Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 6:1
Then the LORD said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh: for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land.
Exo 6:1 . Jehovah’s reply. He calms Moses with the assurance that he will now shortly see what will happen to the Pharaoh: he will soon not merely be willing to let the Israelites go, but will be eager to drive or thrust them (Exo 11:1, Exo 12:39) from his land.
by a strong hand ] compelled by the strong hand of Jehovah; cf. Exo 3:19.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Exo 6:1
Now shalt thou see what I will do.
Gods reply to the prayer of a disappointed worker
I. This reply to the prayer of Moses intimated that God would bring the true result of his mission more thoroughly within the cognizance of his senses. And the Lord said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh.
1. The mission had hitherto been a great tax upon the faith of Moses. The first repulse made him cry out for the visible and the tangible.
2. Now the mission is lowered to the sensuous vision of Moses.
II. This reply to the prayer of Moses vindicated his conduct against the recent insinuations and reproach of the Israelites. Men often take a wrong view of our conduct. God always takes the right view. He knows when His servants are doing what He tells them. He sends them messages of approval for so doing. This vindication–
1. Would reassure Moses in his work.
2. Would clear his conscience from all condemnation.
3. Would enable him to interpret his apparent failure.
III. This reply to the prayer of Moses indicated how thoroughly the work announced by God should be accomplished. For with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land.
1. This shows how wicked men are, under the providence of God, brought to do that which they had once resolutely refused. The sinner knoweth not the future, or he would act with greater wisdom in the present.
2. God makes these revelations in response to prayer, that He may reanimate the dispirited worker.
IV. In reply to the prayer of Moses, God vouchsafes a new and sublime revelation of his character.
1. A sublime revelation of His name.
2. A comforting reference to His covenant.
3. A pathetic reference to the sorrow of Israel.
Lessons:
1. That God speaks to disappointed souls in prayer.
2. That the Divine communings with a disappointed soul have an uplifting tendency.
3. That God deals compassionately with the weakness of Christian workers. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Gods long restrained wrath
When the ice on the great American rivers is broken up, it is sometimes obstructed in its course towards the sea by a log of wood, or something else, that arrests it. But then, as block after block of ice accumulates, the waters above increase in volume and weight, till their force, with mighty crash, sweeps away all the mass. And so the wrath of God, though long restrained by His love and mercy, sweeps away the incorrigible sinner to perdition. (H. R. Burton.)
Conditions of successful work for God
1. Faith in God, and honest conviction that God will do as He says He will.
2. Courage to ,do what faith declares. God doesnt use cowards or faint-hearted men to do much for Him. He told Joshua to be of good courage.
3. Perseverance. Keep right on in the place God gives you to work for Him. Many men fail right on the eve of battle. The best silver mine in England was worked for a long time by a man who became discouraged just before it yielded the richest ingots of choicest silver, and he sold out for a song and lost a princely fortune. Keep at it. Get others to help, and work and plod and win success.
4. Enthusiasm is a valuable element, and one that most men need. Too many are afraid of enthusiasm, but all of us need to put more fire and feeling in what we do for the Lord. (D. L. Moody.)
The judgments of God upon wicked men
I. That God sends severe judgements on men who reject His commands. Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh.
1. Notwithstanding his kingship.
2. Notwithstanding his obstinacy.
3. Notwithstanding his despotism.
II. That these judgments are often witnessed by Christian people. Now shalt thou see.
1. They are seen clearly.
2. Retributively.
3. Solemnly. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Gods everlasting shalls
It is a great thing to get hold of one of Gods everlasting shalls. For when God says a thing shall be done, who shall hinder? When God says shall, you may be sure that He is stirring up His strength and making bare His mighty arm, to do mighty and terrible things in righteousness. Just read through this chapter, and note how Jehovah asserts Himself–I am the Lord; I have remembered My covenant; I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt; I will rid you of their bondage; I will redeem you with a stretched out arm; I will take you to Me for a people; I will bring you into the land concerning which I did swear to give it to Abraham, and I will give it to you; I am the Lord. All this is very refreshing and encouraging to me. It must have been so to Moses, as he stood there and listened to these strong and blessed words. And so I learn from such words this lesson: when I am discouraged or cast down either about my own salvation, or about the work of the Lord–to turn to the blessed Scriptures and search through the pages, and read over and over again the strong, sure words of God. They sound like bugle-blasts to me, calling me to faith and service. So may the strong words of God reassure any fainting heart! Be sure that He will not be untrue to even the least of the promises He has made to you; but will fulfil them all most gloriously. These promises are like the cakes baked for Elijah, in the strength of which he went for forty days. Only we may eat them fresh every day if we are so disposed. (G. F. Pentecost, D. D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER VI
God encourages Moses, and promises to show wonders upon Pharaoh,
and to bring out his people with a strong hand, 1.
He confirms this promise by his essential name JEHOVAH, 2, 3;
by the covenant he had made with their fathers, 4, 5.
Sends Moses with a fresh message to the Hebrews, full of the most
gracious promises, and confirms the whole by appealing to the name
in which his unchangeable existence is implied, 6-8.
Moses delivers the message to the Israelites, but through anguish
of spirit they do not believe, 9.
He receives a new commission to go to Pharaoh, 10, 11.
He excuses himself on account of his unreadiness of speech, 12.
The Lord gives him and Aaron a charge both to Pharaoh and to the
children of Israel, 13.
The genealogy of Reuben, 14;
of Simeon, 15;
of Levi, from whom descended Gershon, Kohath, and Merari, 16.
The sons of Gershon, 17;
of Kohath, 15;
of Merari, 19.
The marriage of Amram and Jochebed, 20.
The sons of Izhar and Uzziel, the brothers of Amram, 21, 22.
Marriage of Aaron and Elisheba, and the birth of their sons,
Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar, 23.
The sons of Korah, the nephew of Aaron, 24.
The marriage of Eleazar to one of the daughters of Putiel, and
the birth of Phinehas, 25.
These genealogical accounts introduced for the sake of showing the
line of descent of Moses and Aaron, 26, 27.
A recapitulation of the commission delivered to Moses and Aaron, 29,
and a repetition of the excuse formerly made by Moses, 30.
NOTES ON CHAP. VI
Verse 1. With a strong hand] yad chazakah, the same verb which we translate to harden; See Clarke on Ex 4:21. The strong hand here means sovereign power, suddenly and forcibly applied. God purposed to manifest his sovereign power in the sight of Pharaoh and the Egyptians; in consequence of which Pharaoh would manifest his power and authority as sovereign of Egypt, in dismissing and thrusting out the people. See Ex 12:31-33.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
With a strong hand; being compelled to do so by my powerful and terrible works.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
1. the Lord said unto MosesTheLord, who is long-suffering and indulgent to the errors andinfirmities of His people, made allowance for the mortification ofMoses as the result of this first interview and cheered him with theassurance of a speedy and successful termination to his embassy.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Then the Lord said unto Moses,…. In answer to the questions put to him, and the expostulations made with him:
now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh: in inflicting punishments on him: for with a strong hand shall he let them go; being forced to it by the mighty hand of God upon him; and it is by some rendered, “because of a strong hand” s; so Jarchi; for this is not to be understood of the hand of Pharaoh, but of the hand of God:
and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land: not only be willing that they should go, but be urgent upon them to be gone,
Ex 12:33.
s “propter manum validam”; so some in Drusius.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Equipment of Moses and Aaron as Messengers of Jehovah. – Exo 6:1. In reply to the complaining inquiry of Moses, Jehovah promised him the deliverance of Israel by a strong hand (cf. Exo 3:19), by which Pharaoh would be compelled to let Israel go, and even to drive them out of his land. Moses did not receive any direct answer to the question, “Why hast Thou so evil-entreated this people?” He was to gather this first of all from his own experience as the leader of Israel. For the words were strictly applicable here: “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter” (Joh 13:7). If, even after the miraculous deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt and their glorious march through the desert, in which they had received so many proofs of the omnipotence and mercy of their God, they repeatedly rebelled against the guidance of God, and were not content with the manna provided by the Lord, but lusted after the fishes, leeks, and onions of Egypt (Num 11); it is certain that in such a state of mind as this, they would never have been willing to leave Egypt and enter into a covenant with Jehovah, without a very great increase in the oppression they endured in Egypt. – The brief but comprehensive promise was still further explained by the Lord (Exo 6:2-9), and Moses was instructed and authorized to carry out the divine purposes in concert with Aaron (Exo 6:10-13, Exo 6:28-30; Exo 7:1-6). The genealogy of the two messengers is then introduced into the midst of these instructions (Exo 6:14-27); and the age of Moses is given at the close (Exo 7:7). This section does not contain a different account of the calling of Moses, taken from some other source than the previous one; it rather presupposes Exo 3-5, and completes the account commenced in Exo 3 of the equipment of Moses and Aaron as the executors of the divine will with regard to Pharaoh and Israel. For the fact that the first visit paid by Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh was simply intended to bring out the attitude of Pharaoh towards the purposes of Jehovah, and to show the necessity for the great judgments of God, is distinctly expressed in the words, “Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh.” But before these judgments commenced, Jehovah announced to Moses (Exo 6:2), and through him to the people, that henceforth He would manifest Himself to them in a much more glorious manner than to the patriarchs, namely, as Jehovah; whereas to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He had only appeared as El Shaddai. The words, “By My name Jehovah was I now known to them,” do not mean, however, that the patriarchs were altogether ignorant of the name Jehovah. This is obvious from the significant use of that name, which was not an unmeaning sound, but a real expression of the divine nature, and still more from the unmistakeable connection between the explanation given by God here and Gen 17:1. When the establishment of the covenant commenced, as described in Gen 15, with the institution of the covenant sign of circumcision and the promise of the birth of Isaac, Jehovah said to Abram, “I am El Shaddai, God Almighty,” and from that time forward manifested Himself to Abram and his wife as the Almighty, in the birth of Isaac, which took place apart altogether from the powers of nature, and also in the preservation, guidance, and multiplication of his seed. It was in His attribute as El Shaddai that God had revealed His nature to the patriarchs; but now He was about to reveal Himself to Israel as Jehovah, as the absolute Being working with unbounded freedom in the performance of His promises. For not only had He established His covenant with the fathers (Exo 6:4), but He had also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, and remembered His covenant (Exo 6:5; – , not only – but also). The divine promise not only commences in Exo 6:2, but concludes at Exo 6:8, with the emphatic expression, “ I Jehovah,” to show that the work of Israel’s redemption resided in the power of the name Jehovah. In Exo 6:4 the covenant promises of Gen 17:7-8; Gen 26:3; Gen 35:11-12, are all brought together; and in Exo 6:5 we have a repetition of Exo 2:24, with the emphatically repeated ( I). On the ground of the erection of His covenant on the one hand, and, what was irreconcilable with that covenant, the bondage of Israel on the other, Jehovah was not about to redeem Israel from its sufferings and make it His own nation. This assurance, which God would carry out by the manifestation of His nature as expressed in the name Jehovah, contained three distinct elements: ( a) the deliverance of Israel from the bondage of Egypt, which, because so utterly different from all outward appearances, is described in three parallel clauses: bringing them out from under the burdens of the Egyptians; saving them from their bondage; and redeeming them with a stretched-out arm and with great judgments; – ( b) the adoption of Israel as the nation of God; – ( c) the guidance of Israel into the land promised to the fathers (Exo 6:6-8). , a stretched-out arm, is most appropriately connected with , great judgments; for God raises, stretches out His arm, when He proceeds in judgment to smite the rebellious. These expressions repeat with greater emphasis the “strong hand” of Exo 6:1, and are frequently connected with it in the rhetorical language of Deuteronomy (e.g., Deu 4:34; Deu 5:15; Deu 7:19). The “great judgments” were the plagues, the judgments of God, by which Pharaoh was to be compelled to let Israel go.
Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament
| The Promise of Deliverance. | B. C. 1491. |
1 Then the LORD said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh: for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land. 2 And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the LORD: 3 And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them. 4 And I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. 5 And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant. 6 Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments: 7 And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the LORD your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. 8 And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage: I am the LORD. 9 And Moses spake so unto the children of Israel: but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.
Here, I. God silences Moses’s complaints with the assurance of success in this negotiation, repeating the promise made him in ch. iii. 20, After that, he will let you go. When Moses was at his wit’s end, wishing he had staid in Midian, rather than have come to Egypt to make bad worse–when he was quite at a loss what to do–Then the Lord said unto Moses, for the quieting of his mind, “Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh (v. 1); now that the affair has come to a crisis, things are as bad as they can be, Pharaoh is in the height of pride and Israel in the depth of misery, now is my time to appear.” See Ps. xii. 5, Now will I arise. Note, Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity of helping and saving. Moses had been expecting what God would do; but now he shall see what he will do, shall see his day at length, Job xxiv. 1. Moses had been trying what he could do, and could effect nothing. “Well,” says God, “now thou shalt see what I will do; let me alone to deal with this proud man,” Job 40:12; Job 40:13. Note, Then the deliverance of God’s church will be accomplished, when God takes the work into his own hands. With a strong hand, that is, being forced to it by a strong hand, he shall let them go. Note, As some are brought to their duty by the strong hand of God’s grace, who are made willing in the day of his power, so others by the strong hand of his justice, breaking those that would not bend.
II. He gives him further instructions, that both he and the people of Israel might be encouraged to hope for a glorious issue of this affair. Take comfort,
1. From God’s name, Jehovah, Exo 6:2; Exo 6:3. He begins with this, I am Jehovah, the same with, I am that I am, the fountain of being, and blessedness, and infinite perfection. The patriarchs knew this name, but they did not know him in this matter by that which this name signifies. God would now be known by his name Jehovah, that is, (1.) A God performing what he had promised, and so inspiring confidence in his promises. (2.) A God perfecting what he had begun, and finishing his own work. In the history of the creation, God is never called Jehovah till the heavens and the earth were finished, Gen. ii. 4. When the salvation of the saints is completed in eternal life, then he will be known by his name Jehovah (Rev. xxii. 13); in the mean time they shall find him, for their strength and support, El-shaddai, a God all-sufficient, a God that is enough and will be so, Mic. vii. 20.
2. From his covenant: I have established my covenant, v. 4. Note, The covenants God makes he establishes; they are made as firm as the power and truth of God can make them. We may venture our all upon this bottom.
3. From his compassions (v. 5): I have heard the groaning of the children of Israel; he means their groaning on occasion of the late hardships put upon them. Note, God take notice of the increase of his people’s calamities, and observes how their enemies grow upon them.
4. From his present resolutions, v. 6-8. Here is line upon line, to assure them that they should be brought triumphantly out of Egypt (v. 6), and should be put in possession of the land of Canaan (v. 8): I will bring you out. I will rid you. I will redeem you. I will bring you into the land of Canaan, and I will give it to you. Let man take the shame of his unbelief, which needs such repetitions; and let God have the glory of his condescending grace, which gives us such repeated assurances for our satisfaction.
5. From his gracious intentions in all these, which were great, and worthy of him, v. 7. (1.) He intended their happiness: I will take you to me for a people, a peculiar people, and I will be to you a God; more than this we need not ask, we cannot have, to make us happy. (2.) He intended his own glory: You shall know that I am the Lord. God will attain his own ends, nor shall we come short of them if we make them our chief end too. Now, one would think, these good words, and comfortable words, should have revived the drooping Israelites, and cause them to forget their misery; but, on the contrary, their miseries made them regardless of God’s promises (v. 9): They harkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit. That is, [1.] They were so taken up with their troubles that they did not heed him. [2.] They were so cast down with their late disappointment that they did not believe him. [3.] They had such a dread of Pharaoh’s power and wrath that they durst not themselves move in the least towards their deliverance. Note, First, Disconsolate spirits often put from them the comforts they are entitled to, and stand in their own light. See Isa. xxviii. 12. Secondly, Strong passions oppose strong consolations. By indulging ourselves in discontent and fretfulness, we deprive ourselves of the comfort we might have both from God’s word and from his providence, and must thank ourselves if we go comfortless.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
EXODUS – CHAPTER SIX
Verses 1-8:
Moses complained that God had delayed His redemption of Israel, and hinted that God was “slack concerning His promise” (see 2Pe 3:9). By using the word “now,” God informs Moses that there would be no delay; He would start to work at once to accomplish Israel’s deliverance.
“A strong hand” refers to God’s hand, not Pharaoh’s.
“Drive them out” denotes the urgency with which the Egyptians would send Israel from their land, in order to be rid of them.
Verses 2-5 are addressed particularly to Moses, confirming God’s promise to deliver in Israel. Verses 6-8 are to the people of Israel.
God’s Assurance to Moses is based upon the faithfulness and power of His Name. God identified Himself to Abraham as “God Almighty,” EI-Shaddai, the All-Nourishing One, Ge 17:1. But He also identified Himself to Abraham as Jehovah Elohim (Ge 15:7) before identifying Himself as El-Shaddai. That Abraham knew God as Jehovah is also evident in Ge 22:14, where he named the site of Isaac’s sacrifice as “Jehovah-Jireh,” or “Jehovah will provide.”
Jacob knew God as Jehovah-Elohim, Ge 28:13, at Bethel.
Moses addressed God as Jehovah, Ex 4:1, at the burning bush.
The fact that God told Moses to tell the elders of Israel that “I AM” (literally, Jehovah) was the One commissioning him affirms the antiquity of the name “Jehovah.”
God does not contradict Himself. The true sense of verse 3 appears to be that the patriarchs were aware of the Name Jehovah, but did not understand the true meaning of the Name.
Here, Jehovah reaffirms the Covenant made with Abraham, expands it, and applies it to the nation Israel. The people who were then complaining of their lot in Egypt were to be delivered from their bondage, and were to be brought into the Land Jehovah had promised to Abraham and his seed.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
1. Then the Lord said unto Moses. Moses was indeed unworthy of receiving so kind and gentle a reply from God; but the Father of all goodness of His infinite mercy pardoned both the sins of Moses and of the people, that He might effect the deliverance which he had determined. Yet He adduces nothing new, but repeats and confirms His former declaration, that Pharaoh would not obey until forcibly compelled to do so. The expression, “thou shalt see,” is a tacit reproof of his immoderate impatience, in not waiting for the result of the promise. The reason is then added why God is unwilling that His people should be spontaneously dismissed by the tyrant, viz., because He wished the work of their liberation to be conspicuous. We must remark the strength of the words “drive them out;” as if He had said, that when Pharaoh had been subdued, and routed in the contest, he would not only consent, but would consider it a great blessing, for the people to depart as quickly as possible. The sum is, that he, who today refuses to let you depart, will not only set you free, but will even expel you from his kingdom.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
ISRAELS BONDAGE. MOSES AND THE EXODUS
Exo 1:1 to Exo 15:21.
DR. J. M. Grays five rules for Bible reading: Read the Book, Read the Book Continuously, Read the Book Repeatedly, Read the Book Independently, Read the Book Prayerfully, are all excellent; but the one upon which I would lay emphasis in this study of Exodus is the second of those rules, or, Read the Book Continuously. It is doubtful if there is any Book in the Bible which comes so nearly containing an outline, at least, of all revelation, as does the Book of Exodus. There is scarcely a doctrine in the New Testament, or a truth in the Old, which may not be traced in fair delineation in these forty chapters.
God speaks in this Book out of the burning bush. Sin, with its baneful effects, has a prominent place in its pages; and Salvation, for all them that trust in Him, with judgment for their opposers, is a conspicuous doctrine in this Old Testament document. God, Sin, Salvation, and Judgmentthese are great words! The Book that reveals each of them in fair outline is a great Book indeed, and its study will well repay the man of serious mind.
Exodus is a Book of bold outlines also! Its author, like a certain school of modern painters, draws his picture quickly and with but few strokes, and yet the product of his work approaches perfection. How much of time and history is put into these three verses:
And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already. And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. And the Children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them (Exo 1:5-7).
These three verses contain 215 years of time, and all the events that crowded into that period would, if they were recorded, fill volumes without end. And, while there are instances of delineation in detail in the Book of Exodus, the greater part of the volume is given to the bolder outlines which sweep much history into single sentences.
In looking into these fifteen chapters, I have been engaged with the question of such arrangement as would best meet the demands of memory, and thereby make the lesson of this hour a permanent article in our mental furniture. Possibly, to do that, we must seize upon a few of the greater subjects that characterize these chapters, and so phrase them as to provide mental promontories from which to survey the field of our present study. Surely, The Bondage of Israel, The Rise of Moses, and the Exodus from Egypt, are such fundamentals.
THE BONDAGE OF ISRAEL.
The bondage of Israel, like her growth, requires but a few sentences for its expression.
Now, there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the Children of Israel are more and mightier than we; Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pit horn and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the Children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the Children of Israel to serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour (Exo 1:8-22).
There are several features in Egypts conduct in effecting the bondage of Israel which characterize the conduct of all imperial nations.
The bondage began with injustice. Israel was in Egypt by invitation. When they came, Pharaoh welcomed them, and set apart for their use the fat of the land. The record is,
Joseph placed his father and his brethren, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Raamses, as Pharaoh had commanded (Gen 47:11).
There they flourished until a king arose which knew not Joseph. Then a tax was laid upon them; eventually taskmasters were set over them, and those who came in response to Pharaohs invitation, Come unto me and I will give you the good of the, land of Egypt, and ye shall eat of the fat of the land, were compelled by his successors to take the place of slaves. It seems as difficult for a nation as it is for an individual to refrain from the abuse of power. A writer says, Revolution is caused by seeking to substitute expediency for justice, and that is exactly what the King of Egypt and his confederates attempted in the instance of these Israelites. It would seem that the result of that endeavor ought to be a lesson to the times in which we live, and to the nations entrusted with power. Injustice toward a supposedly weaker people is one of those offences against God which do not go unpunished, and its very practice always provokes a rebellion which converts a profitable people into powerful enemies.
It ought never to be forgotten either that injustice easily leads to oppression. We may suppose the tax at first imposed upon this people was comparatively slight, and honorable Egyptians found for it a satisfactory excuse, hardly expecting that the time would ever come when the Israelites should be regarded chattel-slaves. But he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. It is doubtful if there is any wrong in mans moral relations which blinds him so quickly and so effectually as the exercise of power against weakness.
Joseph Parker, in speaking of the combat between Moses and the Egyptian, says, Every honorable-minded man is a trustee of social justice and common fair play. We have nothing to do with the petty quarrels that fret society, but we certainly have to do with every controversysocial, imperial, or internationalwhich violates human right and impairs the claims of Divine honor. We must all fight for the right. We feel safer by so much if we know there are amongst us men who will not be silent in the presence of wrong, and will lift up a testimony in the name of righteousness, though there be none to cheer them with one word of encouragement.
It is only a step from enslaving to slaughter. That step was speedily taken, for Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river (Exo 1:22). Unquestionably there is a two-fold thought in this fact. Primarily this, whom the tyrant cannot control to his profit, he will slay to his pleasure; and then, in its deeper and more spiritual significance, it is Satans effort to bring an end to the people of God. The same serpent that effected the downfall of Adam and Eve whispered into Cains ear, Murder Abel; and into the ears of the Patriarchs, Put Joseph out of the way; and to Herod, Throttle all the male children of the land; and to the Pharisee and Roman soldier, Crucify Jesus of Nazareth. It remains for us of more modern times to learn that the slaughter of the weak may be accomplished in other ways than by the knife, the Nile, or the Cross. It was no worse to send a sword against a feeble people, than, for the sake of filthy lucre, to plant among them the accursed saloon. Benjamin Harrison, in a notable address before the Ecumenical Missionary Conference held in the City of New York years ago, said, The men who, like Paul, have gone to heathen lands with the message, We seek not yours but you, have been hindered by those who, coming after, have reversed the message. Rum and other corrupting agencies come in with our boasted civilization, and the feeble races wither before the breath of the white mans vices.
Egypt sought to take away from Israel the physical life which Egypt feared; but God has forewarned us against a greater enemy when He said, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. * * Fear Him, which after He hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him. If in this hour of almost universal disturbance the sword cannot be sheathed, let us praise God that our Congress and Senate have removed the saloona slaughter-house from the midst of our soldiers, and our amended Constitution has swept it from the land.
THE RISE OF MOSES.
I do not know whether you have ever been impressed in studying this Book of Exodus with what is so evidently a Divine ordering of events. It is when the slaughter is on that we expect the Saviour to come. And that God who sits beside the dying sparrow never overlooks the affliction of His people. When an edict goes forth against them, then it is that He brings their deliverer to the birth; hence we read, And there went a man of the house of Levi and took to wife a daughter of the house of Levi, and the woman conceived and bare a son (Exo 2:1-2),
That is Moses; that is Gods man! It is no chance element that brings him to the kingdom at such a time as this. It is no mere happening that he is bred in Pharaohs house, and instructed by Jochebed. It is no accident that he is taught in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. It is all in perfect consequence of the fact that God is looking upon the Children of Israel, and is having respect unto them.
Against Pharaohs injustice He sets Moses keen sense of right. When Moses sees an Egyptian slay an oppressed Israelite, he cannot withhold his hand. And, when after forty years in the wilderness he comes back to behold afresh the affliction of his people, he chooses to suffer with them rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. God never does a better thing for a nation than when He raises up in it such a man. We have heard a great deal of Socrates wisdom, but it is not in the science of philosophy alone that that ancient shines; for when Athens was governed by thirty tyrants, who one day summoned him to the Senate House, and ordered him to go with others named to seize Leon, a man of rank and fortune, whose life was to be sacrificed that these rulers might enjoy his estate, the great philosopher flatly refused, saying, I will not willingly assist in an unjust act. Thereupon Chericles sharply asked, Dost thou think, Socrates, to talk in this high tone and not to suffer? Far from it, replied the philosopher, I expect to suffer a thousand ills, but none so great as to do unjustly. That day Socrates was a statesman of the very sort that would have saved Athens had his ideas of righteousness obtained.
Against Pharaohs oppression He sets Moses Divine appointment. There were many times when Moses was tempted to falter, but Gods commission constrained his service. When Moses said, Who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh? God answered, Surely I will be with thee. When Moses feared his own people who would not believe in his commission, God answered, Thus shalt thou say unto the Children of Israel, I AM hath sent you. When Moses feared that the Israelites would doubt his Divine appointment, God turned the rod in his hand into a worker of wonders. And, when Moses excused himself on the ground of no eloquence, God replied, Go, and I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what thou shalt say. With any man, a conviction of Divine appointment is a power, but for him who would be a saviour of his fellows, it is an absolute essential.
Pastor Stalker, speaking to the subject of a Divine call to the service of soul-winning, said, Enthusiasm for humanity is a noble passion and sheds a beautiful glow over the first efforts of an unselfish life, but it is hardly stern enough for the uses of the world. There come hours of despair when men seem hardly worth our devotion. * * Worse still is the sickening consciousness that we have but little to give; perhaps we have mistaken our vocation; it is a world out of joint, but were we born to put it right? This is where a sterner motive is needed than love for men. Our retreating zeal requires to be rallied by the command of God. It is His work; these souls are His; He has committed them to our care, and at the judgment-seat He will demand an account of them. All Prophets and Apostles who have dealt with men for God have been driven on by this impulse which has recovered them in hours of weakness and enabled them to face the opposition of the world. * * This command came to Moses in the wilderness and drove him into public life in spite of strong resistance; and it bore him through the unparalleled trials of his subsequent career. How many times he would have surrendered the battle and left his fellows to suffer under Pharaohs heels, but for the sound of that voice which Joan of Arc heard, saying to him as it said to her, Go on! Go on!
Against Pharaohs slaughter God set up Moses as a Saviour. History has recorded the salvation of his people to many a man, who, either by his counsels in the time of peace or his valor in the time of war, has brought abiding victory. But where in annals, secular or sacred, can you find a philosopher who had such grave difficulties to deal with as Moses met in lifting his people from chattel slaves to a ruling nation? And where so many enemies to be fought as Moses faced in his journey from the place of the Pyramids to Pisgahs Heights?
Titus Flaminius freed the Grecians from the bondage with which they had long been oppressed. When the herald proclaimed the Articles of Peace, and the Greeks understood perfectly what Flaminius had accomplished for them, they cried out for joy, A Saviour! a Saviour! till the Heavens rang with their acclamations.
But Moses was worthy of greater honor because his was a more difficult deed. I dont know, but I suppose one reason why Moses name is coupled with that of the Lamb in the Oratorio of the Heavens, is because he saved Israel out of a bondage which was a mighty symbol of Satans power, and led them by a journey, which is the best type of the pilgrims wanderings in this world, and brought them at last to the borders of Canaan, which has always been regarded as representative of the rest that remaineth for the people of God.
THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT
involves some items of the deepest interest.
The ten plagues prepare for it. The river is turned into blood; frogs literally cover the land; the dust is changed to lice; flies swarm until all the houses are filled; the beasts are smitten with murrain; boils and blains, hail, locusts and darkness do their worst, and the death of the first-born furnishes the climax of Egyptian affliction, and compels the haughty Pharaoh to bow in humility and grief before the will of the Most High God (chaps. 7-12).
There is one feature of these plagues that ought never to be forgotten. Without exception, they spake in thunder tones against Egyptian idolatry. The Nile River had long been an object of their adoration. In a long poem dedicated to the Nile, these lines are found:
Oh, Nile, hymns are sung to thee on the harp,
Offerings are made to thee: oxen are slain to thee;
Great festivals are kept for thee;
Fowls are sacrificed to thee.
