your care, and go not into this work unless God go with you. Without his presence, unction, and approbation, ye can do nothing.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Had visited, i.e. taken cognizance of their cause and condition, and resolved to deliver them,

they bowed their heads and worshipped; acknowledging and adoring the kindness and faithfulness of God thereto.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

And the people believed,…. That Moses was sent of God, and would be the deliverer of them:

and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel; in a way of grace and mercy, by raising such a redeemer and deliverer in the midst of them:

and that he had looked upon their affliction; with an eye of pity and compassion:

then they bowed their heads, and worshipped; adoring the goodness of God, and expressing their thankfulness for the notice he took of them, and signifying their readiness to obey all instructions and directions that should be given them.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

31. And the people believed. Either this is a synecdoche, a part of the people being put for the whole, or else Moses signifies that after the announcement was published, all with one consent embraced the message of their deliverance. I prefer the former meaning; because their solemn adoration is immediately subjoined, which could only have taken place in a public assembly. But we shall presently see how fickle and infirm was their belief. It is plain, from its levity and inconstancy, that it was without any living root. But it is not unusual that the word belief should be improperly applied to a mere assent and disposition to believe, which speedily passes away. Thus Christ (Mar 4:15) speaks of the faith of many as transient. “The people,” therefore, “believed,” when they heard that their afflictions were regarded by God, since that statement carried with it credibility and authority; but it was such belief as might be dissipated by the first adverse wind; and so, indeed, it happened. This passage, then, teaches, that theirs is no great attainment, and that they are deserving of no great praise, who eagerly and joyfully receive what is propounded to them in God’s name, unless faith, being deeply rooted in their hearts, sustains itself boldly against the assaults of temptation. Some connect the clauses differently, (65) “The people believed; and when they heard that assistance in their calamities awaited them, gave thanks to God.” But the copula is here rightly resolved into the expositive particle, and the sense is — “When the people had heard what Aaron reported, they believed.” God’s visiting them here expresses the actual occurrence, viz., that God was willing to render them aid in their sore distress. Their “worshipping” was in token of their gratitude, because it was not enough for them privately and individually to reflect on the favor of God, unless they also openly manifested their religious feeling; not as if God greatly requires outward ceremonies, but because they are useful supports to our infirmity, and it is right, that not the mind only, but the body also, should be employed in the service of God.

(65) As in A. V. ; and this rendering is confirmed by Dathe, “Hi fidem habuerunt; et cum audirent,” etc.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

The bowing the head in token of belief had a double signification, and both beautiful. It testified that they would depend upon it. And it testified also, that they gave to God all the glory of it.

REFLECTIONS

Reader! while you and I behold with concern the conduct of one of the most faithful servants of the Lord, in the repugnance which he manifested to an immediate obedience to the Lord’s commands; let us consider in him a renewed evidence of the universal taint of our fallen nature, and derive from the view this sweet improvement, that none but our adored Redeemer call be endeared to the heart as holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. And did Moses need one miracle upon another to gain him over to the interests and services of his God; how many miracles of grace have you and I required, and yet in the present moment the remains of unbelief still lurk within! Well may we both cry out, not only in beholding the obduracy of the avowed enemies of God like that of Pharaoh, but even in the rebellion and unbelief of his friends like that of Moses; from hardiness of heart and contempt of thy word and commandment, good Lord deliver us.

One word more on this Chapter. We see that God’s people though persecuted, we’re not forsaken; though cast down by men, were not cast off by their God. They were still the Lord’s people, and therefore the Lord’s care. Now let you and I seek for grace to remember this amidst all our dark and trying dispensations. There is a time to favour Zion, and that time must come. In the covenant all things are ordered and sure. The season for sending trials, the season for removing trials, and one continued stream of love is running through all. Blessed God! give me grace like Israel to believe that the Lord is looking upon my afflictions, and like them in token of submission and thankfulness to bow the head and worship.

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

Exo 4:31 And the people believed: and when they heard that the LORD had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped.

Ver. 31. They bowed their heads. ] An ordinary gesture among the Jews then: as at this day, the reverence they show is in standing up, and the gesture of adoration in the bowing forward of their bodies: for, kneeling they use none, neither stir they their bonnets in their synagogues to any man, but remain still covered. a

a Spec. Europ.

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