But when the waters of that river were turned to blood, the Egyptians supposed Typhon, the God of Evil, with whom blood had always been associated, had conquered over their bountiful and beautiful Osiristhe name under which the Nile was worshiped.
The second plague was no less a stroke at their hope of a resurrection, for a frog had long symbolized to them the subject of life coming out of death. The soil also they had worshiped, and now to see the dust of it turned suddenly into living pests, was to suffer under the very power from which they had hoped to receive greatest success. The flies that came in clouds were not all of one kind, but their countless myriads, according to the Hebrew word used, included winged pests of every sort, even the scarabaeus, or sacred beetle. Heretofore, it had been to them the emblem of the creative principle; but now God makes it the instrument of destruction instead. When the murrain came upon the beasts, the sacred cow and the sacred ox-Apis were humbled. And ~when the ashes from the furnace smote the skin of the Egyptians, they could not forget that they had often sprinkled ashes toward Heaven, believing that thus to throw the ashes of their sacrifices into the wind would be to avert evil from every part of the land whither they were blown. Geikie says that the seventh plague brought these devout worshipers of false gods to see that the waters, the earth and the air, the growth of the fields, the cattle, and even their own persons, all under the care of a host of divinities, were yet in succession smitten by a power against which these protectors were impotent. When the clouds of locusts had devoured the land, there remained another stroke to their idolatry more severe still, and that was to see the Sun, the supreme god of Egypt, veil his face and leave his worshipers in total darkness. It is no wonder that Pharaoh then called to Moses and said, Go ye, serve the Lord; but it is an amazing thing that even yet his greed of gain goads him on to claim their flocks and their herds as an indemnity against the exodus of the people. There remained nothing, therefore, for God to do but lift His hand again, and lo, death succeeded darkness, and Pharaoh himself became the subject of suffering, and the greatest idol of the nation was humbled to the dust, for the king was the supreme object of worship.
He is a foolish man who sets himself up to oppose the Almighty God. And that is a foolish people who think to afflict Gods faithful ones without feeling the mighty hand of that Father who never forgets His own.
One day I was talking with a woman whose husband formerly followed the habit of gambling. By this means he had amassed considerable wealth, and when she was converted and desired to unite with the church, he employed every power to prevent it, and even denied her the privilege of church attendance. One morning he awoke to find that he was a defeated man; his money had fled in the night, and in the humiliation of his losses, he begged his wifes pardon for ever having opposed her spirit of devotion. Since that time, though living in comparative poverty, she has been privileged to serve God as she pleased; and, as she said to me, finds in that service a daily joy such as she at one time feared she would never feel again. Gods plagues are always preparing the way for an exodus on the part of Gods oppressed.
The Passover interpreted this exodus. That greatest of all Jewish feasts stands as a memorial of Israels flight from Egypt as a symbol of Gods salvation for His own, and as an illustration of the saving power of the Blood of the Lamb.
The opponents of the exodus perished. Our study concludes with Israels Song of Deliverance, beginning, The Lord is my strength and song, and He has become my salvation, and concluding in the words of Miriam, Sing ye to the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea. See Exo 15:1-21. Such will ever be the end of those who oppress Gods people and oppose the Divine will.
When one studies the symbolism in all of this, and sees how Israel typifies Gods present-day people, and Moses, their deliverer, Jesus our Saviour, and defeated Pharaoh, the enemy of our souls, destined to be overthrown, he feels like joining in the same song of deliverance, changing the words only so far as to ascribe the greater praise to Him who gave His life a deliverance for all men; and with James Montgomery sing:
Hail to the Lords Anointed
Great Davids greater Son
Who, in the time appointed,
His reign on earth begun.
He comes to break oppression,
To set the captive free,
To take away transgression,
And rule in equity.
He comes, with succor speedy,
To those who suffer wrong;
To help the poor and needy,
And bid the weak be strong;
To give them songs for sighing,
Their darkness turn to light,
Whose souls, condemned and dying.
Were precious in His sight.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
CRITICAL NOTES.
Exo. 6:1-4. Then the Lord] We can scarcely err in saying that this verse should go with chap 5; and, as furnishing the immediate answer of Jehovah to the complaint of Moses, it brings the narrative to a resting place. Exo. 6:2 begins a new section. 2 By my name Jehovah was I not known to them] We here come upon what appears to be a grave difficulty. It does not at once approve itself to our minds as consistent with fact to say that the fathers of the Hebrew people were not acquainted with the divine name Jehovah. It would seem from the sacred text itself that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not only knew this name, but were familiar with it, and even made special use of it on some occasions. For proofs of their acquaintance with it, see Gen. 12:8; Gen. 14:22; Gen. 15:8 (Lord God = Adonai Jehovah); Gen. 21:33; Gen. 24:3; Gen. 26:22; Gen. 27:27; Gen. 28:16;Gen. 29:18, etc. As an example of special use of it, Jehovah jireh (Gen. 22:14) at once comes to mind. Here is the difficulty. Where is the solution? Happily, it is near at hand. It may be found by simply giving to the statement before us its full value.
(1) The word name should be taken in full biblical significance, as denoting what is revealed by the namethe attributes of Him to when the name belongs in so far as those attributes are symbolised by the name; in fact the internal essence, as far as it is outwardly revealed and known as operative (Frst, under shm). In other words, we must pass from the sign to the thing signified (cf. Psa. 5:11; Pro. 18:10; with Psa. 48:10.) Apply this to the matter in hand, and we at once catch the idea that the meaning must be, not that the elder patriarchs did not know of such a name as Jehovah, but that God had not revealed himself to them in any considerable degree according to the import of that name. Now this naturally leads us to anticipate for the name Jehovah a very distinctive meaning; moreover, a meaning less fully verified to Gods people at one time than another. Let this be well observed.
(2) For the import of the name Jehovah we must refer to the Critical Notes on Exo. 3:14. To bring from that place to this the crowning idea of Fulfiller, let us ask whether this, after what has been said above, does not fully meet the present difficulty. Is it not most obviously true to say that, broadly speaking, God made himself known to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, rather as PROMISER than as FULFILLER. We say rather, purposely qualifying our language for a reason to be stated presently. [Under
(3)] Certainly, one of the most marked features of the Divine dealings with Israels progenitors is the lavish abundance and astounding magnitude of the premises made to them,made, but, for the time, most of them left UNFULFILLED. The land was promised (Exo. 13:14-15; Exo. 15:18-21) but the promise was not fulfilled; an innumerable seed was promised (Exo. 12:2; Exo. 13:16; Exo. 17:6), but this promise was unfulfilled, and for a time the first steps towards its realisation were tardy; and the blessing of all the families of the earth in the seed of those wanderers was promised (Exo. 12:3; Exo. 22:18), and this again we need not say had not even now been accomplished. Most true, therefore, it is, that God had not made himself known, as characteristically the Fulfiller, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: a truth now intimated with admirable fitness, when the land is just about to be given, and the seed has already swarmed from a family into a nation, and the bonds of that holy covenant are shortly to be entered into, by virtue of which the nations of the earth should at last be savingly blessed.
(3) We have only to add that the context here altogether confirms this solution of the difficulty. If we mistake not, it does so in a manner not a little remarkable. All must perceive how forcibly the main factthat the God of Abraham was now about to FULFIL as he had never done beforetells in favour of this exposition. We now advance to an argument in its support drawn from the syntax of the entire passage, which has, we presume to think, been most strangely neglected. In other words, the fitting in of the difficult statement to its contexts has received almost no attention whatever. And yet how strongly it calls for notice. (a) Note the foregoing words. I am Jehovah: AND I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob as God Almighty, but, etc. AND I appeared: what means this and? The Hebrew punctists have not hesitated to throw all their weight on the conjunction, having marked it as the strong waw consecutive w-r) and thus given us the hint to make the most of it, which, on the admitted principles of Hebrew Grammar, we are entitled to do. Availing ourselves of this hint, we may render thus: I am Jehovah: AND indeed, I used to appear (imperfect, incoming tense, here probably reiterative [cf. Driver 26]) unto Abraham, etc., as El shaddai, although, by my name (or, to the extent of my name) Jehovah, I did not make myself known to them. In point of fact the strong conjunction (it is either strong or superfluous!) has the effect that, so far from setting the names EL SHADDAI and JEHOVAH in opposition to each other, it actually makes the former a stepping-stone to the latter,makes the verification of that an anticipation of this. We may paraphrase the connection between them, something in this way: I am Jehovah, The Fulfiller; and, indeed, I did in a measure, make this manifest to your fathers, by again and again giving them proof of my power and of my goodness, thus fully bringing out and making good that other name of mine, El Shaddai, God Almighty, (or, as some [Girdlestone: O. T. Syn.] render) God All-Bountiful: although as Jehovah, The Fulfiller of my promises, I did not so familiarise them with my character, in that I suffered them to fall asleep with my great promises yet unfulfilled, (b) Now observe the words that follow. Moreover also (we gham, I set up my covenant with them, etc.,as if resuming the record of Jehovah anticipations,as if still keeping an eye to fulfilment. So, Exo. 6:4 :Moreover also I myself)true to the memory of my covenant, and resolved to fulfil itheard, etc. Wherefore say I am Jehovah (the Fulfiller) AND THEREFORE will have brought you (waw consecution again, though now, most fittingly, with the perfect [the complete] tense, in which promises and prophecies delight). And thus both preceding and succeeding context fully confirm the main statements of our solution; and, for our own part, we honestly think that not a shred of the original difficulty is left. Name is to be taken as signifying revealed character. The name Jehovah is to be regarded as emphasised: it had not at all adequately been verified, so far. Yet, as All-mighty and All-bountiful, God has given many tokens that He would ultimately shine forth as Jehovah (Yahweh) He will bring to pass, He will become all He has said. That purpose, He now renounces. I am Jehovah: the which ye shall know as your fathers never did.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Exo. 6:1-8
GODS REPLY TO THE PRAYER OF A DISAPPOINTED WORKER
It is evident that the first few verses of this chapter belong to the last chapter, being the response to the prayer, which Moses had uttered in reference to the augmented burdens of Israel. Moses had said, Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? Why is it that thou hast sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all. Then came the Divine reply. You are mistaken, Moses. The failure of a first attemptif failure you choose to call itis no proof that a second experiment will not succeed. At all events, it is your duty to follow out what your God says: It is My glory to see that what I have promised and predicted will come to pass. We are apt in all things to intrude on Gods province, thus losing force, instead of concentrating all our disposable energy within the province that God has assigned us. It is not ours to question for a moment that God will fulfil His promises; it is ours always and every where to fulfil the obligations that He has laid upon us. God says, that so far from Pharaoh succeeding, he will be glad to let these poor brickmakers and slaves go forth from his land. This was a most encouraging statement to Moses, and was given in sympathetic spirit.
I. This reply to the prayer of Moses intimated that God would bring the true result of his mission more thoroughly within the cognizance of his senses, And the Lord said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh.
1. The mission had hitherto been a great tax upon the faith of Moses. True, he had beheld the vision of the burning bush, but he had been unable to interpret its meaning. He had held communion with God, but no man hath seen God at any time. His was eminently a mission of faith. Reason would never have led him to it. Sense was utterly opposed to it. He had in youth seen the hosts of Pharaoh, he remembered their prowess, and would feel that it would be the extreme of folly to place himself in antagonism thereto, in so mad an enterprise. But God told him to go. Faith in God sustained him. Hence the mission commenced at its highest point, and was being prosecuted in truest motive. But the weak soul of man cannot work long in this high realm of service without tremor and wavering; he is liable to wander into the realm of sense. Such was the case with Moses. The first repulse made him cry out for the visible and the tangible. Hence the sphere of service was lowered. God does frequently adapt the work to the varying capacity of the workman. He sympathises with our weakness. He promises to let us see His dealings in reference to our mission. It is far better for man to work in the higher realm of service. The vision of faith is more ennobling. It is more refreshing. It gives a stronger power of endurance. It is better to trust the promise of God than to see prematurely Gods dealings with Pharaoh. The moral labour that taxes faith is beneficial to man eternally.
2. Now the mission is lowered to the sensuous vision of Moses. He was to see what God would do unto Pharaoh. Some men can work well in the region of the seen, but are impotent at moral service in the unseen realm. They ascend only to the mountain peaks of earth whither they can climb, they do not rise on the pinions of faith into the great world beyond, where the service is the most sublime. But sometimes the best of men lower their energies into the sphere of the sensuous, either through the imperfection of their energies, either in despair, or for rest from the constant tension of faith. God bears with their weakness. Let them return as soon as possible to the higher level of service.
II. This reply to the prayer of Moses vindicated his conduct against the recent insinuations and reproach of the Israelites. For with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land. Pharaoh had said that the design of Moses and Aaron in making their demand of freedom was to encourage the Israelites in idleness The Israelites said that Moses and Aaron had deluded them, and had been the means of their augmented burdens. God now tells Moses that he had done his duty, and that its ultimate issue would be the liberty desired. Men often take a wrong view of our conduct. God always takes the right view. He is infallible. He knows when His servants are doing what He tells them. He sends them messages of approval for so doing. This vindication:
(1.) It would reassure Moses in his work. His prayer indicates that his soul was growing weary in the work of Israels freedom. He was yielding to the sad influence of doubt and uncertainty as to the issue of things. The outworking of his past effort was discouraging to him. Hence this reply to his prayer would reassure him in his work God generally sends such answers to our prayer as shall strengthen us for His service. In the attitude of devotion we always get visions of future toils.
(2.) It would clear his conscience from all condemnation. This reply to his prayer would give him to see that he had done the Israelites no wrong, and that their reproaches were ungrateful. This conviction would chase away his sorrow. It would a source of strength to him in his labour. A peaceful conscience is the truest joy of a Christian worker.
(3.) It would enable him to interpret his apparent failure. Moses, hearing of the burdens of Israel subsequent to his appeal to Pharaoh, regarded his work as a failure. He would now view it under a new light, under a brightening aspect. God only can give to men the true interpretation of their service, and this He does in answer to their prayers.
III. This reply to the prayer of Moses indicated how thoroughly the work announced by God should be accomplished. For with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land.
1. This shows how wicked men are, under the providence of God, brought to do that which they had once resolutely refused. Pharaoh had told Moses and Aaron that he ignored their God, and that he would not give the Israelites their freedom. Yet the time will come when he will drive them forth into liberty. The sinner knoweth not the future, or he would act with greater wisdom in the present.
2. God makes these revelations in response to prayer that He may reanimate the dispirited worker. What a reviving effect this communication would have upon the soul of Moses; he would be immediately ready for new conflict with Pharaoh.
IV. In reply to the prayer of Moses, God vouchsafes a new and sublime revelation of His character. And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, but by the name of Jehovah was I not known to them, &c.
1. There was a sublime revelation of His name. Here the question occurs, was not this name known to Moses. There are two classes of commentators on this very text. Some say that the name of Jehovah was not known prior to the appearance of God in the burning bush. You answer that statement by referring to the vision that Abraham sawthe ram caught in the thicketwhen he called the place Jehovah-jireh, The Lord will provide. Well, then, if Abraham used the very name Jehovah, and if the word Jehovah occurs several times besides in the course of the previous chapters, how can it be said that this name was not known to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob? Those who hold the opinion that it was not literally known to them, say that, as Moses did not write Genesis till some 2000 years after the facts recorded in it, he used the name Jehovah because it was known to the Jews at the time he wrote, though it was not known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the years in which they lived. But this would seem to be irreconcileable with some passages where the name Jehovah must have been used, because it was given with reference to special circumstances to which the other names of God would not seem to be applicable. And besides, it would seem on this supposition that Moses did not write strictly and literally what was true, but wrote the past with a borrowed light from the present, which would not be the duty of a faithful historian. The other opinionand I think it is the just and only interpretationis, that the name Jehovah was known to Abraham; but that its pregnant meaning, preciousness in its application, and comfort, was SO little known, that, in comparison, it was not known at all; that is, God had not manifested all His glory as Jehovah to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as he would do to Moses, and to the children of Israel in after generations. Pharaoh had made a new and more terrible revelation of himself to Moses and to the Israelites, and therefore the Divine Being opened up to them in comfort the inner glories of His Name. Gods name is more potent than all the hosts of Pharaoh. That name is revealed to human souls, the most beautifully, in prayer.
2. There was also a comforting reference to His covenant. I have also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. God thus reminds Moses of His covenant, which should prevent all fear on his part as to the ultimate success of his work.
3. There was also a pathetic reference to the sorrow of Israel. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage. LESSONS:
1. That God speaks to disappointed souls in prayer.
2. That the Divine communings with a disappointed soul have an uplifting tendency.
3. That God deals compassionately with the weakness of Christian workers.
A TRUE PATTERN OF GOSPEL REDEMPTION. Exo. 6:4-8
I. That Gospel Redemption comes to the soul after a period of moral bondage and distress.
1. It finds the soul in a condition of moral bondage. Whom the Egyptians keep in bondage. The bondage is most severe. It is the bondage of sin. It has been long continued, through many years of our lives. It has been degrading. It has been fruitless to ourselves. We have all the time been working for another master, from whom we have received no good reward. The bondage seems almost hopeless to us. We have no token of moral liberty. Our thoughts, emotions, and energies are all in the slavery of sin. In this condition the Gospel of Christ finds the soul.
2. It finds the soul in a condition of anxious grief. And I have also heard the groanings of the children of Israel. The soul is awakened to a sense of the bondage and consequent degradation; and eagerly awaits the freedom of the Gospel. Its tears are those of repentance. Its cries are those for pardon. Its looks are toward the cross. In this condition the Gospel of redemption comes in all its mercy to the believing soul.
3. It is generally preceded by some Christian agency. Moses had been to the Israelites in their bondage, and had instrumentally awakened their desire for freedom. So the souls of men are often influenced by Christian agencies prior to their cry for the redemption of the cross. It is the aim of the Christian ministry to awaken within men the desire for moral freedom.
II. That Gospel Redemption comes to the soul by virtue of a Divine covenant and promise. And I have remembered my promise, Exo. 6:5.
1. God through Christ has made a covenant of salvation with all who trust in the atonement. There has been the covenant of works. That is no longer possible to man. By the works of the law there shall no flesh living be justified. We are under the covenant of grace. By grace are ye saved through faith in Christ Jesus. By virtue of this covenant all contrite and believing souls may find rest in, and pardon from, God. There is no other covenant that can confer these blessings.
(1) This covenant is unique.
(2) This covenant is merciful.
(3) This covenant is of long standing. There is none other like it. It is the hope of man. It was made with the oldest saints, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
III. That Gospel Redemption brings the soul into holy and responsible relationship to God. And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God, Exo. 6:7.
1. It constitutes the soul a Divine possession. It then belongs to God, its rightful owner. All its thoughts and affections are to be His. Thus the redemption of the Gospel brings back our moral manhood to God, brings us into sympathy with all that is divine and heavenly. It places the soul under the peculiar guardianship of the Infinite. God will then guard the soul. Aid it in its struggles. Open up its future. He will be its sun and shield. Oh! blessed redemption.
IV. That Gospel Redemption leads the faithful unto the inheritance of Canaan. To give them the land of Canaan. Thus what a change this redemption works, from slaves to freemen, from servitude to an inheritance. The redeemed are the inheritors of the universe. All things are yours.
REASONS FOR HUMAN REDEMPTION
I. The Burden of Man is a reason for human Redemption. The burdens of the Egyptians, Exo. 6:6. Sin is a burden. It presses heavily on man. No human hand can remove it. Only Christ can. He says, Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. His burden is light. The pain occasioned by mans burden of sin is a reason for its removal by Christ.
II. The Lordship of Christ is a reason for human Redemption. I am the Lord. Only the Supreme Ruler of the universe could achieve the redemption of man. He only could fulfil the violated law. He only could forgive the past neglect of it. He only could enable us to keep it in the future. Only the God of the soul can redeem it.
III. The Covenant of God is a reason for human Redemption. I have remembered my covenant. God desires the salvation of men. PromiseTypeSymbol. On Calvary the covenant was fully and eternally signed. The world was redeemed by price, only they are redeemed by power who believe in Christ.
DISCOURAGEMENT IN RELIGION PRODUCTIVE OF UNBELIEF IN THE PROMISES OF GOD
The school of experience is the only state of moral discipline in which a Christian can learn the nature of his warfare with the powers of darkness. When first convinced of spiritual captivity, he rises up to escape from it with an alacrity derived from much ignorance of the difficulties that await him in the road to heaven; not less than from a sense of peril by which he is surrounded. Engrossed by one idea, he overlooks the trials of his approaching conflict. The Israelites were anxious for deliverance. They were defenceless. It would be difficult to escape. The loss which God permitted threw them into despondency. There came an increase of burdens. They taunt Moses. He prays to God. A pattern of the Christian life.
I. The promise made by God to His afflicted children
1. He again declared His purpose of redeeming them from their captivity. Pharaoh upon his throne was mighty. Israel was feeble. God had pledged Himself for their deliverance. The ransom He was about to effect was to be attended with a manifestation of Almighty power the most unquestionable. They were not to go forth as fugitives, but as conquerors. Such an engagement has God, in spontaneous mercy, made with you. Are you seeking deliverance. It is promised.
2. The Most High declared that Israel should be adopted as His peculiar inheritance. Separated by customs, institutions, by temporal privileges, and spiritual distinctions, they were to become the family of Jehovah, and not to be reckoned amongst nations estranged from Him. A like declaration is made to all who wish to quit the state in which they are enslaved. Ye are a chosen generation, &c.
3. God also condescended to reiterate His promise of giving the possession of Canaan to Israel. Little would it have availed that the Israelites were to be redeemed from bondage, if the help had ended there. We should be ineffectually called from the death of sin, unless we are led on to eternal rest.
II. The unworthy manner in which these promises were received. It is comparatively easy to repose in God in the sunshine of peace. But when He comes in sorrow we cry out for fear. We refuse to walk any longer by faith. The word has declared, That the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion. Yet how often has God to remonstrate with us when He sees us sinking into doubt. Events appear to frustrate the promise. The burdens are increased. Satan taken advantage of this severe discipline. He endeavours to make us repine. If you would resist, rest not till ye have obtained practical acquaintance with God your Saviour, under the titles by which He revealed Himself to His ancient people.
(1) Knew him as El Shaddai, all sufficient to bless and save you with a present and everlasting salvation.
(2.) Knar Him at Jehovah, the glorious name by which He was revealed to Israel. He is the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever.(Buddicoms Christian Exodus).
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
THE JUDGMENTS OF GOD UPON WICKED MEN
Exo. 6:1.
I. That God sends severe judgments on men who reject His Commands. Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh:
1. Notwithstanding his kingship. The judgments of God are not averted by the exalted social position or great power of kings. The proud monarch of Egypt cannot exempt himself from the retributions of heaven. There are none to deliver him
2. Notwithstanding his obstinacy. Moral obstinacy cannot shield men from the judgments of God. He can subdue the man of iron will. Suffering has a great effect upon obstinate souls.
3. Notwithstanding his despotism. The despot must yield to the sceptre of God. He may defy the vast nation Israel, but now he is in conflict with One who will defeat his armies.
II. That these judgments are often witnessed by Christian people. Now shalt thou see.
1. They are seen clearly. These judgments are seen in all their terrible force. In all their meaning. The dead king and his drowned army are washed upon the banks of the great waters. Retribution is clearly visible in their ruin.
2. They are seen retributively. The overthrow of Pharaoh and his host was no more accident. It was not the outcome of Divine caprice. It was not designed merely to vindicate the prophecy of Moses. It was punitive.
3. They are seen solemnly. These judgments are sad. They awaken thought and moral reflection. We dare not smile at the overthrow of the tyrant. His destiny makes us weep.
The good Lord sometimes promiseth sight of His great works, when His servants scarce believe Him.
In granting them sight God reproves the unbelief of His servants.
Gods strong hand is doubly engaged to work deliverance for His Church.
God chooseth to force deliverance from tyrants, to make His work conspicuous.
There is a great difference between looking at things from a distance, and seeing them drawing close upon us, or actually beginning.
Exo. 6:2.
1. God speaking to man.
2. God speaking to man a condescension.
3. God speaking to man a judgment.
4. God speaking to man an instruction.
God usually joineth the promise of grace unto His people with that of force upon His enemies.
Gods promise of grace is plainly declared and revealed to His servants.
God useth to convey these promises of grace by a mediator to His people.
The highest promise of grace is that God will be Jehovah to His people.
Where God is Jehovah, all His promises are put into effect.
Exo. 6:3. It is not merely in the actings of God that He would cause the heart to find rest, but in Himselfin His name and character.
God joins one encouragement to another to help the weak in faith.
Gods appearances are designed to work faith in creatures.
Gods appearances have been gradual in manner and measure till now.
Fullest discoveries of God require the greatest faith, and aggravate the sin of unbelief.
Knowledge of Gods name is needful to make souls trust it.
Gods name:
1. Not a mere word.
2. Not an abstraction.
3. But a power.
4. A tower of strength.
5. A shield of protection.
6. The hope of the soul.
Exo. 6:4. Gods covenant to His people:
1. Stated.
2. Settled.
3. Kepr.
4. Happy.
5. Restful.
How much the Lord says of His covenant and His oath; and if you consider, there was something in this more suited to encourage hope and trust, than in any other ground for it He could have mentioned. When you are in distress, if you are told of a man who is kind and liberal, it gives you hope of relief. If you hear, moreover, that he has assisted many poor afflicted creatures exactly in your situation, your hopes are raised still more; and if, besides, you know he has promised help to all the needy who apply to him, that is better still; yet even that would not give you so much confidence as if you had it under his hand that he would help you, and you knew he had taken a solemn oath that he would give you all you stand in need of. He would then have bound himself, and his honour would be so engaged that he could not draw back. Now this is exactly what God had done to Israel; and by reminding Moses of it, He showed He did not mean one jot or tittle should pass from His covenant till all was fulfilled. And believers have the same security now. In His new covenant He has pledged Himself to those who have the faith of Abraham. In this covenant He has assured His people of pardon. (Anon.)
Exo. 6:5. God hears the groans of His people.
God remembers the cruelty of the oppressor.
God remembers the covenant of His grace.
Exo. 6:6. Gods appearance to His
Ministers is in order that He may make himself known to the Church.
Ministers must speak to the Church all that God reveals to them.
The main matter that must be re-revealed to the Church is that God is Jehovah.
Gods being Jehovah sets His Israel free from all Egyptian burdens.
The meaning of Jehovah is to rid the Church from bondage, temporal and eternal.
The redemption of Israel is Jehovahs work.
Exo. 6:7-8. Adoption of Israel to Himself is Jehovahs work next to redemption.
Souls are adopted when they are Gods, and God is theirs. Jehovah does all this that Israel may acknowledge his saving power.
Gods people:
1. Taken by God.
2. Knowing God.
3. Serving God.
4. Redeemed by God.
5. Happy in God.
6. Will live with God.
Gods oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is in order to successive generations.
Introduction into such signal privileges is a good step to the full blessing.
Jehovahs donation of the inheritance promised surely followeth this introduction.
I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a God. What follows is only one advantage among many, flowing from that blessed relation. The yoke of the oppressor shall be broken off your necks, for My people must not serve another master; freedom, protection, guidance, victory, wise laws, liberty to make known your requests to Me at all times, are among the many blessings of the people whom I take for My peculiar heritage; and then, I will be to you a God. This is better still; for in these words God gives Himself to them. His favours are precious, His gifts are valuable. He excels them all. Power, wisdom, patience, faithfulness, love infinite and everlasting, are all in Him; and those who have Him for their God, have all these for their portion. Well might David say, My soul shall make her boast in the Lord.
I will be to you a God.
1. Then my life should be devout.
2. Then my heart should be grateful.
3. Then my tongue shall be tuneful.
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY
REV. WM. ADAMSON
Divine Dependence! Exo. 6:1. Moses and Aaron had made an alliance with God; what, then, had they to fear? If God be for us, who can be against us? If the Lord had not been on their side. He was on their side. He had entered into covenant with them. Three hundred years ago, says history, about a million of people in Holland were fighting for freedom from the tyranny of Rome. William, the Prince of Orange, a man who feared God, was the champion of the righteous cause. In the heat of the struggle, one of his generals sent an urgent despatch to know if he had succeeded in forming an alliance with any foreign power such as France or England. The brave deliverers reply thrilled the heart of the general as he read it: You ask me whether I have made a treaty with any great foreign power. I have. When I undertook to achieve the freedom of the oppressed Christians in these provinces, I made a close alliance with the King of Kings, and I doubt not that He will give us the victory.
For who that leans on His right arm
Was ever yet forsaken?
What righteous cause can suffer harm
If He its part has taken.
Whittier.
Appointed Work! Exo. 6:2. Moses would not have disliked the reaping, but to plough. Ploughing is hard work, and, to our notions, soiling work; and so we will not plough for Christ. It is hard work, says Power, to lift one foot in the heavy clayto set it down often only to lift it up with greater difficulty still. Even that would perhaps not have deterred Moses; but the delay was trying. If we had a speedy return for our toil, perhaps we might undertake labours for Jehovah. If in the fields around us, as we turned up the furrow, we were sure of finding treasureof the reaper overtaking the sower; if, as we sweated and toiled in ploughing, the sprouts became headed with grain, and our fevered brows were cooled with the breezes which undulated the waving corn, perhaps we would be ready to plough in hope. But such is not earthly ploughing, and such is not that of heaven. Moses had to plough and plough; and we have to labour and labour in hope, for
Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.
Coleridge.
Divine Decision! Exo. 6:2. Moses forgot that the triumph of the wicked is always shortthat the restrained flood is sure to pour forth with force proportionate to the length and strength of its restraintand that time and tide are nowhere before the word of God. God had said. Each hindrance, therefore, on the part of Pharaoheach refusal on his part to let Israel goeach oppression formed to intensify their bondage, and certify their serfdom to himself would only be treasuring up wrath. The waters were continually rising; and, just as with the great Canadian rivers, the more buttressess men expose to stem its current and icefloes, the more certainly are they bringing ruin upon their bridges and banks; so the hindrances of this despot were only culminating towards destruction. There fore
Let not guilt presumptuous rear her crest,
Nor virtue droop despondent; soon these clouds
Scorning eclipse will brighten into day,
And in majestic splendour He will rise,
With healing and with terror on His wings.
Bally.
Groanings! Exo. 6:4. How bitter are the tears of penitence! How agonising are the cries for pardon! It is with conscience then as if a messenger from God, as Dr. Todd represents, were to take us by the hand, and lead us up the steps of a great building, and, as we entered the porch, it should begin to grow dark. Suppose he should then open a door into a very large hall, which he called a picture gallery. As we enter, we find it dark as night; but as the angel touches a spring, light flashes in and fills the room. We now see that the walls are hung with picturesso many and so large that they cover the walls. On these are painted all the sins that we have ever committed. What pictures of sinsopen sinssecret sinsheart sinslifelong sins! We cannot bear to look at them; they fill us with horror and anguish. That picture gallery becomes a judgment hall. Conviction of sin is therecontrition follows. And from contrition must spring confession and concision; for if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
All powerful is the penitential sigh
Of true contrition; like the placid wreaths
Of incense, wafted from the righteous shrine
Where Abel ministered, to the blest seat
Of mercy, an accepted sacrifice.
Hayes.
Anxiety! Exo. 6:5. A certain man, who had been listening to an awaking preacher during a season of revival, was heard to say with emphasis that he did not like the preachers of the present day, because they make one feel so bad. A representative of many sleeping in the chains of moral bondage, that human slave did not like to be reminded of his condition. Whilst the preacher dealt in beautiful thingsdwelt upon the beauties of Nature and the bounties of Providence, all went well; but so soon as spiritual servitude was brought on the arena, the listener was made uneasy. Conscience, that witness in the soul which never dies, did its terrible dutyand the bondsman began to feel that he was verily guilty concerning his own fetters. He began to see that he was not the freedman which he had imagined himself in the spirit of self-delusion to be. That is the first dawn of conviction; but it is not full conviction. It may be stifled; and no groaningsno anxiety of soulfollow upon this first sensation. That emotion may be as the early dewas the foam upon a billowas the swift glance of a meteoras the snow-flake on a river. It is the aim of the Christian ministry, says Exell, to awaken within men the desire for moral freedom, and that desire is the deepening of convictionwhich anxiety ends in conversion, when a man enjoys the liberty of Christ. Therefore, the ambassador for Christ desires to make men feel so badto arouse them to the consciousness of their pitiable condition as bond-serfs of sin, in the hope of persuading them to embrace the Divine overtures of liberation from Satanic thraldom, and of leading them out of the Egyptian bondage into the Land of Freedomthe Gospel of free grace.
The listening throng there feel its blessed effect,
And deep conviction glows in every breast.
Covenant of Grace! Exo. 6:5. It is of long-standinggoing back not merely to David, or Moses, or Abrahambut to Adam. And thus the New Covenant is a development of the Old. The seed of Adam in Genesis became the giant Tree of Life in Revelationwhile the bud of Sinai appears in the full-blown flower of Sion. In the Law, this covenant of grace is buried as the coal deposit which miners only reach by piercing the various intervening strataor as the pearls of great price which divers only secure by plunging through fathoms of water. In the Gospel, this covenant of grace lies openas a casket of gems whose lustre dazzles the natural mindor as a parterre of flowers whose fragrance charms the sense. The covenant of the Old Dispensation is as realbecause it is the sameas that of the New Dispensation; only it was pavilioned round with cloudswrapped in many a folded leaf. In the Law of the patriarchs, priests and prophets, this unique, merciful, and ancient covenant of grace was like the secret writing of which Stainforth speaks, and which is invisible to the reader till held before the flame, when it gives forth the precious truth for which the soul was longing. The Divine fire brings out the conditions of the covenant of grace as penned by God in invisible but indelible and imperishable ink upon the pages of the moral and spiritual history of Adam, Enoch, Noah, and others.
Across the ages they
Have reached us from afar,
Than the bright gold more golden they,
Purer than the purest star.
Bonar.
Heirs! Exo. 6:6. A pious man was one day walking to the sanctuary with a New Testament in his hand, when a friend who met him said Good morning, and enquired what he was reading so earnestly. I am reading my Fathers Will, was the prompt response; and I find that He has bequeathed me an hundredfold in this life, and in the world to come life everlasting. The redeemed are the inheritors of the universe, 1 Corinthians 3, 12 :
Rise, my soul! and stretch thy wings,
Thy better portion trace;
Rise from transitory things
Towards heaven thy native place.
Seagrave.
Experience! Exo. 6:6. The old saw declares that it teaches wisdom; while the French have a proverb that the ass does not stumble twice over the same stone. Sydney asserts that all is but lip-wisdom which wants experience. Caussin expresses himself that a hundred thousand tongues may discourse to a man about the sweetness of honey, but he never can have such knowledge of it as by taste. In spiritual things, experience is that sense of taste. Carlyle likens experience to a schoolmasteran excellent schoolmaster, who charges dreadful wages. But suppose it is a costly education, only think of the future benefits. Solomon went through a peculiar experience of his ownan experience which many of us shudder ata school in which we are reluctant to be trained: and this is the very man whom God chose as the schoolmaster to teach us the vanity of the world when it is made the portion of a soul. A smooth sea, so runs our English proverb, never made a skilful mariner. The young Christian sets sail under fair balmy breeze and clear sunny skies; but soon the clouds gatherthe waves foamthe darkness deepens.
And these vicissitudes tell best in youth;
For when they happen at a riper age,
People are apt to blame the fates forsooth,
And wonder Providence is not more sage.
Why? Because one dram of experience is worth a whole hogshead of dreams that wave before the half-shut eyefor, as Dr. South says, practical sciences are not to be learned but in the way of action. It is experience that must give knowledge in the Christian profession as well as in all others. Alas! to most of us experience is like the stern-lights of a vessel which illumine only the track it has passed. God would have them to be the bow-lightsfor adversity is the first path to truth.
Righteous Retribution! Exo. 6:7. Gods mills grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. And judgment comes at last, for forbearance has an end. Then these judgments often assume the form of retribution. It is recorded in ancient oriental history that an oppressor introduced a company of elephants into his army, whose appearance and power were expected to win the day. But the huge animals took fright when the opposing forces approached each other, turned tail, and, plunging amid their own ranks of infantry, spread dismay and defeat everywhere. Very similarly we are told that the old war chariots, whose wheels were armed with steel scythes to mow down the ranks of the enemy, instead of bringing destruction upon the opposite host, were not unfrequently dragged by the fiery, furious, frightened steeds into the lines of their friends, leaving a line of death behind them. Pharaohs oppressions are to recoil upon himself.
In the corrupted currents of this world,
Offences gilded hand may shove by justice.
Not so with God. His sun of justice may withdraw its beams from earthly notice for awhile; it may, as it were, sit concealed in a dark recess, pavilioned round with clouds. But it is coming. Dr. Thomas says that society is like the echoing hillsgiving back to the speaker his words, groan for groan, song for song. With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. Gods forbearance, says Brooks, is no quittance. He hath leaden heels but iron hands; and the further He stretches His bow, or draws His arrow, the deeper will He wound. Even Anne of Austria, the Queen of France, could express as much to her implacable enemy, Cardinal Richelieu, when she exclaimed: My Lord Cardinal, God is a sure paymaster; He may not pay at the end of every week, month or year, but remember that He does pay in the end. In all time,
All circumstances, all state, in every clime,
He holds aloft the same avenging sword;
And sitting on His boundless throne sublime,
The vials of His wrath, with justice stored,
Shall in His own good hour on all thats ill be poured.
Percival.
Gods Name! Exo. 6:3. Swinnock has it that travellers who are at the top of the Alps can see great showers of rain fall under them, but not one drop of it falls on them. They who trust in the name of Jehovah are in a high tower, and thereby safe from all troubles and showers. With such confidence in Him, their spiritual life is like the deep calm which prevails beneath, while above the waters are lashed into a foaming, boiling caldron. They which trust in the Lord shall be like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, but which standeth fast for ever. A legend says that a rich and powerful king, troubled in heart in spite of all his possessions, went to a holy dervise and asked him for the secret of happiness. The dervise led him forth in front of a high rock, on the top of which an eagle had built her nest. Pointing to the lofty home of the king of birds, the aged recluse directed the monarch to imitate its wisdom by building on the rock of heavenly truth. And surely if a heathen could assure the terrified bird which flew from the hawk into his bosom for shelter that he would neither kill nor betray it, much less will God either slay or give up the soul that takes sanctuary in His name. The righteous runneth into this strong tower, and is safe.
I all on earth forsake,
Its wisdom, fame, and power,
And Him my only portion make,
My shield and tower.
Ministers! Exo. 6:6. Ministers must speak to the Church all that God reveals to them. When they feel it their duty faithfully to speak pointedly to sinners, and to expose the hypocrisy of professors, let them not be condemned, even though their words condemn you. The pastor is Gods Moses to you, and it is at the peril of his soul that he must preach what his Master bids him. Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospeli.e., the good news of pardon and salvation. But the bad news of guilt and damnation precedeindeed are wrapped up inthis proclamation of glad tidings of great joy. Moses must arouse Israel to sense of their bondage, before the clarion of jubilee could ring its silver tones full and clear. A minister, Dr. Boyd says, was once asked not to preach so hard; for if he did, certain persons would leave the church. Is not the preaching true? responded the man of God. It is. And does not God bless it? He does. Well, then, the devil has sent you to me, to get me to let down the tone of my preaching, so as to ease the minds of the ungodly. We must speak all that God reveals to us. As there were bells as well as pomegranates on Aarons robes, so must the ambassador not only speak words of peace, but sound the bell of alarm. There is a proverb which says that more flies are caught with sugar than vinegar; but it belongs to the proverbial philosophy of the three authorsthe World, the Flesh, and the Devil. As God gives, so must His servantsthe vinegar of the law first, and then the sweetness of the gospel. The Almighty thus
Makes known His sacred will, and shows His power;
By Him inspired, they speak with urgent tongue
Authoritative, whilst the illumined breast Heaves with unwonted strength.
Jenner.
Tuneful Tongues! Exo. 6:7. Philip Henry says that thanksgiving is the rent which the saints owe to God. And if Christ dwell in our heartsdwell, we say, not sojournwe shall always be glad to pay that rent. Our praises will go up, writes Guthrie, as the incense continually. It was the law of some of the old monasteries to carry out this idea of incense continually floating upwards to heaven, by having constant change of choir. The chanting of praise was thus never interrupted; for as soon as one set of monks had done their service others supplied their place, so that, as Pilkington expresses it, both by day and night an endless hallelujah went up to God. It is a tradition of St. Francis that on one occasion he felt himself so penetrated with joy and consolation by the song of a nightingale that he began to sing, whereupon the bird of music stopped its strains. When the monk ceased, Philomela renewed her joyous chant: and thus they sang alternately until St. Francis was exhausted. So ought the saints to rejoice with them that do rejoice, when they themselves have apparently no cause to rejoice in themselves. Time may stopthe world may staythe universe may cease its cycles; but Christians ought not to stop their songsnever! never!
He that to praise and laud Thee doth refrain,
Doth not refrain unto himself alone,
But robs a thousand who would praise Thee fain,
And doth commit a world of sin in one.
Herbert.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
THE TEXT OF EXODUS
TRANSLATION
6 And Je-ho-vah said unto Mo-ses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pha-raoh: for by a strong hand shall he let them go, and by a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land.
(2) And God spake unto Mo-ses, and said unto him, I am Je-ho-vah: (3) and I appeared unto Abraham, unto I-saac, and unto Jacob, as God Almighty; but by my name Je-ho-vah I was not known to them. (4) And I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Ca-naan, the land of their sojournings, wherein they sojourned. (5) And moreover I have heard the groaning of the children of Is-ra-el, whom the E-gyp-tians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant. (6) Wherefore say unto the children of Is-ra-el, I am Je-ho-vah, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the E-gyp-tians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with an out-stretched arm, and with great judgments: (7) and I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and ye shall know that I am Je-ho-vah your God, who bringeth you out from under the burdens of the E-gyp-tians. (8) And I will bring you in unto the land which I sware to give to Abraham, to I-saac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for a heritage: I am Je-ho-vah. (9) And Mo-ses spake so unto the children of Is-ra-el: but they hearkened not unto Mo-ses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.
(10) And Je-ho-vah spake unto Mo-ses, saying, (11) Go in, speak unto Pha-raoh king of E-gypt, that he let the children of Is-ra-el go out of his land. (12) And Mo-ses spake before Je-ho-vah, saying, Behold, the children of Is-ra-el have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pha-raoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips? (13) And Je-ho-vah spake unto Mo-ses and unto Aar-on, and gave them a charge unto the children of Is-ra-el, and unto Pha-raoh king of E-gypt, to bring the children of Is-ra-el out of the land of E-gypt.
(14) These are the heads of their fathers houses. The sons of Reu-ben the first-born of Is-ra-el: Ha-noch, and Pal-Iu, Hez-ron, and Eac-mi; these are the families of Reu-ben. (15) And the sons of Sim-e-on: Jem-u-el, and Ja-min, and O-had, and Ja-chin, and Zo-har, and Sha-ul the son of a Ca-naan-i-tish woman; these are the families of Sim-e-on. (16) And these are the names of the sons of Le-vi according to their generations: Ger-shon, and Ko-hath, and Me-ra-ri; and the years of the life of Le-vi were a hundred thirty and seven years. (17) The sons of Ger-shon: Lib-ni and Shim-e-i, according to their families. (18) And the sons of Ko-hath: Am-ram, and Iz-har, and He-bron, and Uz-zi-el; and the years of the life of Ko-hath were a hundred thirty and three years. (19) And the sons of Me-ra-ri: Mah-li and Mu-shi. These are the families of the Le-vites according to their generations. (20) And Am-ram took him Joch-e-bed his fathers sister to wife; and she bare him Aar-on and Mo-ses: and the years of the life of Am-ram were a hundred and thirty and seven years. (21) And the sons of Iz-har: Ko-rah, and Ne-pheg, and Zich-ri. (22) And the sons of Uz-zi-el: Mish-a-el, and El-za-phan, and Sith-ri. (23) And Aar-on took him E-lish-e-ba, the daughter of Am-min-a-dab, the sister of Nah-shon, to wife; and she bare him Na-dab and A-bi-hu, E-le-a-zar and Ith-a-mar. (24) And the sons of Ko-rah: As-sir, and El-ka-nah, and A-bi-a-saph; these are the families of the Ko-rah-ites. (25) And E-le-a-zar Aar-ons son took him one of the daughters of Pu-ti-el to wife; and she bare him Phin-e-has. These are the heads of the fathers houses of the Le-vites according to their families. (26) These are that Aar-on and Mo-ses, to whom Je-ho-vah said, Bring out the children of Is-ra-el from the land of E-gypt according to their hosts. (27) These are they that spake to Pha-raoh king of E-gypt, to bring out the children of Is-ra-el from E-gypt: these are that Moses and Aaron.
(28) And it came to pass on the day when Je-ho-vah spake unto Mo-ses in the land of E-gypt (29) that Je-ho-vah spake unto Mo-ses, saying, I am Je-ho-vah: speak thou unto Pha-raoh king of E-gypt all that I speak unto thee. (30) And Mo-ses said before Je-ho-vah, Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pha-raoh hearken unto me?
EXPLORING EXODUS: CHAPTER SIX QUESTIONS ANSWERABLE FROM THE BIBLE
1.
After careful reading propose a brief title or topic for ch. six.
2.
Why did God keep telling Moses I am the LORD (Jehovah)? (Exo. 6:2; Exo. 6:6; Exo. 6:8; Exo. 6:29)
3.
By what name was God known to Abraham and Isaac? (Exo. 6:3; Gen. 17:1)
4.
By what name was God NOT known to them?
5.
Didnt Abraham really know the name Jehovah (LORD)? See Gen. 22:14; Gen. 18:14; Gen. 15:7.
6.
How can we explain Exo. 6:3 if Abraham actually used the name Jehovah? Compare Eze. 39:7; Jer. 16:21; Isa. 52:6.
7.
What had God established with Abraham and Isaac? (Exo. 6:4)
8.
What did God intend to give to Abraham and Isaac? (Exo. 6:4)
9.
How were Abraham and Isaac strangers (sojourners) in the land? See Act. 7:4-5; Heb. 11:8-10; Heb. 11:13-16.
10.
What had God heard? (Exo. 6:5)
11.
What did God remember? (Exo. 6:5)
12.
What significance would there be to Israel in Gods saying, I am the LORD? Exo. 6:6-7; (Compare Isa. 49:23)
13.
What does redeem mean in I will redeem you? (Exo. 6:6)
14.
What is implied in Gods arm being outstretched?
15.
When did God formally take Israel to him as His people? (Exo. 6:7; Exo. 19:1; Exo. 19:5-6; Deu. 4:20; Deu. 29:13)
16.
Did Israel quickly sense the significance of the fact that the LORD was their God? (Exo. 6:7-8)
17.
How strongly had God affirmed His intention to give the land to Abraham and Isaac? (Exo. 6:8)
18.
Did Israel accept Gods words which Moses delivered unto them? Why or why not? (Exo. 6:9)
19.
Why did the LORD in Exo. 6:11 repeat His command to Moses to go in and speak unto Pharaoh? (Compare Exo. 4:22-23; Exo. 5:1)
20.
What objection did Moses give against going back to Pharaoh? (Exo. 6:12)
21.
What is meant by uncircumcised lips? (Compare Exo. 4:10; Act. 7:51)
22.
What charge did the LORD give Moses and Aaron? (Exo. 6:13). What is a charge?
23.
Do you think from Exo. 6:10-13 that Moses was rather reluctant?
24.
What is the purpose or point of inserting all of the genealogies of Exo. 6:14-25 into the story right here?
25.
Which three sons of Jacob have descendants listed in Exo. 6:14-16?
26.
Can you suggest any possible reason(s) for listing the descendants of only three of Jacobs sons in Exo. 6:14-16?
27.
Whose son married a Canaanite woman? (Exo. 6:15)
28.
Was the chosen family at this time prohibited from marrying outside of their family? (Gen. 24:3-4; Gen. 28:1-2; Compare Exo. 34:11-16)
29.
Name the three sons of Levi. (Exo. 6:16)
30.
What were the Levites later appointed to do? (Num. 3:6-8; Num. 3:12)
31.
Who was Amram? (Exo. 6:18; Exo. 6:20)
32.
Who was Izhar the brother of? (Exo. 6:18)
33.
Who was the first son of Izhar, as listed in Exo. 6:21?
34.
How was Korah related to Moses and Aaron? (Exo. 6:18-21)
35.
What was Korah later famous (or infamous) for? (Num. 16:1-3; Num. 16:32; Jud. 1:11)
36.
Who was Amrams wife? (Exo. 6:20)
37.
Whom did Aaron marry? (Exo. 6:23)
38.
Of what tribe was Aarons wife? (Exo. 6:23; Num. 1:7)
39.
Name Aarons four sons. (Exo. 6:23)
40.
Who was Aarons grandson? (Exo. 6:25)
41.
What verse (in this sixth chapter) does Exo. 6:26 refer back to?
42.
What thought connection may there be between the genealogies of Exo. 6:14-25 and the emphatic references to Moses and Aaron in Exo. 6:26-27? Try to suggest some possible connection.
43.
According to (or by) what groupings were the Israelites to be brought out of Egypt? (Exo. 6:26; Num. 1:3; Num. 10:11-14; Num. 10:18; Exo. 7:4)
44.
What emphatic declaration did God make about Himself in Exo. 6:29?
45.
What was Moses to speak unto Pharaoh?
46.
What does the repetition in Exo. 6:12 and Exo. 6:30 suggest about Moses willingness?
47.
Is there a sharp thought break between chapters 6 and 7? Does Exo. 6:28 to Exo. 7:7 seem like one paragraph to you?
EXODUS SIX: STRENGTHENING OF GODS MAN
Moses surely needed strengthening after the resistance described in chapter five. How was Gods man strengthened?
I.
By Gods name: Exo. 6:2-3; Exo. 6:6; Exo. 6:29.
II.
By Gods promises; Exo. 6:1; Exo. 6:6-8
III.
By Gods covenant; Exo. 6:4-5.
IV.
By Gods command; Exo. 6:10-13; Exo. 6:28-29.
V.
By past examples (family associations); Exo. 6:14-27.
EXODUS SIX: STRENGTH FOR SERVICE
EXODUS Six: THREE PRECIOUS PS
I.
Promise of God; Exo. 6:1; Exo. 6:6.
II.
Power of God; Exo. 6:6.
III.
People of God; Exo. 6:7; Exo. 6:14-26.
GODS PROMISES TO ISRAEL (Exo. 6:6-8)
1.
I will bring you out; Exo. 6:6.
2.
I will rid you of bondage.
3.
I will redeem you.
4.
I will take you for my people; Exo. 6:7.
5.
I will be to you a God.
6.
I will bring you into the land; Exo. 6:8.
7.
I will give the land to you for a possession.
GODS COMMITMENT TO HIS PEOPLE
1.
He redeems from oppressions.
2.
He takes us as His.
3.
He gives us an inheritance.
I AM THE LORD (JEHOVAH)
1.
Jehovah, the covenant-maker (Exo. 6:4).
2.
Jehovah, the cry-hearer (Exo. 6:5).
3.
Jehovah, the deliverer (Exo. 6:6).
4.
Jehovah, the receiver of His people (Exo. 6:7).
EXPLORING EXODUS: NOTES ON CHAPTER SIX
1.
What is Exodus chapter 6 all about?
The chapter gives the record of how God strengthened and reassured Moses. Moses was downcast after both Pharaoh and the people of Israel had rejected him (Ch. 5). Ch. six tells how God strengthened him and confirmed him in his labors.
2.
How do unbelieving critics interpret chapter 6?
They regard it as a different account of the commission of Moses by a different author (called P, for priestly) than the one who wrote Exo. 3:1 to Exo. 6:1 (called J, for Jehovist). P supposedly lived after the Babylonian captivity and J in the ninth or tenth century before Christ. They maintain that P knew nothing of Moses call in Midian, but rather thought he was called in Egypt. Frankly, this shocks us.
Even a critic as extreme as Martin Noth admits that chapter six now appears (emphasis ours) as a confirmation of the commission previously given to Moses, and an invitation to make new demands upon Pharaoh.[139] It surely does so appear! But he is confident that he can see by the wording that really chapter six is an independent treatment of the one and only call and commissioning of Moses.
[139] Op. cit., p. 58.
To us it is more natural to regard chapter six as a continuation of the story given in ch. five. Also to divide Exodus into several contradictory sources (J, E, P) is to deny that Moses wrote the books of the law, as Christ affirmed that he did (Joh. 7:19; Joh. 1:17).
3.
How would Gods saying I am the LORD (Jehovah) help Moses? (Exo. 6:2)
It would help because by that name all the power, permanence, potential, promises, and performances of God were brought back to their minds.
The name Jehovah signifies the eternal one, the one who causes things to happen. See notes on Exo. 3:14-15.
In this chapter God repeatedly reassured Moses and Israel by saying, I am Jehovah (Exo. 6:2; Exo. 6:7-8; Exo. 6:29). The name of Jehovah is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe. (Pro. 18:10)
Centuries later in the time of the Babylonian captivity God was still reassuring Israel by saying I am Jehovah. (Eze. 39:7; Eze. 38:23).
If the name of the LORD Jehovah does not give us some reassuring thoughts, we need to study and meditate some more concerning it.
4.
By what name was God known to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? (Exo. 6:3)
As God Almighty (Hebrew, El Shaddai). This name is specially prominent in Gen. 17:1, where God gave the covenant of circumcision to Abraham. It also appears in Gen. 28:3; Gen. 35:11; Gen. 43:14; Gen. 48:3. The Greek O.T. translates it as Pantocrator, meaning the Almighty. The Latin gives it as Deus omnipotens, meaning God almighty.
The name El means mighty or powerful one. In its plural form elohim it is the most common word for God in the O.T. A variant form Eloah also occurs (Deu. 32:15; Psa. 18:31; Job. 3:4 and many other places in Job).
The most ancient meaning of Shaddai is quite uncertain. Some connect it with the Assyrian word shadu, meaning mountain.[140] This could be the origin of the word, without its preserving any polytheistic implications, such as that El Shaddai was once a mountain worshipped as a god. Psa. 36:6 speaks of Gods righteousness as being like a great mountain.
[140] Broadman Bible Commentary (1969), p. 342. Cole. op. cit., p. 84.
5.
Did Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob really know that Gods name was Jehovah (LORD)?
Certainly they knew it. See Gen. 12:8; Gen. 14:22; Gen. 15:8; Gen. 21:33; Gen. 24:3; Gen. 26:22; Gen. 27:27; Gen. 28:16; Gen. 49:18. In Gen. 22:14 Abraham called the place where he almost sacrificed his son Isaac JEHOVAH-JIREH, meaning Jehovah will see, or provide.
In fact, Gen. 4:26 indicates that men began to call upon the name of Jehovah back in the time of Enosh, the great-grandson of Adam.
How then can Exo. 6:2 say that God was not known to them by his name Jehovah?
The explanation seems to be that to God knowing that his name is Jehovah means knowing what that name implies. It implies knowing his eternal nature, and how He will deliver his people.
Abraham knew Jehovah by name; but he never lived to learn the glorious Jehovah-type fulfillment of His promises or how He delivered His people. Even we do not really know a person when we know only what his name is.
That this is the true explanation of how Abraham could use the name Jehovah and still not know the name Jehovah is indicated by later passages, such as Eze. 39:7 and Jer. 16:21 and Isa. 52:6. These passages were written centuries after the name Jehovah was well known. But even then God said, I will cause them to know . . . that my name is Jehovah (Jer. 16:21). Also My holy name will I make known in the midst of my people Israel (Eze. 39:7).
In our language and idiom we do not speak of people as not knowing our names just because they do not know our works and personalities. But God so speaks of His name. It is for us to adjust our thinking to Gods manner of speaking, rather than to assert that the Bible is contradictory. Critics assert oftentimes that previous references (in Genesis and Ex.) to the name Jehovah were from one source document (J), and that the Priestly source here at Exo. 6:2 introduces the name Jehovah for the first time. We find this unverified and unacceptable.
6.
What had God promised in His covenant with Israel spoken to Abraham? (Exo. 6:4; Exo. 6:8)
He promised to multiply their number and give them the land of Canaan. See Gen. 15:18; Gen. 17:4; Gen. 17:7-8; Gen. 12:7; Gen. 26:3; Gen. 28:4; Gen. 28:13; Gen. 35:11-12. Israels occupation of Canaan is always seen in the Bible as a fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham. But on the other side, the driving out of the Canaanites is seen as Gods punishment for their wickedness (Gen. 15:16).[141]
[141] Cole, op. cit., p. 85.
7.
What did God remember? (Exo. 6:5)
He remembered His covenant with Israel spoken to Abraham. To say that He remembered does not imply that God had previously forgotten. He was remembering now in the sense that He was now starting to ACT in fulfilling His covenant. Faithfulness to covenant promises is one of Gods most consistent qualities. How greatly this should reassure us who are under such NEW covenant promises as Heb. 8:12!
8.
What seven great promises did God give to Israel? (Exo. 6:6-8)
See p. 141 for the list of these promises. In these seven great promised acts, Israel would see what the name Jehovah meant. The name Jehovah should bring to their minds the whole list of Gods acts in the exodus experiences.
The I in I am Jehovah is emphatic.
Jesus may also be called Jehovah (LORD), as well as the father is called by that name. Compare Isa. 40:3 and Mar. 1:1; Mar. 1:3. All the significance of the name Jehovah God to the Jews should be felt by Christians in the mighty name of JESUS-JEHOVAH.
9.
What does redeem mean? (Exo. 6:6; Compare Exo. 15:6)
Basically it means to buy back something that has been forfeited or sold. It means to act as a redeemer-kinsman (Heb. goel), one who saves some destitute relative from danger, debt, or widowhood. Boaz was the redeemer-kinsman of Ruth and Naomi (Rth. 2:20; Rth. 3:9; Lev. 25:25). Later the meaning of redeem was broadened to refer to deliverance from dangers of various types.
To redeem therefore means to deliver people from unbearable troubles. The way God redeemed Israel is an illustration of the way we Christians are redeemed (1Pe. 1:18; Eph. 1:7). God did not spare Israel from all their troubles and hardships in the desert, but He did deliver them from all intolerable difficulties, those which were beyond their power to face. Similarly we cannot expect to escape all tribulation and persecution. But God does redeem us from the sin, death, and distresses that are beyond our ability to conquer.
10.
What kind of arm is an outstretched arm? (Exo. 6:6)
It is a visible, powerful, and active arm, like the arm of a warrior arming for battle. The idea of Gods stretched-out arm and His great judgments reappears later in Exo. 13:3 and Deu. 5:15.
11.
What would God take Israel unto Himself to be? (Exo. 6:7)
To be His people! Compare Exo. 19:5-6; Exo. 29:45-46; Gen. 17:8; Deu. 4:20; Deu. 7:6; Deu. 29:13. Israel was a stiff-necked rebellious people. Gods choice of Israel was an act of incredible grace and forbearance.
The actual time and place when God took Israel as His people was at Mt. Sinai (Exo. 19:5). This Sinai covenant was reconfirmed and settled in the plains of Moab, just before Israel entered the promised land (Deu. 28:9; Deu. 29:1; Deu. 29:12-13).
The result of Gods taking Israel for His people would be to cause them to know that He was Jehovah their God. This thought about knowing Gods name was a strong and repeated emphasis by God (Exo. 6:2; Exo. 6:6; Isa. 49:23).
At the present time we Christians are the people of God, whether we be Jews or Gentiles (Eph. 1:4; 2Co. 6:18; Rev. 21:7).
12.
What was Gods heritage to Israel? (Exo. 6:8)
The heritage was the land which He swore to give to Abraham (Compare Neh. 9:15). A heritage is a possession, often one received as an inheritance. Interestingly, the term heritage is applied in Deu. 33:4 to the law (or Torah) itself.
13.
How did Israel respond to Moses words of reassurance? (Exo. 6:9)
They would not hearken or pay attention to him. Because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage they were not receptive to any optimistic promises. Anguish of spirit is literally shortness of spirit (or breath). Their longsuffering had shrunk to shortness of spirit. Israels vital energy and hope was shortened and sapped.
14.
What order did God give to Moses in his despondency? (Exo. 6:10-11; Exo. 6:13)
God told him to go in and speak to Pharaoh and demand that he let Israel go. Gods order to Moses would strengthen his weak spirit. Often a good kick in the pants is exactly what hesitant men need. Note the reemphasis of the order in Exo. 6:13.
Note also that the demands upon Pharaoh have gone up. Previously it was only for permission to go and sacrifice (Exo. 5:1). Now Moses is to ask that Israel be released (Exo. 6:11; Exo. 6:13).
15.
What are uncircumcised lips? (Exo. 6:12; Exo. 6:30)
Lips seems to be a figure of speech meaning speaking ability. Uncircumcised lips are lips that are not adequate and capable of saying the words necessary to get a needed job done.
Similarly we read of uncircumcised hearts and ears, that is, ears and hearts that will not hear and comprehend (Act. 7:51).
The root application in the word uncircumcised refers, of course, to the natural fleshly state of the male member. In the ages before Christ came, to be uncircumcised was to be outside of Gods covenant promises to Abrahams descendants (Gen. 17:10-14). By broadening the use of the term, it came to be applied to several inadequate, incompetent, unqualified aspects of our being.
NOTE: The Biblical description of Moses at this point (Exo. 6:12) is not very flattering; but it is realistic. In significant contrast to the Biblical record about Moses, the Jewish historian Josephus[142] says that Moses did not let his courage sink for the kings threatenings; nor did he abate of his zeal on account of the Hebrews complaints. How different is the truthful inspired Biblical account from the flattering propaganda version of history by Josephus!
[142] Antiquities, II, xiii, 4.
16.
Why is a genealogical list (Exo. 6:14-25) inserted into the history at this point?
To be very candid, no one knows why with absolute certainty.
Unbelieving critics see it only as evidence of the existence of several poorly-harmonized source documents lying behind our book of Exodus. Martin Noth[143] says Exo. 6:13-30 is a secondary insertion which serves in the Priestly authors view to introduce and exalt the priest Aaron as the older brother of Moses. Believers can point out that Aaron was introduced long before (in Exo. 4:14, a verse ascribed to J, another author!). Also, in the genealogy Aaron really receives little more stress than Amram (Exo. 6:18; Exo. 6:20) or even Korah (Exo. 6:21-24).
[143] Op. cit., p. 58.
But what can believers say to account for the genealogy here? Exo. 6:27 indicates that the genealogy is to highlight and identify the persons Moses and Aaron at this dramatic moment in their history.
Also we may conjecture that at this discouraging time in Moses career, he himself may have recalled his family tree, a family that had long before received Gods promises through their forefather Abraham. This would be great encouragement to Moses. How could he (or we) forsake the God and faith of the forefathers?
God himself may have brought thoughts about his family tree to Moses mind just then (Compare Joh. 14:26). Therefore, when Moses later penned Exodus, he recorded here an abbreviated genealogy, but one given in sufficient detail to make its encouraging force in his life obvious. The genealogy is certainly too abbreviated to have been intended as a full family record.
17.
What is presented in the genealogy?
First the names of Jacobs (Israels) three oldest sons (Reuben, Simeon, and Levi) and their immediate descendants are given (Exo. 6:14-16). Then the descendants of Levi are traced on through several generations, with special attention given to those personages who will be prominent in the later history of Israels wilderness wanderings and the conquest of Canaan.
18.
What are heads of fathers houses? (Exo. 6:14)
This is a technical term for clans, or families;[144] or for a collection of families called by the name of a common ancestor.[145]
[144] J. H. Hertz, The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (London: Soncino, 1969), p. 234.
[145] Keil and Delitzsch, op. cit., p. 469.
19.
What is related of Reubens descendants? (Exo. 6:14)
Only his sons names. Their names here are identical to (and possibly transcribed from) Gen. 46:9. The Reubenites are also listed in Num. 26:5-9 and 1Ch. 5:1 ff.
20.
What is related of Simeons descendants? (Exo. 6:15)
Only his sons names and the fact that one son (Shaul) was the son of a Canaanite woman. The list here is like that of Gen. 46:10, and is similar to those in Num. 26:12-14 and 1Ch. 4:24 ff.
The marriage of Simeon to a Canaanite woman speaks loudly about the strong tendency of the Israelites to enter such faith-destroying marriages. These were later strictly forbidden by God through Moses (Exo. 34:15-16; Deu. 7:3-4). The idolatry which later developed among the Simeonites (Num. 25:14), and their great decline in population (Num. 1:23; Num. 26:14) suggests an inherent weakness in the tribes character.
21.
Who were the three sons of Levi? (Exo. 6:16)
Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. Memorize these names now! These were fathers of large families that later had specific assignments in transporting and caring for the tabernacle in the wilderness. See Num. 3:14 ff.
A comment in Preachers Homiletic Commentary about these genealogies is good: These genealogies are like great stone bluffs, sterile looking, but there is a spring at their feet.
22.
Are there gaps in the genealogy given for Levi? (Exo. 6:16-20)
Yes. This is clearly indicated by the fact that all three of Levis sons had been born before Jacobs family settled into Egypt (Gen. 46:11); then, Amram, the son of Levis son, lived only 137 years; and Amrams son Moses was only eighty years old at the time of the exodus. There are not enough years in the life spans of these men to stretch across the Egyptian bondage period of 430 years (Exo. 12:40).
Even more conclusive proof of gaps in the genealogy of Levi is the fact that at Mt. Sinai, less than two years after the time of Exodus 6, the Kohathites (which included Moses) numbered 8600 men and boys (Num. 3:28 ff). These Kohathites are divided into four groups named after Kohaths four sons, including Amram. This would indicate that there were about 2147 (8600 divided by 4) Amramites. But Amram the father of Moses had only two sons (Moses and Aaron), and these had less than ten descendants at Mt. Sinai. So apparently the numerous Amramites are descendants of the previous Amram, Levis grandson, and not the later father of Moses, also named Amram.
23.
Who were the sons of Kohath? (Exo. 6:18)
They were (1) Amram (not the father of Moses, but a previous Amram); (2) Izhar, the father (or, more probably, a previous ancestor) of the infamous Korah, who led a rebellion against Moses (Num. 16:1); (3) Hebron; and (4) Uzziel. Of the latter two we know little (Compare Exo. 6:22). Uzziels sons helped bury Nadab and Abihu (Lev. 10:4). See also Num. 3:30.
24.
Who were Moses father and mother? (Exo. 6:20)
Amram and Jochebed, his fathers aunt. See notes on Exo. 2:1.
Jochebeds name means Jehovah (Jah) is (my) glory.[146] This shows that the name Jehovah (or Yahweh) was indeed used by the Hebrews before Exo. 6:3. And therefore the imaginary P source (to which critics ascribe Exodus 6) did know and use Jehovahs name before the Exo. 6:3 revelation. Critics ascribe all earlier uses of the name Jehovah to another source. Their knowledge of unknowable things passes all bounds.
[146] Hertz, op. cit., p. 234. Cole, op. cit., p. 87, affirms a differing view, that the name Jochebed means only May he (the unnamed god!) glorify. Hertz is a Jewish commentator, and his interpretation of this name seems definitely preferable.
25.
Who were Aarons wife and children? (Exo. 6:23)
His wife was Elishaba, better known as Elizabeth (from the LXX). She was of the tribe of Judah. Her brother Nahshon was one of the princes of the tribe of Judah, so she would be a princess (1Ch. 2:10). Elishaba was a sister of a direct ancestor (Nahshon) of Christ. Her father was Amminadab, and her grandfather was named Ram (Mat. 1:4; Luk. 3:33; Rth. 1:18-20).
Aarons children were Nadab and Abihu and Eleazar and Ithamar. Memorize these names now, preferably in pairs. Aarons sons (descendants) later became the priests in Israel (See Exo. 28:1). Nadab and Abihu were burned to death at Mt. Sinai for offering strange (unauthorized) fire upon the altar of incense (Lev. 10:1-2). Eleazar became high priest after Aaron died (Num. 20:25-28). In later generations the high priesthood passed to the house of Aarons son Ithamar in the person of Eli and his sons Ahimelech and Abiathar (1Ch. 24:3; 1Sa. 1:9). Still later the high priesthood reverted to the house of Eleazar through Zadok (1Ki. 2:26-27; 1Ki. 2:35).
26.
How did Korahs family become famous? (Exo. 6:24)
Korah led a great rebellion against Moses at Kadeshbarnea (Numbers 16; Jud. 1:11). Centuries later the surviving sons of Korah became famous temple musicians among the Levites of Israel (1Ch. 6:22-23). Psalm titles on Psalms 42, 44-49, 84-85, 87-88 attribute these psalms to the sons of Korah.
27.
How significant were Eleazar and Phinehas? (Exo. 6:25)
Extremely significant. Eleazar became high priest after the death of his father Aaron (Num. 20:23-28). He was priest during Israels conquest of Canaan and the division of the land (Jos. 14:1).
Phinehas was the son of Eleazar and succeeded him as high priest (Jos. 24:33). Phinehas is renowned for spearing an adulterous couple, and thereby averting Gods judgment upon Israel (Num. 25:7-11; Psa. 106:30).
28.
What purpose does the reference to Aaron and Moses in Exo. 6:26-27 have?
This reference draws our minds back to the main story of Moses and Aaron and their confrontation with Pharaoh, after the interruption of presenting their family tree in Exo. 6:14-25. The story now resumes where it left off at Exo. 6:13. We are reminded in Exo. 6:26-27 of the fact previously stated, namely that Moses and Aaron had been commanded to bring out the children of Israel from Egypt. The genealogies give a sense of historical honor to Moses and Aaron. This sharpens the issues in their conflict with Pharaoh.
Note that Aaron is mentioned first in Exo. 6:26 and Moses first in Exo. 6:27. Probably no great significance can be attached to this.
Note also the third-person writing in Exo. 6:26-27. This style does not eliminate the possibility that Moses himself wrote Exodus. Egyptian writings by the Pharaohs about themselves and by themselves are often written in third person. So also are Biblical writings. Note Ezr. 7:10 (compare Exo. 8:15) and Joh. 19:35 as examples.
29.
Whose words would Moses (and Aaron) speak? (Exo. 6:28-29)
Gods words. Speak . . . all that I speak unto thee. Compare Exo. 7:2. Gods servants need not fear or wonder what they should speak, Speak words God has given us.
30.
What reassurance did God give Moses? (Exo. 6:28-29)
God told him, I am Jehovah! See notes on Exo. 3:14-15 and Exo. 6:3 for information about the meaning and power in the name Jehovah.
Regarding Moses statement about uncircumcised lips, see notes on Exo. 6:12.
31.
Where does the paragraph beginning at Exo. 6:28 extend to?
It extends on through Exo. 7:7. It is unfortunate that the chapter division was placed where it Isa. 7:1-7 continues Gods reassurance to Moses, telling how He will harden Pharaohs heart, and work wonders in Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
VI.
GODS RENEWAL AND ENLARGEMENT OF HIS PROMISES.
(1) Now shalt thou see.Moses complaint was that God delayed, and was slack as concerning His promise. Hitherto He had not delivered His people at all. The answer,Now shalt thou see, is an assurance that there will be no more delay; the work is just about to begin, and Moses will behold it. He will then cease to doubt.
With a strong hand shall he let them go.Rather, through a strong hand: i.e., through the compulsion which my strong hand will exert on him,
Drive them.Comp. Exo. 12:31-33.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
THE TEN JUDGMENT STROKES, Exo 6:1 to Exo 12:30.
1. Now In this crisis of Israel’s fortunes, when all peaceful means have failed; a word of emphasis and transition . Of course, these interviews are only sketched; all that was said to Pharaoh is not detailed. These negotiations may have been some time in progress.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The Complaint of the Administrative Scribes of the Children of Israel ( Exo 5:20 to Exo 6:1 ).
a
b Moses returns to Yahweh and asks Him why He has treated His people so badly and what purpose He had in sending him (Exo 5:22)
b For, he points out, since he has spoken to Pharaoh in Yahweh’s name His people are being even more ill-treated, nor had Yahweh delivered them as He promised (Exo 5:23).
a Yahweh replies that he will now see what He intends to do to Pharaoh, and He will do it with such a strong hand that (it will be an abhorrence to Pharaoh and) he will let them go, no, will be so affected that he will even drive them out of his land by a strong hand (Exo 6:1).
In ‘a’ The administrative scribes of Israel leave the presence of Pharaoh, in the parallel they will be driven out by him. Their complaint is that they have been made an abhorrence to Pharaoh, and Yahweh’s reply is essentially that they will become such an abhorrence to Pharaoh that he will want to get rid of them. In ‘b’ Moses returns to Yahweh and asks Him why He has treated His people so badly and what purpose He had in sending him, while in the parallel he points out that since he has spoken to Pharaoh in Yahweh’s name His people are being even more ill-treated, nor had Yahweh delivered them as He promised.
Exo 5:20-21
‘And they met Moses and Aaron who stood in the way as they came out from Pharaoh, and they said to them, “Yahweh look on you and judge, for you have made our odour abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us.’
The administrative scribes now charge Moses and Aaron with having made things much worse. They call on Yahweh Himself to pass judgment on them because they have made the name of Israel abhorred in Pharaoh’s mind so that they themselves (the scribes) are under the threat of execution.
“They met Moses and Aaron.” Moses and Aaron had been waiting anxiously to find out what response Pharaoh would give to the pleas of the managers.
“To put a sword in their hand to kill us.” Not literally, but figuratively. They would be killed by the strain of impossible demands and the consequent severe punishments. It may, however, be that the overseers had even had to resort to swords because of their resistance, or that there were threats of summary execution.
Exo 5:22-23
‘And Moses returned to Yahweh and said, “Lord, why have you treated this people so badly? Why is it that you sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name he has treated this people badly, nor have you delivered your people at all.”
Moses was baffled. Why had God sent him if this was to be the result? He had come at Yahweh’s command and yet God was seemingly standing by and doing nothing. Indeed in view of the fact that as a consequence the people were being ill treated even more by Pharaoh, that ill treatment could be laid at His door.
Note for Christians.
What happened to Moses and Israel, will often happen in our lives. When we pray God does not always deliver from trials immediately. He has greater purposes to work than we can ever know. Things may seem to be getting worse day by day, but we can be sure of this, that if we have committed our cause into His hands, our deliverance is sure. But it will be easier for us if instead of fighting Him we trust Him for our future. For then we will both enjoy His presence now and His deliverance when it comes. ‘In quietness and confidence shall be your strength’ (Isa 30:15).
End of note.
Exo 6:1
‘And Yahweh said to Moses, “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh, for by a strong hand will he let them go, and by a strong hand will he drive them out of his land.” ’
Yahweh’s reply is, ‘you wait and see what I will do’. And He promises that Pharaoh will be made to listen under Yahweh’s strong hand, so much so that he himself will drive the people out with a strong hand.
“By a strong hand.” In Exo 3:19 ‘the mighty hand’ refers to Yahweh. Compare also Exo 13:3 ‘by strength of hand Yahweh brought you out of this place’ (see also Exo 13:9; Exo 13:14; Exo 13:16). This would suggest that the strong hand which would move Pharaoh must be that of Yahweh, for Yahweh was about to exert His power against him. By it He would reveal that He truly was Yahweh, ‘the One Who is there’. So we may paraphrase, ‘by means of a strong hand will Yahweh make him let them go and by a strong hand will Yahweh make him drive them out of his land.’ Others, however, refer it to Pharaoh’s strong hand seeing it as representing the forcefulness with which Pharaoh will make them depart.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Exo 6:3 “God Almighty” – Comments – God revealed this name of God Almighty to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Abraham:
Gen 17:1, “And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the LORD appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God ; walk before me, and be thou perfect.”
Isaac:
Gen 28:3, “And God Almighty bless thee, and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, that thou mayest be a multitude of people;”
Jacob:
Gen 35:11, “And God said unto him, I am God Almighty : be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall be of thee, and kings shall come out of thy loins;”
Exo 6:20 “Jochebed his father’s sister to wife” – Comments – Amram’s father was Kohath. Kohath was a son of Levi. Therefore, Jochebed was a daughter of Levi (Num 26:59).
Num 26:59, “And the name of Amram’s wife was Jochebed, the daughter of Levi , whom her mother bare to Levi in Egypt: and she bare unto Amram Aaron and Moses, and Miriam their sister.”
Exo 6:24 Comments – Origen tells us the meanings of the three names of the sons of Korah.
“But if it be necessary also from the ancient Scriptures to bring forward the three who made a symphony on earth, so that the Word was in the midst of them making them one, attend to the superscription of the Psalms, as for example to that of the forty-first, which is as follows: “Unto the end, unto understanding, for the sons of Korah.” For though there were three sons of Korah whose names we find in the Book of Exodus, Aser, which is, by interpretation, “instruction,” and the second Elkana, which is translated, “possession of God,” and the third Abiasaph, which in the Greek tongue might be rendered, “congregation of the father,” yet the prophecies were not divided but were both spoken and written by one spirit, and one voice, and one soul, which wrought with true harmony, and the three speak as one, “As the heart panteth after the springs of the water, so panteth my soul alter thee, O God.” But also they say in the plural in the forty-fourth Psalm, “O God, we have heard with our ears.” ( Commentary on Mat 14:1) [23]
[23] Origen, Commentary on Matthew (Giesen, Germany: New Advent, 2008) [on-line]; accessed 24 February 2009; available from http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/101614.htm: Internet.
Exo 6:14-27 Comments The Genealogy of Moses and Aaron Exo 6:14-27 inserts the genealogy of Moses and Aaron within a passage in which Moses argues with the Lord about Pharaoh and the children of Israel not harkening unto him, so the Lord appoints Aaron as the spokesman for Moses. This genealogy lists the first three sons born to Jacob by Leah: Reuben, Simeon, and Levi. One apparent purpose of this genealogy is to establish the biological relationship between Moses and Aaron.
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
Israel’s Justification ( Exo 1:1 to Exo 15:21 ) The emphasis of Exo 1:1 to Exo 18:27 is Israel’s justification before God through the sacrificial atonement of the Mosaic Law. The Passover was the time when God cut a covenant with the children of Israel, and the Exodus testifies to His response of delivering His people as a part of His covenant promise of redemption. Israel’s justification was fulfilled in their deliverance from the bondages of Egypt. Heb 11:23-29 highlights these events in order to demonstrate the faith of Moses in fulfilling his divine commission. These events serve as an allegory of the Church’s covenant through the blood of Jesus Christ and our subsequent deliverance from the bondages and sins of this world.
The Exodus Out of Egypt Exo 1:1 to Exo 18:27 describes God’s judgment upon Egypt and Israel’s exodus from bondage. In comparing the two Pharaoh’s discussed in this section of the book it is important to note that the pharaoh who blessed the people of Israel during Joseph’s life was himself blessed along with his nation. In stark contrast, the Pharaoh who cursed God’s people was himself cursed with the death of his own first born, as well as his entire nation. God watches over His people and blesses those who bless them and He curses those who curse them (Gen 12:3).
Gen 12:3, “And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The Lord Sends a Comforting Message
v. 1. Then the Lord said unto Moses, v. 2. And God spake unto Moses v. 3. and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty, but by My name Jehovah was I not known to them. v. 4. And I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. v. 5. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant. v. 6. Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord; v. 7. And I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and ye shall know that I am the Lord, your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. v. 8. And I will bring you in unto the land concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage,
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
DEPRESSION OF MOSES, AND CONFIRMATION OF HIS MISSION.
EXPOSITION
Exo 6:1-8
The expostulation of Moses did not offend God. God gave him, in reply to it, a most gracious series of promises and assurances, well calculated to calm his fears, assuage his griefs, and comfort his heart; and he confirmed the whole to him by his name JEHOVAH, “the Only Existent,” and therefore” the Eternal and Immutable.” This name he had previously revealed to Moses at Mount Sinai, as his peculiar name, and the one by which he would choose to be called (Exo 3:13-15). He had also told him to proclaim this name to the people. This command is now repeated (Exo 6:6) very solemnly; and with it are coupled the promises above alluded to.
1. That God would certainly bring the Israelites out of Egypt, despite the unwillingness of Pharaoh (Exo 6:1 and Exo 6:6),
2. That he would do this “with a stretched-out arm,” and by means of “great judgments” (Exo 6:6);
3. That he would keep the covenant which he had made with the patriarchs to give their descendants the laud of Canaan (Exo 6:4) and would assuredly “bring in” the Israelites to that land, and “give it them for an heritage” (Exo 6:8).
Exo 6:1
Now shalt thou see. There was encouragement in the very word “now.” Moses’ complaint was, that God delayed his coming, would not show himself, was “slack concerning his promise.” In reply he is told that there is to be no longer any delaythe work is just about to commence. “Now shalt thou see.” With a strong hand shall he let them go. The “strong hand” is not Pharaoh’s, but God’s. “By means of my strong hand” (or “overpowering might”) “laid upon him shall he be induced to let them go,” and similarly with the other clause. Drive them out. This phrase well expresses the final anxiety of Pharaoh to be rid of the Israelites. (See Exo 12:31, Exo 12:22.)
Exo 6:2
And God spake. The promise of the first verse was, apparently, given first, and was quite distinct from all the othersperhaps separated from them by an interval of hours, or days. It was especially addressed to Moses. The rest was in the main (Exo 6:6-8) a message to the people. I am the Lord. Or, “I am JEHOVAH.” Compare Exo 3:15, and note ad loc.
Exo 6:3
I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty. See Gen 17:1 for the revelation of this name to Abraham, and Gen 35:11 for its repetition to Jacob. We do not find the full name used by God in any appearance to Isaac; but IsaActs himself uses it in Gen 28:3. By my name Jehovah was I not known unto them. The explanation of this passage is by no means easy. God himself, according to Gen 15:7, revealed himself to Abraham as Jehovah before declaring his name to be El-Shaddai (God Almighty); and again revealed himself to Jacob as Jehovah-Elohim (Gen 38:13). Abraham named the place where he had been about to sacrifice Isaac, “Jehovah-jireh” (Gen 22:14). That Moses regarded the name as known even earlier, appears from Gen 4:1. It was probably as old as language. The apparent meaning of the present passage cannot therefore be its true meaning. No writer would so contradict himself. Perhaps the true sense is, “I was known to them as a Being of might and power, not as mere absolute (and so eternal and immutable) existence.” This meaning of the word, though its etymological and original meaning, may have been unknown to the patriarchs, who were not etymologists. It was first distinctly declared to Moses at Sinai (Exo 3:14, Exo 3:15).
Exo 6:4
I have established my covenant with them. Compare Gen 15:18-21; Gen 17:7, Gen 17:8; Gen 26:3; Gen 28:13. The land of Canaan, in a narrow acceptation, reached “from Sidon unto Gaza” (Gen 10:19); in a wider sense it included the whole tract between “the river of Egypt (Wady-el-Arish) and the great river, the river Euphrates” (Gen 15:18). It was this larger tract which was promised by God to Abraham. The land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. Literally, “the land of their sojourns wherein they sojourned.” (So Kalisch.) It was by permission of the lords of the soilthe Canaaaites, Perizzites, Hittites, and others, that Abraham and his descendants dwelt in Canaan to the time of Jacob’s descent into Egypt. (See Gen 12:6; Gen 13:7; Gen 23:7; Gen 27:46, etc.)
Exo 6:5
I have also heard the groaning. Compare Exo 2:24 and Exo 3:9. The repetition is in consequence of Moses’ expostulation (Exo 5:22, Exo 5:23), and is to assure the Israelites that God has not forgotten them, but will sustain them under their afflictions, and will shortly deliver them.
Exo 6:6
Say unto the children of Israel. God felt for the disappointment which the people had suffered in finding no alleviation of their toils, but the reverse, after their hopes had been raised high by the words of Moses (Exo 4:31). He therefore sent them an inspiriting and gracious message. “They should be rid of their bondage; they should be brought out; they should be redeemed and delivered by his mighty arm and miraculous intervention. He, Jehovah, had said it.” Faith would lay hold on this assurance and cling to it, even though God still delayed his coming, and did not precipitate matters. A stretched-out arm. Arms are stretched out by men to help and save. An outstretched arm in the Egyptian writing meant “action.” The phrase, elsewhere so common, is here used for the first time. (Compare, however, Exo 3:20.) It was significant of active, energetic help. Great judgments. These had been previously hinted at (Exo 3:20 and Exo 4:22) but had not been previously called “judgments.” Compare Gen 15:14 : “Also that nation whom they serve will I judge.” The plagues of Egypt were not merely “wonders,” but punishments inflicted on a proud and cruel nation by a Judge.
Exo 6:7, Exo 6:8
The promises are continued, heaped one upon another.
1. God will take them for his own people.
2. He will be, in a special sense, their God.
3. They shall clearly know that it is he who brings them forth out of Egypt.
4. They shall be brought into the promised land.
5. The land shall be made over to them, and become their own inheritance.
The Israelites were formally taken to be God’s people at Sinai (Exo 19:5, Exo 19:6); where, at the same time, he became (specially but not exclusively) their God (Exo 20:1; Exo 29:45, Exo 29:40). They had evidence that it was he who brought them forth in the pillar of fire and of a cloud (Exo 13:21; Exo 14:19, Exo 14:20, etc.). They were brought into the promised land by Joshua (Jos 4:1), and given the full possession of it by him and his successorsthe various judges and kings, until at last, under David and Solomon, they held the entire tract that had been promised to Abraham (see 1Ki 4:21; 2Ch 9:26).
Exo 6:8
The land which I did swear to give it to Abraham etc. See Gen 22:16-18; Gen 26:3, etc. The only formal oath is recorded in Gen 22:16; but an oath is perhaps implied in every covenant between God and man. God’s faithfulness is pledged to the performance of the terms of the covenant on his part. I will give it you for an heritage: I am the Lord. Rather, “I will give it you for an heritage, I the Lord” (or “I Jehovah,” or “I the Eternal One”). “You have the pledge of my Eternity and Immutability that it shall be yours.”
HOMILETICS
Exo 6:1
God’s condescension to a weak faith.
As the Lord Jesus condescended to Thomas, and bade him “reach hither his finger and behold his hands, and reach hither his hand and thrust it into his side,” so that he might be no longer “faithless, but believing”(Joh 20:27), so Jehovah now declared to Moses that, if he could not walk by faith, sight should be vouchsafed to him. “Now shalt thou see,” etc. Human infirmity is so greet, man’s faith is so weak, the best are so liable to accesses of distrust and despondency, that, if God were extreme to mark what is in this way done amiss, few indeed would be those who could “abide it.” Therefore, in his mercy, he condescends. Well for man could he breathe continually the higher, rarer, atmosphere of faith. But, if he cannot, yet has Godward aspirations, so that he takes his distrust and his despondency to God, as Moses did, God will in no wise cast him out. He will not “break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax.” He will accept the imperfect service that is still service, and allow his servant to work in a lower sphere. Henceforth the faith of Moses was not much triedhe had soon sight to walk by. When once the series of plagues began, he could no longer ask, “Why is it that thou hast sent me?” He could see that the end was being advancedthe deliverance being extorted from the kingand that the day of final triumph was fast coming.
Exo 6:2, Exo 6:3
God’s names and their importance.
With men a name is simply a “mark of difference”a mode of distinguishing one individual from another; and the particular name that a man bears is, generally speaking, a matter of the very slightest importance. But with God the case is otherwise. The names of God have always been among all men significant names. If their signification is clear, or generally known, then men’s views of the Supreme Being are vitally affected by the names under which they know him. Persons whose only name for God is Dyaus or Tien“the heaven”are not likely to be strongly apprehensive of the personality and spirituality of the Creator. If God is known as Ammon, the main idea of him will be, that he is a riddle and a mystery; if as Shaddai, that he is powerful; if as Mazda, that he is wise or bounteous. When monotheism is firmly established, it is well that God should be known by many names, as El, Elohim, Adonai, Eliun, Shaddai, Jehovah, because then his many and various attributes are better apprehended. If, however, God is to be known by one name only, or by one special name, while there is none more pure or lofty than Jehovah”the Self-Existent “there is none more tender and loving than our own English name, Godi.e. “the Good.”
Exo 6:4-8
God a keeper of covenants.
God is declared in Scripture to be one who “keepeth covenant and mercy, yea, to a thousand generations” (Deu 7:9). He is ever faithful. He cannot lie. He is not a man that he should repent. The bow which he set in the cloud, when he covenanted with Noah that the waters should no more become a flood to destroy all flesh, is still there, and the promise of which it was the sign has been keptthere has come no repetition of the Flood, no second destruction of mankind by water. God has kept the covenant which he made with Israel at Sinaifirst, on the side of promise, in giving them all the good things which he said he would give them; and then, on the side of threatening, in bringing upon them all the calamities which he said he would bring. With Christians, too, God enters into covenant at their baptism, promising them protection, spiritual aid, and eternal life in heaven, on their maintaining faith and repentance. This covenant, like his others, he will assuredly keep. Let them be but true to him, and they need have no fear but that he will be true to them. The Promised Land will be theirshe will give it to them for an heritagehe, Jehovah!
HOMILIES BY J. ORR
Exo 6:1-9
A Divine commentary on a Divine name.
The antiquity of the name Jehovah, setting aside direct testimonies to its occurrence in earlier scriptures, is sufficiently proved by its etymology (from havah, an oldand, in the days of Moses, obsoleteform of the verb “to be”), and from its presence (in composition) in pre-Mosaic proper names (e.g. Exo 6:20). It is absurd to press this passage in proof of the ignorance of the patriarchs of this name of God, when one observes
1. That the context plainly relates to a commentary which God was about to give on this name in deeds.
2. That the name is not here announced, but is presupposed as known”My name Jehovah.”
3. That in Exo 3:14-16, where it is announced, it is expressly referred to as a name of older dateGod styling himself repeatedly, “Jehovah God of your fathers.” The knowledge of God by this name in the present passage has obvious reference to a knowledge derived from manifestation of the attributes implied in the meaning of the name.
I. “JEHOVAH” IN CONTRAST WITH “EL–SHADDAI” (Exo 3:3).
1. El-Shaddai means, as translated, “God Almighty.” It denotes in God the simple attribute of powerAll-Mightinesspower exerted chiefly in the region of the natural life.
2. Jehovah, on the other hand, has a deeper and wider, an infinitely fuller and richer meaning. It denotes God as possessed of the perfections of the Absoluteself-identical and changeless because self-existent and eternal. God’s eternally what he is (Exo 3:14)the Being who is and remains one with himself in all he thinks, purposes, and does. This implies, together with immutability, the attribute of self-determining freedom, and that unlimited rule (dominion, sovereignty) in the worlds of matter and mind, which is of the essence of the conception of the Absolute. Hence such passages as these:”I am Jehovah, I change not” (Mal 3:6); “Whatsoever Jehovah pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and in all. deep places” (Psa 130:6); “Jehovah, he is God in heaven above, and upon the earth beneath; there is none else” (Deu 4:39). Jehovah is, moreover, the God of gracious purpose. It is this which gave the name its depth of interest to the Hebrew bondsmen, who were not likely to be greatly influenced by purely ontological conceptions. The chosen sphere for the manifestation of the attributes denoted by these names of God was that marked out by the promises of the Covenant. El-Shaddai, e.g; while declaring the possession by God of the attribute of power in general, had immediate reference to the manifestations of power which God would give in the birth of Isaac, and in the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham of a numerous posterity (Gen 16:1-7). It was power working in the interests of grace, in subserviency to love. The same is true of the name Jehovah. A view of God in his bare absoluteness would awaken only a speculative interest; but it is different when this self-existent, eternal Being is seen entering into history, and revealing himself as the God of compassionating love. Grace and mercy are felt to be no longer foreign to the meaning of the name, but to be as much a part of it as changelessness and freedom. This, accordingly, was what the name told to Israel; not simply that there was an Absolute, or even that he who had entered into covenant with the Fathers, and was now about to undertake their deliverance, was this absolute God; but rather, that it was in the work of their salvation that his perfections as Absolute were to be surprisingly and surpassingly exhibited. Their redemption was to be a chosen field for the manifestation of his Jehovah attributes. There would be given in it a discovery and demonstration of these surpassing everything that had hitherto been known. And was not this glorious comfort to a nation lying in darkness and the shadow of death!
II. THE HISTORICAL EXHIBITION OF THIS CONTRAST.
1. God revealed as El-Shaddai (Exo 3:3). God was made known as El-Shaddai in the birth of IsaActs (Rom 4:17-22), in the care exercised over the patriarchs in their wanderings (Gen 28:15), in the provision made for their temporal necessities (Gen 45:5-9), in the increase and preservation of the chosen race in Egypt (Exo 1:7, Exo 1:12, Exo 1:20; Exo 3:2). This name, however, was inadequate to express the richer aspects and relations of the Divine character brought to light in the Exodus, and in the subsequent experiences of the people.
2. The transition from El-Shaddai to Jehovah. Exo 3:4-6 narrate the steps by which the way was prepared for the new and higher manifestation. The preparation involved
(1) The establishment of a covenant of promise (Exo 3:4). If God is revealed as Jehovah when seen acting with unbounded freedom in fulfilment of a purpose, then it was necessary, in order that the freedom and sovereignty of the worker might be rendered completely manifest, that the purpose should be previously declared. Only on the basis of a previously declared purpose could the Jehovah attributes be conspicuously and conclusively displayed. (See interesting remarks on this in Bruce’s ‘Chief End of Revelation’ Rev 4:1-11.)
(2) The development of a crisis in the situation of Israel (Exo 3:5). This crisis was marked on the human side by the sufferings of Israel reaching a pitch of intensity which imperatively called for a Divine interposition; and on the Divine side, by God arousing himself, and determining himself to interfere on their behalf (Exo 2:23-25). We have already seen that the bondage was not without Divine permission. We have traced it in
(1) A punishment for sins,
(2) A trial of faith, and
(3) A moral preparation.
We have now to view in it a situation providentially prepared with the design of affording the tidiest possible scope for the display of the truth, grace, power, and all-embracing sovereignty of the great Being who was revealing himself in Israel’s history.
3. God revealed as Jehovah (Exo 3:6-9). This revelation would embrace
(1) The deliverance of the people from the bondage and misery of Egypt, and this with great accompaniments of power and judgment (Exo 3:6).
(2) Their adoption by God as a people to himself (Exo 3:7).
(3) Their final settlement in Canaan, in fulfilment of promise (Exo 3:8). By such deeds would God make it manifest that he was indeed Jehovah, their God. He would display his might; would demonstrate his supremacy as Moral Ruler; would magnify his covenant-keeping faithfulness; would reveal himself as the Living Personal God, working freely in history in pursuance of gracious purposes, and, in spite of all human opposition, bringing them to pass.
Lessons:
1. How wonderful to contemplate God in the majesty of his perfections as the Great I Amthe absolute and unconditioned Being! But what language will express the condescension and grace displayed in the stooping down of this absolute Being to enter into covenant engagements with man, even to the extent of binding himself with oaths to fulfil the promises given by his own free goodness.
2. The manifestation of the Jehovah attributes in the deliverance of Israel from Egypt has its higher counterpart in the discovery of them since made in the redemption of men from sin and Satan through Christ. Christ redeems us from sin’s burden and from Satan’s tyranny. He does this in virtue of the “stretched-out arm” and “mighty judgments” with which, while on earth, he overcame the Prince of the power of this world; himself also enduring the judgment of God in being “made sin for us,” “that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” By this atonement and victory, in the might of which he has now ascended on high, leading captivity captive, we, being reconciled to God, are formed into a people for his praise, and he becomes our God; the same power that redeemed us working in us to deliver us from sin in our members, and to prepare us for a heavenly inheritance; to which, as the goal of all God’s leading of us, the promises immovably point forward (Rom 8:1, Rom 8:2; 2Co 5:21; Eph 4:8; Col 1:12-15; Col 2:15; 1Pe 2:3-10; 1Pe 2:9, 1Pe 2:10).J.O.
Exo 6:7
A rich promise.
The promise is as rich as it is wonderful, and as wonderful as it is rich”I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God.” It includes
1. The highest honour. Who speaks? The absolute God. To whom? A nation of bondsmen. Yet he says”I will take you,” etc. And he did it, even as he still takes sinners in Christ into union and fellowship with himselfadopting them as sons, admitting them to covenant, making them heirs, etc.
2. The highest privilege. All promise and all blessing, for time and for eternity, are wrapped up in this single but most comprehensive word”I will be to you a God.”
3. The most indissoluble of relations. It lasts through time, and extends into eternity, enduring as long as God and the soul and Christ endure, and that is for ever (cf. Mat 22:31, Mat 22:32).J.O.
HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG
Exo 6:8
God encourages Moses in his despondency.
We have here
I. MOSES QUESTIONING THE PROCEDURE OF JEHOVAH. Observe
1. Moses in all his perplexity still acts upon the firm assurance that there is a Jehovah to resort to. “He returned unto the Lord.” Neither the reproaches of the people nor his own disappointment made him at all to doubt that he was dealing with a glorious, awful, and Divine existence outside of himself. It seems just as much a matter of course for Moses to meet with Jehovah, as it had been for the Israelite officers to meet with Moses. This is one good result of all the discussion (for hardly any other term will sufficiently indicate it) which Moses has had with Jehovah concerning his own fitness. Every time God spoke he stood out before the mind of his servant more distinctly and impressively as a real existence. The troubled heart of Moses leads him here into a set of very ignorant questions; but these were a small evil compared with what might have happened, viz. a lapse into utter atheism.
2. Moses, like the Israelite officers makes the mistake of going by first consequences. He does not rebuke the officers for wrong expectations and hasty conclusions. By his language in approaching God, he admits to the full that these officers have reason for their reproaches. They have appealed to Jehovah as against Moses; Moses in turn can only appeal to Jehovah, not against them, butto justify himself. How easy it is for a man, even though fully persuaded of God’s existence, to have utterly erroneous thoughts of his purposes and of his ways of working. Evidently it will need a gradual processand not without temporary retrogressionsin order to lift Moses above such conceptions of deity as he had gained in Egypt and Midian, and by all his acquaintance with current idolatries. It is easier to remember the name I AM than to understand the thing signified by the name.
3. In particular, Moses blundered in thinking of deliverance, not as a process, but as an actsomething to be achieved by a miracle as instantaneous and complete as those which he had wrought before Israel. One of the most pernicious misapprehensions of the Gospel is that which looks on salvation as an instantaneous thingwhich speaks of the saved, instead of using the more exact description, “those who are being saved” (Rom 5:10; 1Co 1:18; Php 2:12; 1Pe 1:9). First of all, we put our shallow, unspiritual notions into the Word of God, and then turn round in amazement, because his actions do not correspond with our ideas of what they should be.
4. We see from this utterance of Moses, how a man may make the first step towards freedom and Divine fulfilments of gracious purposes to him, and yet not know it. Moses having gone to Pharaoh, had met with nothing but rebuff; and was further compelled to see his brethren treated more cruelly than ever. He thinks nothing has been done, because he can see nothing, but he is utterly mistaken. The Israelites, had they only known it, were nearer salvationa great deal nearerthan when they first believed. “Wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people?” says Moses to Jehovah. Wherefore? indeed!only we should ever ask all-important questions in their proper order. First, “Is it so?“ and then, “Why is it so?” It was not true that Jehovah was evilly entreating the people. The liberating work was really begum, even though Moses could see no sign of it. When, from the point of view given by the catastrophe of the Red Sea, we look back on this first interview, then we see that it was also the first step in a solemn gradationfor Moses and Israel, the first step upwards; and just as surely for Pharaoh, the first step downwards.
II. GOD GIVES AN ANSWER FULL OF ENCOURAGEMENT.
1. Notice the absence of anything in the shape of rebuke. These words of Moses had a very offensive and dishonouring sound, but we do not read that Jehovah’s anger was kindled against Moses (Exo 4:14), or that he sought to kill him (Exo 4:24). When there is a want of due and prompt submission to the commandments of God, especially when they are plain and decisive ones, then God begins to threaten. But when the thing lacking is a want of understanding as to God’s way, then he patiently extends sympathy, and endeavours to give light and truth. A commander severely punishes a subordinate when he neglects plain orders at a critical juncture; but he would be very unreasonable if he expected him all at once to appreciate the plan of a campaign. Moses would have been very differently treated, if, after the reproaches of the officers, be had shown a spirit of disobedience towards Jehovah.
2. As to the substance of God’s reply, what can be said that he has not said already; save that he puts the old truths and promises more emphatically, more comprehensively than ever? The first appeal to Moses is, to rest as far as he can in an undisturbed sense of the power of God. That power belongs to Jehovah is the one thing which Moses has seen most clearly, felt most deeply; and God began by assuring him that he will yet be convinced how strong the Divine hand is. The strong man, violently and wastefully laying hold of Jehovah’s possessions, will be utterly subdued by a far stronger than himself. The next point to be noticed is that though, as we have said, there was no expressed rebuke, yet there are elements in this reply of God, out of which Moses, reflecting on what was expressed, could construct a rebuke for himself. Moses is not showing a faith equal to that of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and yet they were without the revelation of this name JEHOVAH. Moses, who had been told more of the Divine nature than Abraham was told, ought to have believed not less readily and steadily than Abraham. Rest if you can, Moses, in all the comforts that flow from a due consideration of this great and exhaustless Name! Then God goes on to speak of his own faithfulness, of the covenant which was constantly in the Divine mind. Was it for Moses to speak as if God was unmindful of that covenant; he to speak, who but lately had shown his own want of regard to the human side of it, and been in deadly pork[ because of his uncircumcised son! The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is Jehovah, the great I Am. If, then, he made a covenant with all its promises yesterday, be sure that to-day he is doing something to carry that covenant out. If, yesterday, he expressed compassion for the oppressed, and wrath with the oppressor, be sure that he has not relapsed into cold indifference to-day. These capricious sympathies are reserved for men and women who will weep over the mimic and exaggerated sorrows of the stage, and then go home to harden their hearts against the terrible sorrows of real life. When we read over the words of Moses here, and compare them with the words of God, we see how contracted were the views of Moses, and how gloriously enlarged were the views of God. Moses is thinking simply of deliverancehow to get the present generation from under the yoke of the oppressor; but God has in his mind a great plan, of which the deliverance from Pharaoh is but one stage in the development, and that a very brief stage. To the completion of this plan the liberation of Israel was necessary, and therefore this liberation would assuredly be achieved. Moses, so to speak, was low down in a hollow; he could get no proper view of the distances; he could not get a due impression of all this tract of time, from God’s first appearing to Abraham down to the securing of the inheritance; and therefore he may well be excused if he speaks hastily. But God looks down from his throne in eternity. The whole stretch of the work lies before him, and thus beholding it, he can but reiterate his promises, exhibit the great features of his plan, and counsel Moses and Israel to do the one thing needful, i.e. continue obediently waiting upon him in the generation in which they live. Let us do what God tells us, being perfectly sure that he sees what we cannot see, and that, because he is the God who cannot lie, he sets all things before us just as they are.
3. Another thing is to be considered here, which, though omitted from Jehovah’s answer to Moses, ought not to be neglected by us. For typical purposes, the welfare and future of Israel is the great thing spoken of; Pharaoh is looked at simply as the cruel adversary and oppressor of Israel. Hence just those things are stated which most effectively show his complete downfall. But we must remember that the things which are stated at any particular time are only a small part of what are in the mind of God. He states not all the considerations which inspire his acts, but only such as it may be well for us to know. Pharaoh had to be dealt with as a man, even though the record is’ emphatically constructed so as to set him forth merely as a type. It would have been manifestly unjust to bring upon him sudden and terrible destruction of all his power, without an appearance of appeal to his voluntary action.Y.
HOMILIES BY J. URQUHART
Exo 6:2-8
The message to afflicted Israel.
I. THE WORD TO THE LEADER: Exo 6:2-5. The message must be from faith to faith. The heart of God’s servant must first be revived ere he can impart strength to the people.
1. He is reminded of God’s faithfulness: “I am Jehovah.” We cannot grasp this truth without deliverance from fear.
2. The darkness will only make God’s glory shine out the more resplendently. Their present sufferings will mark a new era in God’s revelation of himself. Known before as the Almighty, he will now reveal himself as Jehovah, “the faithful One,” who remembers and fulfils his promises.
3. Having grasped the truth regarding God’s faithfulness he is led back to the promises by which the Lord has bound himself.
4. The assurance of present sympathy and speedy deliverance. He has heard their groaning and called to remembrance his pledged word. To dwell in these truths is to possess light and power. God’s word will then be a joy to our hearts, and will be in our lips consolation and strength for the fainting ones around us.
II. THE WORD TO THE PEOPLE: Exo 6:6-8.
1. It is shut in between the reiterated assurance, “I am Jehovah,” Exo 6:6-9. For them, too, the truth to rest in is God’s faithfulness.
2. The deliverance will be accompanied by the revelation of God’s terribleness (Exo 6:6). Israel never forgot those days, and never will.
3. God will wed them to himself. He does not deliver us and then leave us: “I will take you to me for a people and I will be to you a God.”
4. He will fulfil all the promises and give them the land for a heritage. This is the Gospel message: Our bonds will be brokenGod will bind us to himself and give us his people’s heritage. Have we received it? Is it a living hope, an abiding joy to us?U.
HOMILIES BY G. A. GOODHART
Exo 6:2-3
The Lord thy God is one God.
God appeared to the fathers of the race under one name; to their successors under another. Name is more than title; it is the character, or aspect of character, denoted by the title. Jehovah would seem to have been a title of God before the time of Moses; but to him, and to the Israelites through him, was first revealed that aspect of the Divine character which explained and justified the title. Notice
I. ONE MAY KNOW GOD WITHOUT KNOWING ALL ABOUT HIM. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob certainly knew God. They believed in him as an Almighty Rulerone who was ruling them, and who would fulfil his promise to them. His power and his trustworthiness were the characteristics they most relied on. Their faith centred in his name El-Shaddai, and as a living practical faith it tended to secure the righteousness for whichas seed for fruitit was reckoned. [Illustration:Certain medicines, in earlier years, were trusted and used successfully to produce certain effects; yet other uses remained unknown until long afterwards.] God was trusted by the patriarchs to the extent of their then knowledge, though they knew nothing of other characteristics which were to be afterwards revealed.
II. WE MAY KNOW GOD UNDER DIFFERENT ASPECTS, AND YET KNOW THE SAME GOD. No doubt the revelation of a new name, the fixing of the attention upon a new aspect of the Divine character, must have been, at first, somewhat startling to those who held by the old traditions. Those taught to believe in El-Shaddai may have held the new believers in Jehovah unorthodox. Yet both, in so far as their belief was genuine, knew and trusted the same God. Jehovah was El-Shaddai only viewed from a new standpoint. There was no contradiction between the two namesone God owned both.
III. WE MAY EXPECT AS THE OLD ORDER CHANGES TO VIEW GOD UNDER OTHER THAN THE OLD CONDITIONS. The new revelation resulted from new conditions. The old order having changed, a new standpoint was necessitated, whence God must be viewed under a new aspect. [Illustration:The properties of a medicine are discovered little by little, as new diseases cause it to be applied in different ways.] New conditions must result in new discoveries as to the “properties” of God.
Application:God is one; Truth is one; yet God and Truth are many-sidedwe see them differently according to the position which we occupy. Some people are in a great hurry to denounce all novelty as heresy; but novelty may mean nothing more than a new point of view, whereas heresy results from distorted vision; it sees wrongly, through personal idiosyncrasy, that which, from the same standpoint, is seen clearly by the clear-eyed. We do well to suspect ourselves when our conclusions differ from those of others. We may test such conclusions in two ways:
1. What are the conditions under which they have been arrived at? If the conditions have changed, we may expect the conclusions to be different.
2. Do they contradict old beliefs? If so, they should be suspectedor, Do they merely embrace them within a wider faith? If so, they may sufficiently justify themselves. We may expect new revelations, but we must not hurriedly accept novelties. New names will be made known, but they are never really inconsistent with the old.G.
Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary
Exo 6:1. Then the Lord said unto Moses The improper division of this, and of many other subsequent chapters, is evident to readers of the least attention. Some have supposed, that the language of Moses, at the close of the former chapter, was querulous and unbecoming: but the answer which God here condescends to make him, sufficiently shews, that it was not indecent or blameable; but only an humble and fervent expostulation with him, for the ill success of his first message.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
D.Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh. The seemingly mischievouas effect of their divine message, and the discouragment of the people and the messengers themselves. God reverses this effect nu solemnly promising deliverance, revealing his name Jehovah, summoning the heads of the tribes to unite with Moses and Aaron, raising Moses faith above Pharaohs defiance, and declaring the glorious object and issue of Pharaohs obduracy
Exo 5:1 to Exo 7:7
1And afterward Moses and Aaron went in [came] and told [said unto] Pharaoh, Thus saith Jehovah, God [the God] of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. 2And Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, neither will I [and moreoverI will not] let Israel go. 3And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with [met] us: let us go, we pray thee, three days1 journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto Jehovah our God, lest he fall upon us with the pestilence, or with the sword. 4And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let 5[release] the people from their works? get you unto your burdens [tasks]. And Pharaoh said. Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens [tasks]. 6And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people, and their officers [overseers], saying, 7Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore; let them go and gather straw for themselves. 8And the tale of the bricks which they did make [have been making] heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish aught thereof: for they be [are] idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God. 9Let there more work be laid upon the men [let the work be heavy for2 the men], that they may labor therein [be busied with it];3 and let them not regard vain [lying] words. 10 And the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers [overseers], and they spake unto the people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. 11Go ye, get you straw where ye can find it; yet [for] not aught 12of your work shall be diminished. So [And] the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble instead of [for] straw. 13And the taskmasters hasted [urged] them, saying, Fulfil your works, your daily tasks, as when there was straw. 14And the officers [overseers] of the children of Israel, which [whom] Pharaoh had set over them, were beaten, and demanded [were asked], Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task in making brick both yesterday 15and to-day as heretofore? Then [And] the officers [overseers] of the children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants? 16There is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say unto us, Make brick;4 and, behold, thy servants are beaten; but the fault is in thine own people 17[thy people are in fault]. But he said, Ye are idle, ye are idle [Ide are ye, idle]; therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice [and sacrifice] to Jehovah. 18Go therefore now [And now go], and work; for [and] there shall no straw be given you; yet shall ye [and ye shall] deliver the tale of bricks. 19And the officers [overseers] of the children of Israel did see that they were in [saw themselves in] evil case [trouble], after it was said, Ye shall not minish [diminish] aught from your bricks of [bricks,] your daily task. 20And they met Moses and Aaron, who stood in the way [who were standing to meet them], as they came forth from Pharaoh: 21And they said unto them, Jehovah look upon you, and judge; because ye have made our savor to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to slay us. 22And Moses returned unto Jehovah, and said, Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated [thou done evil to] this people? why is it that thou hast [why hast thou] sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all.
Chap. Exo 6:1 Then [And] Jehovah said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with [through]5 a strong hand shall he let them go, and with 2[through] a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land. And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Jehovah. 3And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of [as]6 God Almighty, but by7 my name Jehovah was I not known to them. 4And I have also [I also] established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage 5[sojourn], wherein they were strangers [sojourners]. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant. 6Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am Jehovah, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid [deliver] you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm and with great judgments. 7And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and ye shall know that I am Jehovah your God, which 8[who] bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land concerning the which [the land which] I did swear to give it [to give] to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage [a possession]: I am Jehovah. 9And Moses spake so unto the children of Israel: but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish [vexation] of spirit and 10for cruel bondage. And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, 11Go in, speak unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, that he let the children of Israel go out of his land. 12And Moses spake before Jehovah, saying, Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me; how then [and how] shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised 13lips [uncircumcised of lips]? And Jehovah spake unto Moses and unto Aaron, and gave them a charge unto the children of Israel and unto Pharaoh king 14of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. These be [are] the heads of their fathers houses (their ancestral houses): The sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel; Hanoch, and Pallu, Hezron, and Carmi; these be [are] the families of Reuben. 15And the sons of Simeon; Jemuel, and Jamin, and Thad, and Jachin, and Zohar, and Shaul, the son of a [the] Canaanitish woman; these are16the families of Simeon. And these are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generations [genealogies]; Gershon, and Kohath, and Merari: and the years of the life of Levi were an [a] hundred thirty and seven years. 17The sons of Gershon: Libni, and Shimi, according to their families. 18And the sons of Kohath: Amram, and Izhar, and Hebron, and Uzziel; and the years of the life of Kohath were an [a] hundred thirty and three years. 19And the sons of Merari: Mahali, and Mushi: These are the families of Levi according to their generations [genealogies].20And Amram took him Jochebed his fathers sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses: and the years of the life of Amram were an [a] hundred and thirty and seven years. 21And the sons of Izhar: Korah, and Nephez, and Zichri. 22And the sons of Uzziel: Mishael, and Elzaphan, and Zithri [Sithri]. 23And Aaron took him Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab, sister of Naashon, to wife; and she bare him Nadab, and Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. 24And the sons of Korah: Assir, and Elkanah, and Abiasaph: these are the families of the Korhites. 25And Eleazar, Aarons son, took him one of the daughters of Putiel to wife; and she bare him Phinehas: these are the heads of the fathers of the Levites 26according to their families. These are that Aaron and Moses, to whom Jehovah said, Bring out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt according to their 27armies [hosts]. These are they which [who] spake unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring out the children of Israel from Egypt: these are that Moses and Aaron. 28And it came to pass on the day when Jehovah spake unto Moses in the land of 29Egypt, That Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying, I am Jehovah: speak thou unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I say unto thee. 30And Moses said before Jehovah, Behold I am of uncircumcised lips [uncircumcised of lips], and how shall [will] Pharaoh hearken unto me?
Chap. Exo 7:1 And Jehovah said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god [God] to Pharaoh; and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet. 2Thou shalt speak all that I command thee; and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto Pharaoh that he send the children of Israel out of his land. 3And I will harden Pharaohs heart, and 4 multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh shall [will] not hearken unto you, that I may [and I will] lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people [my hosts, my people], the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. 5And the Egyptians shall know that I am Jehovah, when I stretch forth mine [my] hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them. 6And Moses and Aaron did as 7[did so; as] Jehovah commanded them, so did they. And Moses was fourscore years old, and Aaron fourscore and three years old, when they spake unto Pharaoh.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
[Exo 5:3. This expression is the same as the one in Exo 3:18 (on which Bee the note), except that here we have , instead of . But the interchange of these forms is so frequent that it is most natural to understand the two words as equivalent in sense.Tr.]
[Exo 5:9. Literally upon, the work being represented as a burden imposed upon the Israelites.Tr.]
[Exo 5:9. Literally, do in it, i.e. have enough to do in the work given.Tr.]
[Exo 5:16. If we retain the order of the words as they stand in the original, we get a much more forcible translation of the first part of this verse: Straw, none is given to thy servants; and Brick, they say to us, make ye. This brings out forcibly the antithesis between straw and brick.Tr.]
[Chap. 6. Exo 6:1. I.e. by virtue, or in consequence, of Jehovahs strong hand, not Pharaohs, as one might imagine.Tr.]
[Exo 6:3. Literally, I appeared in God Almightya case of essential, meaning in the capacity of. Vid Ewald, Ausf. Gr. 299, b; Ges. Heb. Gr. 154, 3 a (y).Tr.]
[Exo 6:3. The original has no preposition. Literally: My name Jehovah, I was not known.Tr.]
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Exo 5:1. Afterward Moses and Aaron went.Their message is quite in accordance with the philosophical notions of the ancients, and especially with the Israelitish faith. Having accepted the message from Horeb, Israel became Jehovahs people, Jehovah Israels God; and as Israels God, He through His ambassadors meets Pharaoh, and demands that the people be released, in order to render Him service in a religious festival. The message accords with the situation. Jehovah, the God of Israel, may seem to Pharaoh chiefly the national deity of Israel; but there is an intimation in the words that He is also the Lord of Pharaoh, of Egypt, and of its worship. Under the petition for a furlough lurks the command to set free; under the recognition of the power of Pharaoh over the people, the declaration that Israel is Jehovahs free people; under the duty of celebrating a feast of Jehovah in the wilderness, the thought of separating from Egypt and of celebrating the Exodus. The words seemed like a petition which had an echo like a thunder-tone. Perhaps the instinct of the tyrant detected something of this thunder-tone. But even if not, the modest petition was enough to enrage him.
Exo 5:2.Who is Jehovah?As the heathen had the notion that the gods governed territorially, the Jews seemed to fall under the dominion of the Egyptian gods. They had no land, had moreover in Pharaohs eyes no right to be called a nation; therefore, even if they had a deity, it must have been, in his opinion, an anonymous one. This seemed to him to be proved by the new name, Jehovah (which therefore could not have been of Egyptian origin). But even disregard of a known foreign deity was impiety; still more, disregard of the unknown God who, as such, was the very object towards which all his higher aspirations and conscientious compunctions pointed.8 Thus his obduracy began with an act of impiety, which was at the same time inhumanity, inasmuch as he denied to the people freedom of worship. He was the prototype of all religious tyrants.
Exo 5:3. He is glorified by us.[This is Langes translation of ].9 The correction : He hath met us (), weakens the force of a significant word. They appeal to the fact that Jehovah from of old has been their fathers God; and also in their calling themselves Hebrews is disclosed the recollection of ancient dignities and the love of freedom growing out of it.Three days journey.Keil says: In Egypt offerings may be made to the gods of Egypt, but not to the God of the Hebrews. But see Exo 8:26. In the three days journey also is expressed the hope of freedom.With the pestilence.A reference to the power of Jehovah, as able to inflict pestilence and war, and to His jealousy, as able so severely to punish the neglect of the worship due Him. Not without truth, but also not without subtileness, did they say, lest He fall upon us; in the background was the thought: lest He fall upon thee. Clericus remarks that, according to the belief of the heathen, the gods punish the neglect of their worship.
Exo 5:4. Wherefore, Moses and Aaron.He thus declares their allegation about a message from Jehovah to be fictitious. He conceives himself to have to do only with two serfs.Release the people.And so introduce anarchy and barbarism. The same objection has been made against propositions to introduce freedom of evangelical religion.Get you to your burdens.To all the other traits of the tyrant this trait of ignorance must also be added. As he thinks that Moses and Aaron belong among the serfs, so he also thinks that servile labor is the proper employment of the people.
Exo 5:5.The people of the land (peasants). The simple notion of countrymen can, according to the parallel passages, Jer 52:25 and Eze 7:27, denote neither bondmen nor Egyptian countrymen as a caste, although both ideas are alluded to in the expression, a people of peasants, who as such must be kept at work, especially as there are becoming too many of them. The perfect sense, Ye have made them rest, is to be ascribed to the fancy of the tyrant.
Exo 5:6.The same day.Restlessness of the persecuting spirit. The , or the drivers over them, are the Egyptian overseers who were appointed over them; the , or the scribes belonging to them, were taken from the Jewish people, officers subordinate to the others, in themselves leaders of the people.
Exo 5:7. The bricks in the old monuments of Egypt, also in many pyramids, are not burnt, but only dried in the sun, as Herodotus (II. 136) mentions of a pyramid (Keil). The bricks were made firm by means of the chopped straw, generally gathered from the stubble of the harvested fields, which was mixed with the clay. This too is confirmed by ancient monuments. Hengstenberg, Egypt, etc., p. 80 sq.Heretofore.Heb.: yesterday and the day before yesterday. The usual Hebrew method of designating past time.
Exo 5:9. Regard lying words. .Thus he calls the words of Moses concerning Jehovahs revelation.
Exo 5:10. Even the Jewish scribes yield without opposition. They have become slavish tools of the foreign heathen despotism.
Exo 5:16. Thy people is in fault (orsinneth).According to Knobel, the phrase thy people refers to Israel; according to Keil, to the Egyptians. The latter view is preferable; it is an indirect complaint concerning the conduct of the king himself, against whom they do not dare to make direct reproaches. is a rare feminine form for (see on Gen 33:11) and is construed as feminine, as in Jdg 18:7; Jer 8:5 (Keil).10
Exo 5:21. Ye have made our savor to be abhorred (Heb. to stink) in the eyes.The strong figurativeness of the expression is seen in the incongruity between odor and eyes. The meaning is: ye have brought us into ill-repute.
Exo 5:22. Augustines interpretation: Hc non contumacyi verba sunt, vel indignationis sed inquisitionis et orationis, is not a sufficient explanation of the mood in which Moses speaks. It is the mark of the genuineness of the personal relation between the believers and Jehovah, that they may give expression even to their vexation in view of Jehovahs unsearchable dealings. Expressions of this sort run through the book of Job, the Psalms, and the Prophets, and over into the New Testament, and prove that the ideal religion is not that in which souls stand related to God as selfless creatures to an absolute destiny.
Exo 6:1-3. Knobel finds here a new account of the call of Moses, and that, by the Elohist. A correct understanding of the connection destroys this hypothesis. Moses is in need of new encouragement. Therefore Jehovah, first, repeats His promise, by vigorous measures to compel Pharaoh to release Israel, in a stronger form (comp. Exo 3:19; Exo 4:21); and then follows the declaration that this result is pledged in the name Jehovah, that the name Jehovah, in its significance as the source of promise, surpasses even the name God Almighty. If the fathers, in the experience of His miraculous help, have become acquainted with Him as God Almighty, they are now to get a true knowledge of Him as the God of helpful covenant faithfulness. This is the reason why he recurs to the name Jehohovah. Comp. Keil, p. 467.11
Exo 6:4. Vid. the promises, Gen 17:7-8; Gen 26:3; Gen 35:11-12.
Exo 6:6.I am Jehovah. With this name He begins and ends (Exo 6:8) His promise. With the name Jehovah, then, He pledges Himself to the threefold promise: (1) To deliver the people from bondage; (2) to adopt them as His people; (3) to lead them to Canaan, their future possession.With a stretched-out arm. A stronger expression than . Comp. Deu 4:34; Deu 5:15; Deu 7:19.
Exo 6:9.For vexation of spirit. Gesenius: Impatience. Keil: Shortness of breath, i.e., anguish, distress.
Exo 6:10-11. While Moses courage quite gives way, Jehovah intensifies the language descriptive of his mission.
Exo 6:12. On the other hand, Moses intensifies the expression with which he made (Exo 4:10) his want of eloquence an excuse for declining the commission.Of uncircumcised lips. Since circumcision was symbolic of renewal or regeneration, this expression involved a new phase of thought. If he was of uncircumcised or unclean lips (Isa 6:5), then even Aarons eloquence could not help him, because in that case Moses could not transmit in its purity the pure word of God. In his strict conscientiousness he sincerely assumes that there must be a moral hinderance in his manner of speaking itself.
Exo 6:13. This time Jehovah answers with an express command to Moses and Aaron together, and to the children of Israel and Pharaoh together. This comprehensive command alone can beat down Moses last feeling of hesitation.
Exo 6:14-27. But as a sign that the mission of Moses is now determined, that Moses and Aaron, therefore, are constituted these prominent men of God, their genealogy is now inserted, the form of which shows that it is to be regarded as an extract from a genealogy of the twelve tribes, since the genealogy begins with Reuben, but does not go beyond Levi.
Exo 6:14. . Father-houses, not father-house [Keil]. The compound form has become a simple word. See Keil, p. 469. The father-houses are the ramifications of the tribes. The tribes branch off first into families, or clans, or heads of the father-houses; these again branch off into the father-houses themselves. The Amram of Exo 6:20 is to be distinguished from the Amram of Exo 6:18. See the proof of this in Tiele, Chronologie des A. T.; Keil, p. 469.12 The text, to be sure, does not clearly indicate the distinction. The enumeration of only four generationsLevi, Kohath, Amram, Mosespoints unmistakably to Gen 15:16 (Keil).
Exo 6:20.His fathers sisterThat was before the giving of the law in Lev 18:12. The LXX. and Vulg. understand the word of the daughter of the fathers brother. According to Exo 7:7, Aaron was three years older than Moses; that Miriam was older than either is seen from the history.
Exo 6:23. Aarons wife was from the tribe of Judah. Vid. Num 2:3.
Exo 6:25. . Abbreviation of [heads of the father-houses].
Exo 6:26.These are that Aaron and Moses.Thus the reason is given for inserting this piece of genealogy in this place.
Exo 6:28. Resumption of the narrative interrupted at Exo 6:12. What is there said is here and afterward repeated more fully. In the land of Egypt.This addition is not a sign of another account, but only gives emphasis to the fact that Jehovah represented Himself in the very midst of Egypt as the Lord of the country, and gave Moses, for the furtherance of his aim, a sort of divine dominion, namely, a theocratic dominion over Pharaoh.
Exo 7:1. What Moses at first was to be for Aaron as the inspiring Spirit of God, that he is now to be for Aaron as representative of God in His almighty miraculous sway. So far Aarons position also is raised. It must not be overlooked that, with this word of divine revelation, Moses growing feeling of lofty confidence and assurance of victory corresponds; it was developed in Egypt itself, and from out of his feeling of inability. For Aaron Moses is God as the revealer, for Pharaoh as the executor, of the divine will (Keil).
Exo 7:2.That he send.Keils translation, and so he will let go, does not accord with the following verse.
Exo 7:4.My hosts.Israel becomes a host of Jehovah. Vid. Exo 13:18, and the book of Numbers. This is the first definite germ of the later name, God, or Jehovah, of hosts; although the name in that form chiefly refers to heavenly hosts; these under another name have been mentioned in Gen 32:2.
Footnotes:
[1][Exo 5:3. This expression is the same as the one in Exo 3:18 (on which Bee the note), except that here we have , instead of . But the interchange of these forms is so frequent that it is most natural to understand the two words as equivalent in sense.Tr.]
[2][Exo 5:9. Literally upon, the work being represented as a burden imposed upon the Israelites.Tr.]
[3][Exo 5:9. Literally, do in it, i.e. have enough to do in the work given.Tr.]
[4][Exo 5:16. If we retain the order of the words as they stand in the original, we get a much more forcible translation of the first part of this verse: Straw, none is given to thy servants; and Brick, they say to us, make ye. This brings out forcibly the antithesis between straw and brick.Tr.]
[5][Chap. 6. Exo 6:1. I.e. by virtue, or in consequence, of Jehovahs strong hand, not Pharaohs, as one might imagine.Tr.]
[6][Exo 6:3. Literally, I appeared in God Almightya case of essential, meaning in the capacity of. Vid Ewald, Ausf. Gr. 299, b; Ges. Heb. Gr. 154, 3 a (y).Tr.]
[7][Exo 6:3. The original has no preposition. Literally: My name Jehovah, I was not known.Tr.]
[8][This is putting a rather fine point on Pharaohs wickedness. A bad man cannot, as such, be required to have aspirations towards any hitherto unknown god of whom he may chance to hear, and to have such aspirations just because he has never before heard of him. It is enough to say that, as a polytheist, ho ought to have respected the religion of the Hebrews.Tr.]
[9][See under Textual and Grammatical. It is true that would be the usual form for the meaning has met; but on the other hand it is certain that sometimes is = , and the analogy of Exo 3:18 points almost unmistakably to such a use. Moreover, even if this were not the case, it is hard to see how the Hebrew can be rendered: He is glorified by us. For does not mean is glorified, and does not mean by us. If the verb is to be taken in its ordinary sense, the whole expression would read: He is called upon us, i.e. we bear his name, though even this would be only imperfectly expressed.Tr.]
[10][The opinion of Knobel, here rejected, is held also by Glaire, Arnheim, Frst and others. The meaning, according to this, is: Thy people (i.e. the Israelites) are treated as if guilty. The LXX. understood as a verb in the second person, and rendered , thou doest wrong to thy people. Still other explanations have been resorted to; but the one given by Lange is the most natural, and is quite satisfactory.Tr.]
[11][Notice should be taken of the fact that from Exo 6:3 it has been inferred by many that the name Jehovah had actually (or, at least, in the opinion of the writer of this passage) never been known or used before this time; consequently that wherever the name occurs in Genesis or Exodus 1-5, it is a proof that the passage containing it was written after the time here indicated. This is an important element in the theories concerning the authorship of the Pentateuch. Certainly if we press the literal meaning of the last clause of Exo 6:3, it would seem to follow that the name Jehovah (Yahveh) was now for the first time made known. But, to say nothing of the fact that the name Jehovah is not only familiarly used by the author of the book of Genesis, but is also put into the mouths of the earliest patriarchs (all which might be regarded as a proleptic use of the word, or a careless anachronism), it is perhaps sufficient to reply, that such an inference from the passage before us betrays a very superficial view of the significance of the word name, as used in the Bible, and especially in the Hebrew Scriptures. The name of a person was conceived as representing his character, his personality. When Jacobs name was changed, it was said: Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel; and the reason given for the change is that he has now entered into a new relation with God. Yet, notwithstanding the new appellation, the name Jacob continued to be used, and even more frequently than Israel. In the case before us, then, the statement respecting the names amounts simply to this, that God had not been understood in the character represented by the name Jehovah. The use of the phrase my name instead of the name, itself points to the previous use of the name.Tr.]
[12][The proof, as given by Tiele, is this: According to Num 3:27 sq., the Kohathites were divided (at the time of Moses) into the four branches: Amramites, Izharites, Hebronites, and Uzzielites; these together constituted 8,600 men and boys (women and girls not being reckoned). Of these the Amramites would include about one fourth, or 2,150. Moses himself, according to Exo 18:3-4, had only two sons. If, therefore, Amram, the son of Kohath, the ancestor of the Amramites, were identical with Amram the father of Moses, then Moses must have had 2,147 brothers and brothers sons (the brothers daughters, the sisters and sisters children not being reckoned). But this being quite an impossible supposition, it must be conceded that it is demonstrated that Amram the son of Kohath is not Moses father, but that between the former and his descendant of the same name an indefinitely long list of generations has fallen out.Tr.].
Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange
CONTENTS
This becomes an interesting Chapter, in that a gracious God, in answer to the complaints of Moses and the people, takes occasion therefrom to assure them of the reality of his delivering them from the oppressions of Egypt, by proclaiming his glorious incommunicable name of Jehovah, the promise-making, and promise-performing God. Moses is again commanded to repair to the court of Pharaoh: and by the way to assure the people that the Lord their God had heard their cries, and that he would deliver them. Moses expresseth his reluctance and desires to be excused going again before Pharaoh; but the Lord’s commands are absolute. The Holy Ghost hath thought proper in this place to introduce the ancestry of Moses and Aaron in the tribe of Levi, together with that of the tribes of Simeon and Reuben.
Exo 6:1
In answer to the complaints of Moses, and the cries of the children of Israel, the Lord gives assurance that such shall be the event, that Pharaoh shall at length not only let the people go but earnestly desire their departure. See Exo 12:31-33 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
The Names of God
Exo 6:2-3
If we read into the first of these two verses ‘Jehovah’ for ‘Lord,’ we shall get the exact balance and contrast of what was here said to Moses. A name is just the utterance of character. That is its first and proper meaning. It is the putting out of a character in a human word, and that is just what God meant when He gave Himself these various names. They were intended to be such utterances as men and women could easily understand and apply by understanding them to their varied experience. The text gives us two reveal ings of names from God, and God Himself is careful to tell Moses that there was a progression from the one to the other, that the first was the preliminary of the second, and the second was raised, as it were, on the meaning of the first. Now the conditions of the people to whom the name was given determined these various self-revealings.
I. The Progressive Revealing of the Names of God. In general the occasions of revealing different names of God correspond in the history of Israel to special epochs in that history, or, in the broader area of the human race, they correspond with great needs of that race, and gradually, by the successive names, God tried to show mankind what He really was. All the revealings of the name of God in the Bible have crowned and culminated in one name that you find in the New Testament from the lips of Christ, the name that carried to Him most of the meaning of the Godhead and the name that He meant should carry most of the meaning of the Godhead to you, for in His last prayer to the Father He speaks in this wise: ‘O, righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have known Thee,’ and that name of ‘Righteous Father’ is the last utterance of the Godhead as to what God is and as to how you are to name God to your own hearts and consciences. Now all down the Bible it would be an easy matter to trace historically this development of the name of God, and you must not wonder that at the beginning the name was a very primitive one, carrying rather ideas of power and might and august majesty than tenderness and gentleness and love, for the full revealing of God at the first would have been utterly useless, and indeed impossible. God has always revealed the knowledge of Himself and all other knowledge in one way. It has been through consecrated souls and gifted minds who, as a rule, in religious revelation, have not been the official representatives of religion, have not been the priests, have not been the leaders of the religious life of their time, and have not been popular, as a rule, certainly have not had a large popular following. Abraham, Moses, as in my text, all the Hebrew prophets, the Apostles of the Lord, and Christ Himself, they were all antagonists of the official religion of their times, and God passed by officialism, and chose out lowly hearts and gracious minds, and through them revealed the sequence of the names of God from lower to higher and from simple to more wondrous. And God acts on the same principle in His revealing to souls. That has been God’s way, a progressive revealing of His name.
II. The Meaning of the Names. Apply it to what you have in my text. Here you have two names, ‘God Almighty’ and ‘Jehovah’. Now the first one, ‘God Almighty,’ is said here to be suitable to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but not suitable to the slaves in Egypt that Moses was to enfranchise. The other name was fit for them, namely, that great name of ‘Jehovah, the Lord’. This second is an advance on the first. An inferior idea of God was given to the great saints; a superior idea of God was given to the slaves in Egypt. What do these two names mean? The first means simply ‘divine almightiness,’ the idea of organized power, God Almighty; the second one is an altogether more involved name, and in general you may understand it in this way. It means ‘The Unchanging, the Eternal, Trustworthy One’. The name Jehovah carries in it the idea of a covenant-keeping God. By the first, the idea of power, almightiness, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were specially blessed and strengthened, and it was just what they wanted, it was just the name suitable to their condition. Round the other name of the trustworthy, covenant-keeping God, a nation of slaves was rallied and concentrated and led on to liberty and national life. Men in sorrow need more of God, the revealing of more of God’s tenderness, than men in prosperity and health and strength and happiness.
III. The Greater the Need the Greater the Revelation. The deeper the sorrow, the more the unfolding of the heart of God. The more poignant the grief, the more tender the revelation of the name of God. And that has always been God’s way. The deeper the sin, the more bitter the sorrow of man, the more tenderly God has revealed Himself. The thought ought to nerve us to know that God has given us that last name because the needs of an age like this are greater than the needs of an age like that of Abraham; more of His love has been revealed to this age than to the Apostles’ age.
References. VI. 3. J. H. Rushbrooke, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxi. 1907, p. 69. VI. 6-8. H. W. Webb-Peploe, The Life of Privilege, p. 44.
Exo 6:9
It is possible to be so disheartened by earth as to be deadened towards heaven.
C. G. Rossetti.
The Heart’s Obstruction to the Hearer
Exo 6:9
I. It is not always the fault of a preacher that his message does not go home. ‘They hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage.’ There never was a better preacher, there never was a more joyous message; but there was a weight at the heart of the hearer. There was a stone at the door of the sepulchre which prevented the voice from penetrating inside.
II. Observe, there were two impediments in the heart a positive and a negative barrier a sense of anguish and a sense of bondage. These often exist separately. There are some who are the victims of a definite sorrow; they have a special cause of grief which blocks the door of the heart and will let no message of comfort enter in. There are others, again, who, without being able to point to a special sorrow, are simply conscious of a chain about the spirit; they have an oppression all round, a nameless weight which will not let them soar. I know not which is more deterrent to a message the anguish or the bondage the poignant grief in a single spot or the dull pain all over. Either is incompatible with the hearing of a Sermon on the Mount.
III. How, then, shall I lift the stone from the door of the sepulchre, that the angel of peace may enter in! Can I say it is summer when it is winter! No, my Father, Thou wouldst not have me say that. But Thou wouldst have me forget, not the winter, but my winter. Thou wouldst have me remember that there are thousands like me, thousands feeling the same anguish, thousands bearing the same bondage. Thou wouldst not have me ignore the night, but Thou wouldst have me remember that I watch not there alone. Is Peter weighted in the Garden; Thou wouldst have him call to mind that James and John are also there. Thou wouldst have him watch for one hour by the burden of James and John. Thou wouldst have him bury his own beneath the soil till he has returned from his mission of sympathy. Then after the night watches Thou wouldst have him go back to disinter his burden. Thou wouldst have him turn up the soil to uncover the spot of the burial. He will cry, ‘My burden has been stolen in the night; the place where I laid it is vacant; I left it here, and it is here no more; come, see the place where my grief lay!’ So, my Father, shall he find rest rest in Thy love.
G. Matheson, Messages of Hope, p. 46.
References. VI. 9. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxxiv. No. 2026.
Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson
VI
THE TEN PLAGUES, OR THE GREAT DUEL
Exodus 5:18-13:36
The present chapter will be upon the great duel (as Dr. Sampey is pleased to call it) between Moses and Pharaoh, or in other words, the ten plagues. I have mapped out, as usual, some important questions.
What is the scope of the lesson? From Exo 5:15-12:37 . What is the theme of the lesson? The ten plagues, or God’s answer to Pharaoh’s question: “Who is the Lord?” What is the central text? Exo 12:12 : “Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment.” What was the purpose of these plagues? Generally, as expressed in Exo 9:16 : “That my name may be declared throughout all the earth,” i.e., to show that Jehovah was the one and only God. The second object was to show to Israel that Jehovah was a covenant keeping God. The first object touched outsiders. As it touched Moses it was to show that God would fully accredit him as the leader. How was Moses accredited? By the power to work miracles. Let the reader understand, if you never knew it before, that Moses is the first man mentioned in the Bible who worked a miracle, though God had worked some miracles directly before this. But Moses was God’s first agent to work miracles, duly commissioned to bear a message to other men.
On the general subject of miracles, I wish to offer the remark, that there are three great groups of miracles, viz.: The Plagues of Egypt, the miracles wrought by Elijah and Elisha, and the miracles wrought by Christ and the apostles. And from the time of Moses, every now and then to the time of Christ, some prophet was enabled to work a miracle. These are the groups. But what is a miracle? When we come to the New Testament we find four words employed, all expressed in Greek. One word expresses the effect of the miracle on the beholder, a “wonder.” Another expresses the purpose, a “sign.” Another expresses the energy, or “power,” while still another expresses the “work”‘, i.e., “wonders, signs, powers, works.”
As we have come to miracles for the first time, it would be a good thing for every reader to read the introductory part of Trench, or some other author Trench is the best. We come back to our question, What is a miracle? Take this for a definition: (1) “An extraordinary event.” That is the first idea. If it is an ordinary event you cannot call it wonderful. It is not a miracle that the sun should rise in the east. It would be a miracle for it to be seen rising in the west. (2) This extraordinary event is discernible to the senses. (3) It apparently violates natural laws and probabilities. I say, “apparently,” because we do not know that it actually does. (4) It is inexplicable by natural laws alone. (5) It is produced by the agency of God, and is sometimes produced immediately. (6) For religious purposes; usually to accredit a messenger or attest God’s revelation to him.
I am going to call your attention to some definitions that are either imperfect or altogether wrong. Thomas Aquinas, a learned doctor of the Middle Ages, says that miracles are events wrought by divine power apart from the order generally observed in nature. That is simply an imperfect definition; good as far as it goes. Hume and Spinoza, a Jew, say, “A miracle is a violation of a natural law; therefore,” says Spinoza, “impossible”; “therefore,” says Hume, “incredible.” It is not necessarily a violation of natural laws: for instance, if I turn a knife loose, the law of gravitation would make it fall, but if a wind should come in between, stronger than the law, of gravitation, and this natural law should hold the knife up, it would not be a violation of the natural law; simply one
natural law overcoming another. Therefore, it is wrong to say that a miracle is a violation of natural law. Jean Paul, a noted critical skeptic, says, “Miracles of earth are the laws of heaven.” Renan says: “Miracles are the inexplicable.” Schleiermacher says, “Miracles are relative, that is, the worker of them only anticipates later knowledge.” Dr. Paulus says, “The account of miracles is historical, but the history must signify simply the natural means.” Wolsey says, “The text that tells us about miracles is authentic, but the miracles are allegories, not facts.” Now, I have given you what I conceive to be a correct definition of a miracle and some definitions that are either imperfect or altogether faulty.
When may miracles be naturally expected? When God makes new revelations; as, in the three epochs of miracles.
To what classes of people are miracles incredible? Atheists, pantheists, and deists. Deists recognize a God of physical order. Pantheists make no distinction between spirit and matter. Atheists deny God altogether.
What are counterfeit miracles? We are going to strike some soon, and we have to put an explanation on them. In 2Th 2 they are said to be “lying wonders,” or deeds. They are called “lying” not because they are lies, but because their object is to teach a lie, or accredit a lie. Unquestionably, Satan has the power to do supernatural things, so far as we understand the laws of nature, and when the antichrist comes he is to be endowed with power to work miracles that will deceive everybody in the world but the elect. It is not worth while, therefore, to take the position that the devil and his agents cannot, by permission of God, work miracles. When may we naturally expect counterfeit miracles? When the real miracles are produced the counterfeit will appear as an offset. Whenever a religious imposture of any kind is attempted, or any false doctrine is preached, they will claim that they can attest it. For example, on the streets of our cities are those, whatever you call them, who claim that Mar 16 is fulfilled in our midst today. What then, does the counterfeit miracle prove? The reality and necessity of the true. Thieves do not counterfeit the money of a “busted” bank. How may you usually detect counterfeit miracles? This is important: (1) By the immoral character of the producer. That is not altogether satisfactory, but it is presumptive evidence. (2) If the doctrine it supports or teaches is contradictory to truth already revealed and established. (3) The evil motive or the end in view. God would not work a lot of miracles just for show. When Herod said to Christ, “Work me a miracle,” Christ refused. Miracles are not to gratify curiosity. (4) Its eternal characteristic of emptiness or extravagance. (5) Its lack of substantial evidence. In the spirit-rapping miracles they need too many conditions put out the light, join hands, etc. It is one of the rules of composition as old as the classics, never to introduce a god unless there be a necessity for a god; and when one is introduced, let what he says and does correspond to the dignity and nature of a god. If that is a rule of composition in dealing with miracles it shows that God, as being wise, would not intervene foolishly.
Now, is a miracle a greater manifestation of God’s power than is ordinarily displayed by the Lord? No. He shows just as much power in producing an almond tree from a germ, and that almond tree in the course of nature producing buds and blossoms, by regulating the order of things, as he does to turn rods to serpents. But while the power is no greater, the impression is more vivid, and that is the object of a miracle.
There are, certainly, distinctions in miracles, and you will need to know the distinction when you discuss the miracles wrought by Moses more than any other set of miracles in the Bible. There are two kinds of miracles, the absolute and the providential, or circumstantial, e.g., the conversion of water into blood is an absolute miracle; the bringing of frogs out of the water is a providential or circumstantial miracle. Keep that distinction in your mind. The plague of darkness and the death of the firstborn are also absolute miracles. The providential or circumstantial miracles get their miraculous nature from their intensity, their connection with the word of Moses, the trial of Pharaoh and the Egyptian gods, with the deliverance of Israel, and their being so timely as to strengthen the faith of God’s people, and to overcome the skepticism of God’s enemies.
I will give a further idea about a providential miracle. Suppose I were to say that on a certain day at one o’clock the sun would be veiled. If that is the time for an eclipse there is nothing miraculous in it. But suppose a dense cloud should shut off the light of the sun, there is a miraculous element because there is no way of calculating clouds as you would calculate eclipses. Now, the orderly workings of nature, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork,” reveal the glory of God to a mind in harmony with God, and they hide the glory from the eyes of an alienated man who will not see God in the sun, moon, and stars. They will turn away from the glory of God in these regular events and worship the creature more than the creator.
Does a miracle considered by itself prove the truth of the doctrine or the divine mission’ of him who produces it? Not absolutely. The Egyptians imitated the first two miracles. Other things must be considered. The doctrine must commend itself to the conscience as being good. All revelation presupposes in a man power to recognize the truth, arising from the fact that man is made in the image of God, and has a conscience, and that “Jesus Christ lighteth every man coming into the world.” The powers of darkness are permitted to perform wonders of a startling nature. The character of the performer, the end in view, the doctrine to be attested in itself, BS related to previously revealed truth, must all be considered. In Deu 13:1-5 , the people are expressly warned against the acceptance of any sign or wonder, wrought by any prophet or dreamer, used to attest a falsehood. In Mat 24:24 , the Saviour expressly forewarns that antichrists and false prophets shall come with lying signs and wonders, and Paul says so in several passages.
How are miracles helpful, since the simple, unlearned are exposed to the danger of accepting the false and rejecting the true? This difficulty is more apparent than real. The unlearned and poor are exposed to no more danger than the intellectual. Those who love previously revealed truth and have no pleasure in unrighteousness are able to discriminate, whether they are wise folks or simple folks. The trouble of investigation is no greater here than in any other moral problem. Therefore, the apostle John says, “Beloved, try every spirit.” A man comes to you and says he is baptized of the Holy Spirit. John says, “Try him, because there are many false prophets,” and “Every spirit that refuses to confess that God was manifested in the flesh,” turn him down at once. Once Waco was swept away by the Spiritualists. I preached a series of sermons on Spiritualism. Once in making calls I came upon some strangers, and happened to meet a Spiritualist lady who came up to me and said, “I am so glad to meet you. We belong to the same crowd. We are both a spiritual people. Let me see your hand.” I held it out and she commenced talking on it. She says, “I believe the Bible as much as you do.” I said, “No, you don’t. I can make you abuse the Bible in two minutes.” “Well, I would like to see you try.” I read that passage in Isaiah where a woe is pronounced upon those who are necromancers and magicians. “Yes, and I despise any such statements,” she said. “Of course,” I replied; “that is what I expected you to say.”
The conflict in Egypt was between Jehovah on the one hand and the gods of Egypt, representing the powers of darkness, on the other. Note these scriptures: Exo 12:12 ; Exo 15:11 ; Num 33:4 . The devil is the author of idolatry in all its forms The battle was between God and the devil, the latter
working through Pharaoh and his hosts, and God working through Moses.
Water turned into blood. I want to look at the first miracle A question that every reader should note is: State in order the ten miracles. First, the conversion of the waters of the Nile into blood. Egypt is the child of the Nile. If you were up in a balloon and looked down upon that land you would see a long green ribbon, the Nile Valley and its fertile banks. Therefore they worship the Nile. There has been a great deal written to show that at certain seasons of the year the waters of the Nile are filled with insect life of the animalcule order, so infinitesimal in form as to be invisible, even with a microscope, yet so multitudinous in number that they make the water look like blood. It would be perfectly natural if it only came that way. I will tell you why I do not think it came that way. This miracle applied to the water which had already been drawn up) and was in the water buckets in their homes. That makes it a genuine miracle.
The second miracle was the miracle of the frogs. I quote something about that miracle from the Epic of Moses , by Dr. W. G. Wilkinson:
Then Aaron, at his brother’s bidding, raised His rod and with it smote the river. Straight .Forth from the water at that pregnant stroke Innumerably teeming issued frogs, Prodigious progeny I in number such As if each vesicle of blood in all The volume of the flood that rolled between The banks of Nile and overfilled his bound And overflowed, had quickened to a frog, And the midsummer tide poured endless down, Not water and not blood, but now instead One mass of monstrous and colluctant life! The streams irriguous over all the realm, A vast reticulation of canals Drawn from the river like the river, these Also were smitten with that potent rod, And they were choked with tangled struggling frogs. Each several frog was full of lusty youth, And each, according to his nature, wished More room wherein to stretch himself, and leap, Amphibious, if he might not swim. So all Made for the shore and occupied the land. Rank following rank, in serried order, they Resistless by their multitude and urged, Each rank advancing, by each rank behind An insupportable invasion, fed With reinforcement inexhaustible From the great river rolling down in frogs I Spread everywhere and blotted out the earth. As when the shouldering billows of the sea, Drawn by the tide and by the tempest driven, Importunately press against the shore Intent to find each inlet to the land, So now this infestation foul explored The coasts of Egypt seeking place and space.
With impudent intrusion, leap by leap Advancing, those amphibious cohorts pushed Into the houses of the people, found Entrance into the chambers where they slept, And took possession of their very beds. The kneading-troughs wherein their bread was made, The subterranean ovens where were baked The loaves, the Egyptians with despair beheld Become the haunts of this loathed tenantry. The palace, nay, the person, of the king Was not exempt. His stately halls he saw Furnished to overflowing with strange guests Unbidden whose quaint manners lacked the grace Of well-instructed courtliness; who moved About the rooms with unconventional ease And freedom, in incalculable starts Of movement and direction that surprised. They leaped upon the couches and divans; They settled on the tops of statutes; pumped Their breathing organs on each jutting edge Of frieze or cornice round about the walls; In thronging councils on the tables sat; From unimaginable perches leered. The summit of procacity, they made The sacred person of the king himself, He sitting or reclining as might chance, The target of their saltatory aim, And place of poise and pause for purposed rest.
Nor yet has been set forth the worst; the plague Was also a dire plague of noise. The night Incessantly resounded with the croaks, In replication multitudinous, Of frogs on every side, whether in mass Crowded together in the open field, Or single and recluse within the house. The dismal ululation, every night And all night long, assaulted every ear; Nor did the blatant clamour so forsake The day, that from some unfrequented place Might not be heard a loud, lugubrious, Reiterant chorus from batrachian throats. Epic of Moses I think that is one of the finest descriptions I ever read. They worshiped frogs. Now they were surfeited with their gods. I have space only to refer to the next plague of lice. I give Dr. Wilkinson’s description of it: They were like immigrants and pioneers Looking for habitations in new lands; They camped and colonized upon a man And made him quarry for their meat and drink. They ranged about his person, still in search Of better, even better, settlement; Each man was to each insect parasite A new-found continent to be explored. Which was the closer torment, those small fangs Infixed, and steady suction from the blood, Or the continuous crawl of tiny feet Banging the conscious and resentful skin In choice of where to sink a shaft for food Which of these two distresses sorer was, Were question; save that evermore The one that moment pressing sorer seemed.
Epic of Moses
What was the power of that plague? The Egyptians more than any other people that ever lived upon the earth believed in ceremonial cleanliness, particularly for their priesthood. They were not only spotless white, but defilement by an unclean thing was to them like a dip into hell itself.
QUESTIONS
1. What the scope of the next great topic in Exodus?
2. The theme?
3. The central text?
4. Purpose of the plagues?
5. How was Moses accredited?
6. What three great groups of miracles in the Bible?
7. In the New Testament what four words describe miracles? Give both Greek and English words, showing signification of each.
8. What, then, is a miracle?
9. Cite some faulty definitions.
10 When may they be naturally expected?
11. What are counterfeit or lying miracles, and may they be real miracles in the sense of being wrought by superhuman power, and whose in such case is the power, and what the purpose of its exercise?
12. To what classes of people are miracles incredible, and why?
13. Cite Satan’s first miracle, its purpose and result. Answer: (1) Accrediting the serpent with the power of speech; (2) To get Eve to receive him as an angel of light; (3) That Eve did thus receive him, and was beguiled.
14. On this point what says the Mew Testament about the last manifestation of the antichrist?
15. When may counterfeit miracles be expected?
16. Admitting many impostures to be explained naturally, could such impostures as idolatries, Mohammedanism, Mormonism, Spiritualism, witchcraft, necromancy, etc., obtain permanent hold on the minds of many peoples without some superhuman power?
17. What do counterfeit miracles prove?
18. How may they be detected?
19. What says a great poet about the priority of introducing a god into a story, who was he and where may the classic be found? Answer: (1) See chapter; (2) Horace; (3) In Horace’s Ars Poetica .
20. Distinguish between the ordinary powers of God working in nature and a miracle, e.g., the budding of Aaron’s rod and the budding of an almond tree.
21. What two kinds of miracles? Cite one of each kind from the ten plagues.
22. Of which kind are most of the ten plagues?
23. Does a miracle in itself prove the truth of the doctrine it is wrought to attest? If not, what things are to be considered?
24. Cite both Old Testament and New Testament proof that some doctrines attested by miracles are to be rejected.
25. If Satan works some miracles, and if the doctrines attested by some miracles are to be rejected, how are miracles helpful, especially to the ignorant, without powers of discrimination?
26. Who were the real antagonists in this great Egyptian duel?
27. Give substance and result of the first interview between Pharaoh and Moses?
28. Name in their order of occurrence the ten plagues.
29. First Plague: State the significance of this plague.
30. How have some sought to account for it naturally, and your reasons for the inadequacy of this explanation?
31. Second Plague: Recite Dr. Wilkinson’s fine description of the plague in his Epic of Moses.
32. The significance of the plague?
33. Third Plague: His description of the third plague and its significance.
VII
THE TEN PLAGUES, OR THE GREAT DUEL (Continued)
Every plague was intended to strike in some way at some deity worship in Egypt. I begin this chapter by quoting from Dr. Wilkinson’s Epic of Moses language which he puts in the mouth of Pharaoh’s daughter, the reputed mother of Moses, who is trying to persuade the king to let the people go: We blindly worship as a god the Nile; The true God turns his water into blood. Therein the fishes and the crocodiles, Fondly held sacred, welter till they die. Then the god Heki is invoked in vain To save us from the frogs supposed his care. The fly-god is condemned to mockery, Unable to deliver us from flies. Epic of Moses
We have discussed three of the plagues, and in Exo 8:20-32 , we consider the plague of flies. Flies, or rather beetles, were also sacred. In multitudes of forms their images were worn as ornaments, amulets, and charms. But at a word from Moses these annoying pests swarmed by millions until every sacred image was made hateful by the living realities.
The plague of Murrain, Exo 9:1-7 . Cattle were sacred animals with the Egyptians. Cows were sacred to Isis. Their chief god, Apis, was a bull, stalled in a place, fed on perfumed oats, served on golden plates to the sound of music. But at a word from Moses the murrain seized the stock. Apis himself died. Think of a god dying with the murrain I
Boils, Exo 9:8-12 . Egyptian priests were physicians. Religious ceremonies were medicines. But when Moses sprinkled ashes toward heaven grievous and incurable boils broke out on
the bodies of the Egyptians. King, priests, and magicians were specially afflicted; could not even stand before Moses.
Hail, Exo 9:13-35 . The control of rain and hail was vested in feminine deities Isis, Sate, and Neith. But at Moses’ word rain and hail out of season and in horrible intensity swept over Egypt, beating down their barley and the miserable remnant of their stock, and beating down exposed men, women, and children. In vain they might cry, “O Isis, O Sate, O Neith, help us! We perish; call off this blinding, choking rain! Rebuke this hurtling, pitiless storm of hail I” But the Sphinx was not more deaf and silent than Egypt’s goddesses.
Locusts, Exo 10:1-20 . The Egyptians worshiped many deities whose charge was to mature and protect vegetables. But at Moses’ word locusts came in interminable clouds, with strident swishing wings and devouring teeth. Before them a garden, behind them a desert. See in prophetic imagery the description of their terrible power, Joe 2:2 ; Rev 9:2-11 .
Darkness, Exodus 10-11:3. Ra, the male correlative of Isis, was the Egyptian god of light. A triune god, Amun Ra, the father of divine life, Kheeper Ra, of animal life, Kneph Ra, of human life. But at Moses’ word came seventy-two consecutive hours of solid, palpable darkness. In that inky plutonian blackness where was Ra? He could not flush the horizon with dawn, nor silver the Sphinx with moonbeams, nor even twinkle as a little star. Even the pyramids were invisible. That ocean of supernatural darkness was peopled by but one inhabitant, one unspoken, one throbbing conviction: “Jehovah, he is God.”
Death of the First-born, Exo 11:4-8 ; Exo 12:29-35 . This crowning and convincing miracle struck down at one time every god in Egypt, as lightning gores a black cloud or rives an oak, or a cyclone prostrates a forest. See the effect of this last miracle. The victory was complete. Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, “Rise up, and get you forth, from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve Jehovah, as ye have said. Also take your flocks and your herds, as ye have said, and be gone; and bless me also. And the Egyptians were urgent upon the people that they might send them out of the land in haste; for they said, We be all dead men. And against the children of Israel not a dog moved his tongue against man or beast; so the Lord put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel” (Exo 11:7 ; Exo 12:31-35 ).
Give the names of the magicians who withstood Moses and Aaron and what New Testament lesson is derived from their resistance? Paul warns Timothy of perilous times in the last days, in which men having the form of godliness but denying the power thereof were ever learning but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth, and thus concludes, “Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth; men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further; for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.” That is the time which I have so frequently emphasized when Paul’s man of sin shall appear and be like Jannes and Jambres, who withstood Moses and Aaron.
Give in their order the methods of Pharaoh’s oppositions to God’s people: (1) Persecution; (2) Imitation of their miracles; (3) Propositions of compromise. State what miracles they imitated. They changed their rods to serpents and imitated to some extent the first two plagues. But the rod of Aaron swallowed up theirs and they could not remove any plague nor imitate the last eight. State the several propositions of compromise; show the danger of each, and give the reply of Moses. I am more anxious that you should remember these compromises than the plagues.
COMPROMISES PROPOSED “Sacrifice in the land of Egypt,” i.e., do not separate from us, Exo 8:25 . This stratagem was to place Jehovah on a mere level with the gods of Egypt, thus recognizing the equality of the two religions. Moses showed the impracticableness of this, since the Hebrews sacrificed to their God animals numbered among the Egyptian divinities, which would be to them an abomination.
“I will let you go only not very far away” (Exo 8:28 ), that is, if you will separate let it be only a little separation. If you will draw a line of demarcation, let it be a dim one. Or, if you will so put it that your religion is light and ours darkness, do not make the distinction so sharp and invidious; be content with twilight, neither night nor day. This compromise catches many simple ones today. Cf. 2Pe 2:18-22 .
“I will let you men go, but leave with us your wives and children” (Exo 10:11 ). This compromise when translated simply means, “You may separate from us, but leave your hearts behind.” It is an old dodge of the devil. Serve whom ye will, but let us educate your children. Before the flood the stratagem succeeded: “Be sons of God if you will, but let your wives be daughters of men.” The mothers will carry the children with them. In modern days it says, “Let grown people go to church if they must, but do not worry the children with Sunday schools.”
“Go ye, serve the Lord; let your little ones go with you; only let your flocks and herds be stayed”; i.e., acknowledge God’s authority over your persons; but not over your property. This compromise suits all the stingy, avaricious professors who try to serve both God and mammon; their proverb is: “Religion is religion, but business is business.” Which means that God shall not rule over the maxims and methods of trade, nor in their counting houses, nor over their purses, nor over the six workdays, but simply be their God on Sunday at church. Well did Moses reply, “Our cattle shall go with us; there shall not an hoof be left behind.”
These compromises mean anything in the world rather than a man should put himself and his wife and his children and his property, his everything on earth, on the altar of God. Was it proper for the representatives of the Christian religion to unite in the Chicago World’s Fair Parliament of Religions, including this very Egyptian religion rebuked by the ten plagues? All these religions came together and published a book setting forth the world’s religions comparatively.
My answer is that it was a disgraceful and treasonable surrender of all the advantages gained by Moses, Elijah, Jesus Christ, and Paul. “If Baal be God, follow him; but if Jehovah be God, follow him.” If neither be God, follow neither. Jesus Christ refused a welcome among the gods of Greece and Rome. The Romans would have been very glad to make Jesus a deity. But he would have no niche in the Pantheon. That Chicago meeting was also a Pantheon. The doctrine of Christ expresses: “Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers; for what fellowship have righteousness and iniquity? or what communion hath light with darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what portion hath a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement hath a temple of God with idols? for we are a temple of the living God; even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2Co 6:14-18 ). “But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God; and I would not that ye should have communion with demons. We cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons; ye cannot partake of the table of the Lord, and the table of demons. Or do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? are we stronger than he?” (1Co 10:20-22 ).
The supreme fight made in Egypt was to show that Jehovah alone is God. He was not fighting for a place among the deities of the world, but he was claiming absolute supremacy. When we come to the giving of the law we find: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” and “you shall make no graven image, even of me, to bow down to worship it.” It took from the days of Moses to the days of the Babylonian captivity to establish in the Jewish mind the unity of God. All the time they were lapsing into idolatry. The prophets fought over the same battles that Moses fought. But when God was through with those people they were forever settled in this conviction, viz.: There is no other God but Jehovah. From that day till this no man has been able to find a Jewish idolater. Now then it takes from the birth of Christ to the beginning of the millennium to establish in the Jewish mind that Jesus of Nazareth is that Jehovah. Some Jews accept it of course, but the majority of them do not. When the Jews are converted that introduces the millennium, as Peter said to those who had crucified the Lord of glory, “Repent ye: in order that he may send back Jesus whom the heavens must retain until the time of the restitution of all things.”
One matter has been deferred for separate discussion until this time. I will be sure to call for twenty passages on the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. Paul has an explanation of them in Rom 9:17-23 , and our good Methodist commentator, Adam Clarke, devotes a great deal of space in his commentary to weakening what Paul said. There are two kinds of hardening: (1) According to a natural law when a good influence is not acted upon, it has less force next time, and ultimately no force. A certain lady wanted to get up each morning at exactly six o’clock, so she bought an alarm clock, and the first morning when the alarm turned loose it nearly made her jump out of bed. So she got up and dressed on time. But after awhile when she heard the alarm she would not go to sleep, but she just lay there a little while. (Sometimes you see a boy stop still in putting on his left sock and sit there before the fire). The next time this lady heard the alarm clock the result was that it did not sound so horrible, and she kept lingering until finally she went to sleep. Later the alarm would no longer awaken her. There is a very tender, susceptible hardening of a young person under religious impressions that brings a tear to the eye. How easy it is to follow that first impression, but you put it off and say no, and after awhile the sound of warning becomes to you like the beat of the little drummer’s drumstick when Napoleon was crossing the Alps. The little fellow slipped and fell into a crevasse filled with snow, but the brave boy kept beating his drum and they could hear it fainter and fainter, until it was an echo and then it died away.
(2) The other kind of hardening is what is called judicial hardening, where God deals with a man and he resists, adopting this or that substitute until God says, “Now you have shut your eyes to the truth; I will make you judicially blind and send you a delusion that you may believe a lie and be damned.” Paul says, “Blindness in part hath happened unto Israel because they turned away from Jesus; because they would not hear his voice, nor the voice of their own prophets; because they persecuted those who believed in Jesus. There is a veil over their eyes when they read the scripture which cannot be taken away until they turn to the Lord and say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.”
Now the last thought: When the first three plagues were sent they fell on all Egypt alike. After that, in order to intensify the miracle and make it more evidently a miracle, in the rest of the plagues God put a difference between Egypt and Goshen, where the Israelites lived. The line of demarcation was drawn in the fourth plague. In the fifth plague it fell on Egypt, not Goshen; the most stupendous distinction was when the darkness came, just as if an ocean of palpable blackness had in it an oasis of the most brilliant light, and that darkness stood up like a wall at the border line between Egypt and Goshen, bringing out that sharp difference that God put between Egypt and Israel.
I will close with the last reference to the difference in the night of that darkness, a difference of blood sprinkled upon the portals of every Jewish house. The houses might be just alike, but no Egyptian house had the blood upon its portals. Wherever the angel of death saw the blood he passed over the house and the mother held her babe safe in her arms. But in Egypt all the first-born died.
When I was a young preacher and a little fervid, I was preaching a sermon to sinners on the necessity of having the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than the blood of Abel, and in my fancy I drew this picture: A father, gathering all his family around him, says: “The angel of death is going to pass over tonight. Wife and Children, death is coming tonight; death is coming tonight.” “Well, Husband,” says the wife, “is there no way of escaping death?” “There is this: if we take a lamb and sprinkle its blood on the portals, the angel will see that blood and we will escape.” Then the children said, “Oh, Father, go and get the lamb; and be sure to get the right kind. Don’t make a mistake. Carry out every detail; let it be without blemish; kill exactly at the time God said; catch the blood in a basin, dip the bush in the blood and sprinkle the blood on the door that the angel of death may not enter our house.” Then I applied that to the unconverted, showing the necessity of getting under the shadow of the blood of the Lamb. I was a young preacher then, but I do not know that, being old, I have improved on the thought.
QUESTIONS
1. Name the ten plagues in the order of their occurrence.
2. Show in each case the blow against some one or more gods of Egypt.
3. What is the most plausible explanation of the first six in their relation to each other?
4. How explain the hail and locusts?
5. What modern poet in matchless English and in true interpretation gives an account of these plagues?
6. How does he state the natural explanation?
7. How does he express the several strokes at Egypt’s gods?
8. What of the differentiating circumstances of these plagues?
9. State the progress of the case as it affected the magicians.
10. State the progress of the case as it affected the people.
11. State the progress of the case as it affected Pharaoh himself.
12. Give in order Pharaoh’s methods of opposition.
13. State in order Pharaoh’s proposed compromises and the replies of Moses.
14. State some of the evils of religious compromise.
15. What about the World’s Fair Parliament of Religions?
l6. What about the Inter-Denominational Laymen’s Movement? And the money of the rich for colleges?
17. Show how each miracle after the third was intensified by putting a difference between Egypt and Israel, as in the case of the last plague, and illustrate.
18. Explain the two kinds of hardening, and cite the twenty uses of the word in Pharaoh’s case.
19. How does Paul use Exo 9:16 , in Rom 9 and how do you reply to Adam Clarke’s explanation of it?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
Exo 6:1 Then the LORD said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh: for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land.
Ver. 1. Then the Lord said unto Moses. ] Pardoning the faults of his prayer, God grants him a gracious answer. So he dealt with David, “For I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes: nevertheless thou heartiest the voice of nay supplication when I cried unto thee.” Psa 31:22
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
the LORD (Hebrew. Jehovah) said. See note on Exo 3:7, and compare note on Exo 6:10, and see App-4.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Chapter five of the book of Exodus, we left Moses in great despair. He did what he thought God was calling him to do. He went to the Pharaoh and demanded the release of the children of Israel. But the Pharaoh, rather than releasing them, only increased the burdens and the severity of their slavery.
Until the children of Israel started really getting on Moses’ case saying, “Why didn’t you leave us alone? We were much better off before you ever came. Now since you’ve come, things are really hard on us. We wish you would’ve left us alone.” So Moses in turn went to God and said, “God what were You asking me to do? Why did You ask me to do it Lord? Because You haven’t delivered them, and things are just worse.”
It is interesting how that many times when we launch out into what we feel is the will of God for our lives, that things don’t work out exactly like we thought they were gonna work out. Sometimes things turn into total chaos, and we’re prone to challenge again our calling. “God did You really call me to do this? And if You called me to do it, how come it’s turned into such a mess?”
Now Moses didn’t want to go in the first place. He had said, “Oh Lord, please call somebody else.” The Lord became angry with Moses. Moses did what the Lord said, and just things seemed to be going just the opposite of what he had anticipated and expected.
I do believe that any time we enter into any kind of ministry for the Lord that Satan is going to challenge our commitment of faith. That Satan is going to do his best to discourage us right at the beginning of any ministry. He’s going to make you question the call of God upon your life. He’s gonna challenge the work of God within your life, especially if that ministry has to do with some of the gifts of the Spirit. How Satan loves to challenge any exercise of the gifts of the Spirit. For instance, the gift of prophecy. “He that prophesieth”, Paul said, “let him prophesy according to his portion of faith”( Rom 12:6 ).
Many times when you by faith step out, and speak what you feel to be the Word of God, people will challenge it, and it’ll cause you to question, “Was that really God that was speaking to me?” Moses came to this place of challenge. The people challenged him, and challenged his ministry, and he in turn challenged God. “Why did You send me? Things aren’t any better, they’re only getting worse.”
So beginning with chapter six, we have God’s response to His distraught prophet.
Then the Lord said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh: for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land ( Exo 6:1 ).
“Moses you haven’t seen anything yet. Now you’re going to see what I’m gonna do to Pharaoh because with a strong hand”, he’s not gonna just let them go, he’s gonna drive them out. By the time they go, he’s gonna be glad to see them gone.
And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the LORD ( Exo 6:2 ):
Now that is, it might look upon the service that just sort of, “Well, of course.” But how many times we forget that. How many times we think we’re in the driver’s seat. How many times we think we ought to be controlling the situation. I’m sure that these people are falling after this “command God” bit, and are going around ordering God like He’s some kind of a little puppet or robot.
That God is saying to them, “Hey, wait a minute. I am the Lord. Who’s in control? Who’s guiding these things? Who’s governing over these things? Moses, I am the Lord.” Many times we try to take that position away from Him, but He needs to remind us who He is. And we need to be reminded of who He is because there is a danger of forgetting who He is, as we are so prone to exalt ourselves or to exalt man, and forget that He is the Lord.
When we forget that He is the Lord, then we fall into that category that Paul was referring to in Romans chapter one. “Who when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God” ( Rom 1:21 ). They began to take things in their own hands. They began to live as though God was their servant, rather than they were God’s servants. We need to be reminded that He is the Lord, and not only that He is the Lord, but of the greatness of His power and His wisdom and of His glory.
So many times we look at our problems and they seem so big, overwhelming. I look at that mountain in front of me and I think, “Oh, nothing can move that mountain.” I get discouraged because that mountain looks so big, and I come to God with sort of timidity. You even hate to ask Him because you know it’s such a huge mountain. You know it’s impossible for you to move it, and you just wonder if God can really do it.
The disciples, when they came to the Lord with, they had a heavy problem, they said, “O Lord. Thou art God, Thou hast created the heavens and the earth, and every thing that is in them”( Act 4:24 ). That’s a good thing to remind yourself of before you pray. The heavens out there are the work of His fingers. He’s created it all. So that mountain that is in front of you, though it may look like Everest to you, it is nothing in the eyes of God. “It is nothing for Thee to help Lord, many are with those that have no power.”
Next time you think that that mountain that you have in front of you is maybe too big for God to move, get up at about four o’clock, three-thirty, and look out into the western sky and look at the constellation Orion. Take a careful look at the left shoulder of Orion, that’s Betelgeuse. Betelgeuse is four hundred and fifteen million miles in diameter. If you would hollow out the center of Betelgeuse, leaving out the crust a hundred million miles thick, you could put the sun in the middle of Betelgeuse and let the earth rotate around it, and have a hundred million miles to spare.
Betelgeuse is a pretty big mountain. It happens to be traveling at about nineteen miles a second. Have you ever wondered what kind of a force or thrust it took to get Betelgeuse into orbit; something that huge moving that fast? You ever wondered what thrust, what force? I can tell you, “When I consider the heavens”, David said, “the work of Thy fingers”( Psa 102:25 ). Hey, all of my problems seem really small. That mountain doesn’t look nearly so big.
God said to Moses, you know he had his feathers ruffled and he was all uptight, and God said, “Hey, wait a minute. I’m the Lord.” So many times we get all upset, our feathers ruffled. He said, “Hey, wait a minute. I’m the Lord; I’m in control. I’ve got it.” You know, and we need to remember that. What a comfort to know that He is the Lord and He is in control.
And I appeared unto Abraham, and unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty, [El Shadai] but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them ( Exo 6:3 ).
Now that is in the sense that the word means “the becoming one”, actually Abraham used the term Jehovah-Jireh when his son said, “Dad where is the sacrifice?” Abraham said, “Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord will provide”( Gen 22:8 ). But yet the Lord is saying, “By My name Jehovah was I not known.” In other words, they knew Him in a less personal way than Moses was to know God. They knew Him as the Almighty God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth.
Some of you may know Him as the Almighty God, the Creator of the heaven and the earth. Whenever I hear a person beginning his prayer, “O thou mighty God, creator of the universe,” I think, “Well, they really don’t have a very close relationship with Him. When I hear someone come in and say, “Hey, Dad, I’m really in trouble.” I feel, “My, they’ve got a real neat working relationship with the Father”.
I was with some Italians once in a prayer meeting, and they started saying, “Oh Papa.” I was shocked for a moment, and I thought, “My that’s sacrilegious.” Then I found out that “papa” was “father” in Italian. I thought, “Oh, that’s beautiful.” I like that. “Papa, your child’s in trouble. I need help.” It’s glorious to have a close, intimate relationship with God, to know Him by that name Jehovah where He becomes to me all that I need.
Now they had not really appropriated that fullness of God that He wants to be to His people. They were sort of-God was sort of a far off, great, powerful almighty force, creative; yet, He was known in a personal sense, but yet, always in that vast distance that exists between the infinite and the finite. Now God is coming closer to man. And He said, “They’ve not known me by my name Jehovah, you’re gonna know me in a closer, more intimate way.” Even as God wants to relate to you in a closer, more intimate way, and for that purpose He sent His only begotten Son. Why? That you might relate to God in the closest kind of intimate relationship as a Father with His child; that you might boldly come into His presence, that you might receive mercy in your time of need.
It’s funny sometimes when people come into the office to see me. They’re so nervous that they forget really what they want to say. I feel sort of funny, because I’m nobody, and I know I’m nobody. And yet because of what God has done through my life, people respect that work that God has done through me, though it doesn’t make me anything. It just glorifies God that He’s able to take something like me and make something through me, of His grace and love. It just shows how great God is. But yet people sometimes have that sort of, “Oh Chuck”, like, something, though it really isn’t. You don’t need to be that way, don’t need to feel that way at all. I’ll tell you my grandkids aren’t that way. Man, they come storming into the office. They don’t care what kind of a counseling session I’m in or anything else, you know. They interrupt whatever’s going on. “Grandpa, I need an ice-cream cone.” I’ll tell you, they get first priority because of relationship.
God wants you to have a neat, beautiful relationship with Him. He wants you to feel a perfect freedom of just coming in anytime even with the most trivial things. He wants to have that kind of relationship. And thus God is expressing, “Look they knew Me as God Almighty, I revealed Myself to them. They knew Me as God Almighty, but they didn’t really know that relationship of intimacy that I want you and the people to experience as I take, and begin to watch over you, and I begin to care for you, and I begin to put the food on your table.”
And I have also established my covenant with them, [That is with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.] to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. And I’ve also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant ( Exo 6:4-5 ).
Now first of all God establishing Himself to Moses, “I’ve made My covenant with them. I know, I heard, and I have remembered My covenant.”
Sometimes because of time delays, we feel that God has forgotten His promises. In the last days the Bible says, “Scoffers will come saying, Where is the promise of the coming of Jesus Christ?”( 2Pe 3:4 ). Because of the time delay men will scoff. “God is not slack concerning His promises as some men count slackness, but is faithful”( 2Pe 3:9 ).
“Wherefore [God said] say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you [First of all “I am”, and then, “I will bring you] out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments: And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it to you for a heritage: for I am the Lord ( Exo 6:6-8 ).
So He started out by saying, “I am”, and then He threw in all these “I wills”, and He comes back to, “I am”.
Now a promise is usually just as good as the person making it. There are some people who have made many promises but I don’t put much stock into it. When I was just a little guy there was a knock at the front door. My parents went, and this guy introduced himself as our cousin Pringle, some relative of my dad’s. They came in. “Oh this is your family, Charles. Oh wonderful, wonderful.” He kissed all of us kids. He looked at me very sternly and he said, “Now, son don’t smoke. If you don’t smoke until you’re twenty-one, I’ll give you a gold watch.” I thought that was sort of a funny thing for him to say because he was smoking. I didn’t smoke until I was twenty-one; in fact I’ve never smoked yet. But I’ve never seen him again. So I’ve got a gold watch promised to me that I’ve never seen, because I’ve never seen that cousin Pringle again. So there are some promises that you just can’t put much stock in.
But I’ll tell you when God begins to promise, and He begins it by saying, “Hey, look I am the Lord, and I will, and I will”, and there are seven “I wills” there of God; what God will do for His people. And because the history of the children of Israel is typical history, and it typifies the child of God coming out of bondage through the Red Sea, baptism, into a new relationship of faith with God in the wilderness and on in through the death of the old life, and the old self into the land of promise, a life of richness and fullness; we can take these “I wills” of God to Israel and we can apply them to our own lives as God is promising.
I will deliver you from the heavy burdens, I will rid you from the bondage, [from the flesh, and of that old life] and I will redeem you. And take you for a people, and I will be to you a God: and I will bring you into the fullness of that which I have promised. So Moses spoke to the children of Israel: [these words of the Lord] but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for the cruel bondage ( Exo 6:6-9 ).
They, at this point, were so discouraged because of these things the Egyptians were laying upon them. Even when Moses came with these glorious promises and declarations of God, the people just couldn’t believe it.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Go in, and speak unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, that he let the children of Israel go out of his land. And Moses spake before the Lord, saying, Behold, the children of Israel haven’t listened to me; how then will Pharaoh hear, who am of uncircumcised lips ( Exo 6:10-12 )?
Moses said, “Hey, God now look. You told me to tell the children of Israel, they didn’t listen to me, now You’re telling me to tell Pharaoh. If they didn’t listen to me, what do you think the Pharaoh’s gonna do? He’s not gonna listen to me.” So Moses is still dragging his heels at the call of God, at the commission of God upon his life.
And the Lord spake to Moses and unto Aaron, and he gave them a charge unto the children of Israel, and unto Pharaoh the king of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt ( Exo 6:13 ).
Now at this point there is inserted a little genealogy of the first three sons of Jacob. With Reuben and Simeon his first two sons, it lists just the names of the sons of Reuben and Simeon as they are in Genesis. When it lists then the names of the sons of Levi, it goes on then to name the grandsons and the great grandsons in order that we might have a genealogy that will bring us down to Moses and Aaron.
So Amram [Verse twenty] took him Jochebed his father’s sister to wife; and she bare him Aaron and Moses: and these are the years of the life of Amram he was a hundred and thirty seven years old ( Exo 6:20 ).
Now verse twenty-seven. “These are they”, well verse twenty-six,
Now these are that Aaron and Moses, to whom the Lord said, Bring out the children of Israel from the land of Egypt according to their armies. These are they which spake to Pharaoh the king of Egypt, to bring out the children of Israel from Egypt: these are that Moses and Aaron ( Exo 6:26-27 ).
So you have a little genealogy to bring you to Moses and Aaron just sort of inserted here into chapter six, so you’ll know where they came from.
And it came to pass on the day when the Lord spake unto Moses in the land of Egypt, That the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, I am the Lord: speak thou unto Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say unto thee. And Moses said before the Lord, Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, how shall the Pharaoh hearken unto me ( Exo 6:28-30 )?
So that’s just sort of a little throwback to verses twelve and thirteen. He threw in the genealogy, and then he sort of recaps the story to bring you up to chapter seven. “
Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary
Here commences the section of Exodus devoted to the subject of national deliverance. Everything began with a solemn charge to Moses. It is first an answer to the complaint which God’s servant had uttered in His presence. It was a message of divine self-assertion and, therefore, necessarily a message of grace. Mark the recurrence of the personal pronoun. That is the permanent value of this wonderful passage. The supreme need in every hour of difficulty and depression is a vision of God. To see Him is to see all else in proper proportion and perspective. Moreover, in this passage we have the unfolding of the real value of the name Jehovah.
After this the command to go to Pharaoh was reiterated and a new fear took possession of the heart of Moses which again was expressed in the presence of God. He no longer complained at God’s treatment of the people but spoke of his own inability to deliver God’s message. That inability was now born of a sense, not as before of his lack of eloquence, but of his uncleanness. He spoke of himself as of uncircumcised lips. As when Isaiah beheld the glory of God he cried, “I am a man of unclean lips”; and as Daniel in the presence of the same glory said, “My comeliness was turned in me into corruption”; and as Job in the presence of the matchless splendor of God said, “Behold, I am of small account”; so Moses became conscious of his own moral imperfection.
Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible
Moses Appeals from Pharaoh to God
Exo 5:15-23; Exo 6:1
Gods way is to bring men to an end of themselves before He arises to their help. Our efforts to deliver ourselves only end in increasing our perplexities. The tale of bricks is doubled; the burdens augment; the strength of our purpose is broken; we are brought to the edge of despair. Probably this was the darkest hour in the life of the great leader. But from all the obloquy that was heaped on him, he took refuge in God. There is no other refuge for a limited man than to return unto the Lord, Exo 5:22. Return unto the Lord with your story of failure! Return unto Him for fresh instructions! Return unto Him with your appeal for his interposition! Be perfectly natural with your Heavenly Father! Humble yourself under His mighty hand! Even dare to reason with Him, saying: Why! Then the Lord will say to you, as to Moses: Now thou shalt see what I will do.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Exo 6:8
Consider the meaning of our duty to God; the great truth that we have such a duty; and how it comes about that we have it.
I. Duty is something which is due from one to another; something which ought to be given, or ought to be done; not a thing which is given or done under compulsion, under the influence of fear, extorted by force, not even a free gift or offering; quite different from this; if a thing is a duty, it must be done because it is right to do it and wrong to omit it.
II. The words of the text are, as it were, the sign manual whereby Almighty God, in His dealings with His ancient people the children of Israel, claimed from them the performance of that duty which they owed to Him. The words which gave validity to an Israelitish law merely rehearsed the fact that He who gave the law was Jehovah; and nothing more was added, because nothing more remained to be said.
III. Notice the principles upon which our duty to God depends. (1) There is a relationship, a close vital connection between God and man, which does not exist between God and any other of His creatures; man is in a very high sense “the Son of God,” so that it is inconceivable that the true aims and purposes of God and man can be distinct. Man being made in God’s image, ought to do God’s will. (2) Our duty to God depends also on the ground of election. God deals with us now as with His Church in former days; it is still a Church of election. We, to whom God sends His commands, are still rightly described as redeemed out of the house of our bondage; and if the redemption of Israel out of Egypt be nothing better than the faintest type and shadow of the redemption of mankind out of the power of the devil, how much greater is the appeal which is made to us on the ground of that deliverance which Jesus Christ has wrought out.
Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons, 4th series, p. 1.
References: Exo 6:8.-M. G. Pearse, Thoughts on Holiness, p. 231. Exo 6:9.-W. Arnot, Roots and Fruits of the Christian Life, p. 327; Parker, vol. ii., p. 310; R. D. B. Rawnsley, Sermons for the Christian Year, p. 494. Exo 6:27.-Parker, vol. ii., p. 311. Exo 7:1-14.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., pp. 67, 69.
Fuente: The Sermon Bible
CHAPTER 6:1-27 Jehovahs Answers and the Genealogy
1. Jehovah answers Moses (Exo 6:1-13)
2. The Genealogy (Exo 6:14-27)
Moses wherefore and why, his outburst of impatience, is graciously met by Jehovah. In His answer He speaks more fully of Himself as Jehovah, and what He will do in behalf of His afflicted and oppressed people. I am Jehovah, is His solemn declaration. Note the continued utterances of what He is and what He will do. I appeared unto Abraham; I have heard; I have remembered; I will bring you out; I will rid you out of their bondage; I will redeem you; I will take you to be for Me a people; I will be to you a God; I will bring you into the land; I will give it to you for a heritage; I am Jehovah. In Ezekiel, chapter 36, the reader will find Jehovahs I will concerning the future restoration of His people Israel .
No condition is mentioned; for their salvation as well as ours, is not of works but of grace alone. The source of all is His love (Deu 7:7-8). Salvation is Jehovahs work and not ours. Thus while the patriarchs knew the name of God as Jehovah, the full revelation of Jehovah, working in the gracious performance of His promises, they knew not. Exo 6:3 means that they did not understand the name Jehovah, though they knew that name. Then follows the record of the heads of their fathers houses. He knows them by name. He comes down where the slaves are, and calls them by name, thus identifying Himself with them. And then He knew, as He does now, every groan, every burden, every spot upon which the whip of the cruel taskmaster had fallen. This is the precious lesson of this register of names. No other genealogy is found in Exodus. What a great redeemer is Jehovah, our Lord Jesus Christ! All praise and glory be to His holy Name.
Fuente: Gaebelein’s Annotated Bible (Commentary)
Now shalt: Exo 14:13, Num 23:23, Deu 32:39, 2Ki 7:2, 2Ki 7:19, 2Ch 20:17, Psa 12:5
with a strong: Exo 3:19, Exo 3:20, Deu 4:34, Psa 89:13, Psa 136:12, Isa 63:12, Eze 20:33, Eze 20:34
drive them: Exo 11:1, Exo 12:31, Exo 12:33, Exo 12:39
Reciprocal: Exo 13:3 – strength Exo 13:9 – strong hand Exo 14:8 – with an high hand Neh 1:10 – thy strong Jer 32:21 – with a strong Jer 46:15 – the Lord Dan 9:15 – that hast Act 13:17 – and with
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
Faith as Exemplified in Moses
Selections from Exo 3:1-22; Exo 6:1-30; Exo 7:1-25; Exo 8:1-32; Exo 14:1-31; Exo 15:1-27
INTRODUCTORY WORDS
The Children of Israel had been captive in Egypt for several hundred years. During that time another Pharaoh had arisen who knew not Joseph. As the sons of Jacob multiplied, the king of Egypt became more and more afraid of their possible ascendancy in his empire. Therefore, moved with fear, he began to persecute them, and to force them to work as common slaves. Thus, God heard the groanings of His people under the iron hand of Pharaoh.
1. The birth of a deliverer. Finally an edict of Pharaoh was given forth that every male child should be killed. There were two, however, who were not afraid of the king’s commandment, and when a goodly child was born unto them, they hid him in an ark of bulrushes at the river’s brink, where the daughter of Pharaoh came to bathe. This little child was rescued by royalty and nursed by his own mother. Thus it was that God Himself brought up the deliverer in the home of the persecutor. A child who was under a sentence of death, became the giver of life to the people of God.
2. The deliverer’s attempt in the flesh. When the baby Moses had grown into a man of forty years of age, he spurned everything that the pleasures and the wealth of Egypt could give him. He turned his back on Pharaoh’s palace, and, with a heart aching because of the straits of his own people, he went down, bent upon delivering them, but forty years passed before God undertook to deliver Israel through Moses.
3. Hiding away. During the forty years that Moses was in Midian he married the daughter of Jethro, the priest of Midian. At the end of the forty years God came to Moses and spoke to him.
During the years that Moses was hid away with God he could meditate and think upon the glory of Jehovah.
4. A wonderful sight. God appeared unto Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. Moses stopped and looked, and, “behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.” Immediately he said, “I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt.” It was at that moment that the Lord called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, “Moses, Moses.” And he said, “Here am I.” God told Moses to put off his shoes from off his feet, because the place on which he stood was holy ground.
Then it was that he said, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Immediately God told Moses that He had surely seen the affliction of His people in Egypt; that He had heard their cry, and that He would send forth Moses to their deliverance.
5. A complaining, doubting spirit. We are amazed when we think of the man whom God had called to deliver His people, saying to the Lord, “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the Children of Israel out of Egypt?” The Lord, however, gave him promises that He would be with him.
The story is familiar to all of us: we remember how the Lord gave him His Name, saying, “I Am that I Am.” When Moses still demurred, God wrought the miracle of the turning of a rod which Moses held in his hand into a serpent.
God furthermore commanded Moses to put his hand into bis bosom, and when he took it out, it was as leprous as snow. Then He told Moses to put his hand back into his bosom. This time, when he took it out, it was turned again as his other flesh.
Moses still demurred, and said, “I am not eloquent.” This time, God took away from him a wonderful privilege and gave it unto Aaron, the brother of Moses, telling him that he should be the spokesman of Moses, and that he should be to Moses instead of a mouth, and that Moses should be to him instead of God.
6. A few conclusions. As we think of what we have just set before you, let us weigh our own experience in its light. Have we not had a call from God? Have we not often warred in the flesh? Have we not often demurred, and hesitated to undertake the work to which we are called? Perhaps God has even given us a vision of His mighty power and work. Before we complain about Moses, and condemn him, let us ask if we have been faithful, and ready to launch out the moment that some Divine order came to us; perhaps Moses far outshines us in our obedience. Let us be careful, lest we miss God’s very best in service and spiritual attainments.
I. FAITH IN TRAINING (Exo 3:12-14)
When we feel that our faith is weak, we know of no better way to strengthen it than to study the dealings of the God in whom we are asked to believe, with men in the past. Listen to some of the things that God said to Moses:
1.In Exo 3:8 He said, “I am come down to deliver.”
2.In Exo 3:10 He said, “I will send thee unto Pharaoh.”
3.In Exo 3:12 He said, “Certainly I will be with thee.”
4.In Exo 3:14 He said, “I AM hath sent me unto you.”
5.In Exo 3:17 He said, “I will bring you up.”
6.In Exo 3:20 He said, “I will stretch out My hand.”
7.In Exo 3:21 He said, “I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians.”
When we look at the seven statements above, we see, in every instance, a definite promise from the Almighty. Why should Moses be afraid when God kept saying, “I will, I will; and I will”? When God promises to do it, it will surely be done. What God undertakes He is able to accomplish; if we are sent by Him; we are panoplied by Him.
If He is with us, we are armed with all power in Heaven and upon earth. If He is going to bring us through, we need not fear the terrors by the way; if He has said, “I will stretch out My hand,” we need not care how weak our hands may be.
There was one other thing that God did to encourage Moses. He said, “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, * * of Isaac, and * * of Jacob.” In other words, He said to Moses, “You are familiar with the wonderful dealings I had with your forefathers; and I was their God, and now I will be thine.” If the Lord comes with us, are we afraid to go? Do the silver and the gold not belong to Him? Does He not have all authority, in every realm?
Suppose Jesus Christ stood by us today, telling us to go; and then He said, “I have met the powers of Satan and have vanquished them; I was dead, and I am alive again, and I hold in My hand the keys of death and of hell; I have ascended up through principalities and powers, and am seated on the right hand of God, clothed with all authority.” When Christ says such things to us, shall we be weak in faith and afraid to obey His voice?
II. FAITH WARNED (Exo 3:19)
We often speak of the faith of Moses, and indeed it was a remarkable faith. Let none of us criticize him in his faith until we can do the things he did; let none of us enlarge upon his unbelief until our unbelief is less than his.
1. The warning. Exo 3:19 says, God speaking: “And I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go, no, not by a mighty hand.” The Lord never promises us that which we are not to receive; He never encourages us in giving us a false hope; He never tries to increase our faith by belittling the obstacles which will beset us by the way.
God very plainly and positively assured Moses that the Children of Israel would resist him, and that Pharaoh would not let the people go. However, God went on to tell him that He would do His wonders in Egypt, and “after that he will let you go.” He even told Moses that the Children of Israel should not go out empty, but they should go out with their hands filled with jewels of silver and gold and raiment, and with the spoil of the Egyptians.
2. The refusal. In the 5th chapter, and 1st verse, Moses said unto Pharaoh, “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let My people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness.” Pharaoh did not hesitate a moment to reply, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.”
A man of little faith would certainly have stumbled here. To be sure, God had told him that Pharaoh would not let Israel go; however, it was not easy for Moses and Aaron to be repulsed with such terrific onslaughts of unbelief.
Sometimes as we go forth in the service of God everything seems to fail which we had hoped would come to pass. Our prayers seem unanswered, our attempts seem futile, and our service seems in-vain.
We should remember that it is not always that our God delivers instantly. If we get our victories too easily, we might begin to think that our own hand had gotten us the victory, and that we had accomplished things by our own efforts and prowess.
3. The direct results. In the 4th verse of the 5th chapter, the king of Egypt said unto Moses and Aaron, “Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works? get you unto your burdens.” That same day the king commanded the taskmasters to cease giving straw to the Children of Israel. They were to get their own straw, and yet the same quantity of brick was required from them daily.
This caused a tremendous bitterness in the Children of Israel. They complained, and when they met Moses and Aaron as they came forth from Pharaoh, they said, “Ye have made our savour to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to slay us.”
This was about all that Moses could bear, and he cried unto the Lord, “Why is it that Thou hast sent me?” He also said, “Neither hast Thou delivered Thy people at all.” When the enemy seems to have every advantage, and is pressing us on every side, do we sometimes murmur and complain at the Lord? It is not easy to be condemned by the populace; it is not easy to see our leadership seemingly broken.
III. FAITH ASSURED (Exo 6:1-6)
When Moses talked with God, the Lord told him several things.
1. “Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh.” Defeat does not disturb the Almighty-He can see the end from the beginning. He knew that Pharaoh would rebel again and again, but God also knew that Pharaoh would be willing-yea, more than willing: he would be glad to have Israel go, before God had finished His judgments upon him.
2. Other things God said unto Moses.
1.”I am the Lord: and I appeared unto Abraham * * by the Name of God Almighty.”
2.”I have also established My Covenant with them.”
3.”I have remembered My Covenant.”
4.”I will bring you out * * I will rid you out of their bondage.”
5.”I will redeem you with a stretched out arm.”
6.”I will take you to Me * * I will be to you a God.”
7.”I will bring you in unto the land.”
Three times in this passage, concluding at Exo 6:8, the Lord says, “I am the Lord.” Let every one of us write over every power of darkness the same word-“I am the Lord.” If God be for us, who can be against us?
3. Moses’ plea. It must have been a wonderful thing to have the privilege of speaking to the Lord face to face, as did Moses, God addressing him as we would an intimate friend. Moses said, “Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto Me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me?” He meant, If my own people, Thine own children, have not heard me, how shall I expect Pharaoh to hear me?
Sometimes we, too, get to the place where we want to give up. We hasten to belittle our successes and the possibility of our efforts. Beloved, we need, today, to get a fresh hold on God.
IV. Faith Encouraged (Exo 7:1-6)
The skies are brightening as far as Moses is concerned. While so far he has met nothing but rebuff and setback and disappointment; yet he has been learning, step by step to trust God. Now the Lord is speaking unto Moses, and He tells him one thing that, so far as we know, has never been repeated.
1. “I have made thee a God to Pharaoh.” In other words, God is saying unto Moses that he should go before Him in the power and might of Deity Himself. He was to speak everything that God commanded him; he was to do mighty works, even the works that only God could do.
God still warned Moses that Pharaoh would harden his heart, but He said that He would multiply His signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. The fact of the business was that every time Pharaoh refused Moses, it gave God an opportunity to magnify His own Name and power in the midst of the Egyptians, and to prove that God was Lord; and that the Children of Israel were His people.
2. “And Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded them.” They went forth and faced Pharaoh time and time again; with Pharaoh’s every refusal they were spurred to further attacks against the cruel king of the Egyptians. They both obeyed the voice of God implicitly; they obeyed, no matter what happened, how dark the skies, how rugged the way, how steep the road. They were learning that God is able to bring down every high thing, and every proud thing that exalts itself against the Lord. They were learning that the weapons of their warfare were mighty, through God, to the breaking down of strongholds.
V. FAITH WORKING (Exo 8:1-4)
The story of the ten plagues which were brought upon Egypt by the words of Moses, is nothing less than the story of faith at work.
1. The first three plagues. As Moses threw down his rod it became a serpent. How was it then, if this was a miracle, that the magicians threw down their rods, and they became serpents? The second great miracle of Moses was the turning of the water of Egypt into blood; this the magicians of Egypt also did.
The third was the miracle of the frogs; once again the magicians of Egypt did the same with their enchantments.
Moses, perhaps, was dumfounded when he saw that the magicians could duplicate, thus far, whatever he did. However, they could not get rid of the frogs; they could bring the curse, but could not relieve it. Perhaps God Himself permitted all of this, to make Moses lean the harder upon Him; and also to bring a deeper curse upon Pharaoh, because of his rebellion. One thing we know, that step by step, Moses was “as God” in moving God and nature to obey his voice.
2. Is the day of miracles past? My God is a God that still works miracles. If He did not, how could I trust Him in the many places where He commands me to travel and to labor? I have seen with mine own eyes the Lord our God doing the impossible.
When we think of the Apostles, and of Paul, we think of men who knew how to believe God, and to do things which could not be accounted for on any natural lines. In these days, when the modernist is seeking to discount every miracle that God has ever wrought, it is absolutely necessary for us to prove that our God is still the God who wrought the miracles of the Old Testament. We must do the same things as were done then.
VI. THE FINAL TRIUMPH (Exo 14:13-16)
We are passing very rapidly over many remarkable things that occurred, and now we come to the final great test.
1. Hemmed in on every side. When Moses led the Children of Israel out of Egypt, he led them as he was directed, down by the way of the Red Sea. The news was taken to Pharaoh that Moses with his million and one half of people were entangled in the wilderness; then Pharaoh immediately started out to pursue them.
When the Children of Israel saw the hosts of the Egyptians approaching, they were filled with fear, and they said unto Moses, “Because there were no graves in Egypt, hast thou taken us away to die in the wilderness?” Here was a real trial to faith.
Moses, however, did not waver: he said, “Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will shew to you today: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more for ever.” He added, “The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.”
After Moses had told this unto the people, he sought the face of his God, and cried unto Him. Then the Lord said to him, “Wherefore criest thou unto Me? speak unto the Children of Israel, that they go forward.” How could they go forward?
They certainly could not go back; they certainly could not go to the left, or to the right, for, on the one hand were the fastnesses of the mountains and the hills, and on the other hand Pharaoh’s hosts. Before them was the impassable sea. It was under such circumstances that God said, “Go forward,” and forward they went.
Moses lifted up his rod, and God opened before them sufficient dry land that they might march in through the midst of the sea, and straight across to the other side.
VII. FAITH REJOICING (Exo 15:1-6)
1. The thrill of victory. It must have been a wonderful thing to the Children of Israel, as they marched up on the other side of the sea. Surely they knew that there was a God in Israel! If their joy, for the moment, was darkened by the approach of the hosts of the Egyptians who were marching upon the same path through the sea which God had prepared for them, their fear was quickly allayed when they saw that the armies of Pharaoh were having great trouble in passing, because their chariot wheels would come off, and because they were blinded in their route by a cloud of darkness.
Then, after the last one of Israel had passed over, how they must have rejoiced when Moses stretched forth his rod over the sea, and the waters returned to their strength, overthrowing the Egyptians in the midst thereof! Pharaoh’s army and chariots and horsemen were altogether overthrown, and there remained not so much as one.
2. The song of victory. Chapter 15 says, “Then sang Moses and the Children of Israel this song.” Have you ever accomplished something by faith which caused you to sing? You have read of faith’s miracles: Have you ever wrought them? You have heard of Daniel in the lions’ den: have you ever had any experience that even shadowed that? You have heard of the experience of the three Hebrew children in the burning fiery furnace: have you ever done or seen anything like that in your life?
Yes, every day there are things just as marvelous, but how few there are who know them, or see them, or believe them! Now when there is victory, there is song. After Moses had finished his rejoicing with the Children of Israel, then Miriam, the sister of Moses and Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand, and all the women went out after her, with timbrels and dances.
3. Experiences in the wilderness. After this wonderful miracle one would have thought that the Children of Israel would never again doubt God. They had seen everything that God had wrought by the hand of Moses; all of the miraculous plagues, all of their wonderful deliverances, and yet they were scarcely over the Red Sea and in the wilderness, until, as they journeyed, they struck a place where there was no water. Then they began to chide with Moses. One of the crowning acts of faith in the life of Moses was when he went out and struck the rock at the command of God. There is no water in a rock, and yet the smitten rock sent forth a stream. Beloved, let us never doubt God again, but rather let us believe that it will be even as He has spoken.
AN ILLUSTRATION
“Ask ye of the Lord rain” (Zec 10:1).
In the following lines we wish to relate something of the Lord’s goodness as suggested by the above text.
There had been many months of drought, very dry and hot weather. The previous N.E. monsoon had failed, resulting in only half the normal rainfall. Tanks and ponds had been dry for weeks. Many wells had failed in their supply of water. Droves of cattle were being driven miles to obtain a drink of water. Men and women, on returning late in the evening from work, had to go off in search of water before attempting to cook the food. One evening, two messengers, one following the other, came along to say our well was empty. We knew of only one resource at such a time. There were some clouds above. “Ask ye of the Lord rain.” Two of us knelt that evening and asked our Heavenly Father to command the clouds and to send the rain. We retired, believing our God would care for us. On rising next morning we looked but to see “floods on the dry ground.” Two and a quarter inches of rain had fallen!
“O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth for ever.”
Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water
Exo 6:1. Now shalt thou see what I will do Here we have a striking proof of Gods long-suffering. Instead of severely reproving Moses for his impatience, as manifested at the close of the preceding chapter, and his injurious complaints, he condescends to give him fresh assurances of his power and his determination to deliver the Israelites. With a strong hand That is, being forced to it with a strong hand, or by those terrible judgments which I shall inflict upon him by my power, he shall let them go.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Exo 6:1. With a strong hand. In a general view we do not find that heaven has recourse to miracles, except when religion is low and greatly depressed, somewhat as a fire which is burnt down has need of the blast to raise the heat. In this view, God graciously favoured the holy prophets, before Jerusalem was destroyed, and when idolatry raised her daring front to heaven. So also when the new covenant superseded the shadows of the old, our Saviour commanded divine obedience by the divinity of his works.
Exo 6:3. By my name Jehovah was I not made known to them. From the scope and connection of these words, it would seem, that God encouraged Moses in his bold and daring confliction, by the consideration that when Moses had asked his name, he had declared to him his great and glorious name JEHOVAH, which he had not done to Abraham. If so, Moses must then have used the name in Gen 22:14, by way of anticipation. Some however read the words interrogatively; Was I not made known to them by my name JEHOVAH; for Abraham had known it, Gen 22:14; and Isaac, Exo 26:25; and Jacob, Exo 27:20. We find however, that when Jacob asked the strangers name, Exo 32:29, he did not favour him with that secret name, as he now favoured Moses.There is another sense in which these words are taken. I was not made known to them in the fulfilment of my promises. This form is often used by the prophets. And they shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened their graves, and brought them into their own land.Many of the Jews have thought the name JEHOVAH too sacred to be pronounced, and therefore they substitute Adonai in its place. It signifies that he subsists of himself, independent, immutable, eternal. Hence our Lord Jesus Christ assumes this name. Rev 1:8. I am Alpha and Omega; the beginning and the ending; which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty. The name is appropriate to the Godhead, and cannot be given to any creature. Isa 42:8. For God and his name are the same. When he made the promise to Abraham, it was by the name of El Shaddai, God omnipotent or alsufficient. Gen 17:1. Jehovah is the supreme appellation of God the Father, Psa 110:1. Of God the Son, Jer 23:6. Of God the Holy Ghost, Isa 6:8; Isa 6:10. For as Dr. Lightfoot observes, according to Act 28:25-26, the Holy Ghost spake these things of the Jews who rejected the gospel.
Exo 6:12. Uncircumcised lips; that is, deficient in the powers of elocution.
Exo 6:20. Fathers sister; his cousin german, or uncles daughter, as in Exo 2:1.
Exo 6:23. Aaron took Elisheba to wife. The LXX write, Elizabeth; the Greeks altered old names for ease and elegance of pronunciation.
REFLECTIONS.
In the last chapter, Moses went full of discouragement and trouble to God, and here the Lord supports and comforts him by a repetition of the promises, and imboldens him by the company of the elders of Israel. Thus he is ever ready to comfort and encourage his sincere but dejected servants.
We may farther remark, that from this time the course of tremendous miracles were performed, or visitations of Almighty God on the Egyptians, for murdering the infants, oppressing the strangers, and persisting in the design of retaining them in slavery. And this is evident of itself, that so great and useful a people could never have resumed their liberty without either miracles or war. By war it could not be, for Israel was untutored in the art, and unarmed; the hand of God therefore must have interposed for their emancipation. Had it been by war, the Israelites would surely have retained Egypt, the most rich and fertile country in the world, for a permanent possession.
Against miracles the learned world have many scruples, and more prejudices, because the heathen poets and historians abound with omens, dreams, oracles, and prodigies; and the authors generally notice those things with a cautious sneer at superstition. But as falsehood implies the existence of truth, so lying wonders should not obstruct our faith in the extraordinary exertions of providence for the safety of Gods church and people. And however much the omens and prodigies, mentioned by the heathens, might originate in superstition, they were often real visitations of God for their wickedness. This is allowed by their most sober writers; this is asserted by St. Paul; for God left not himself without witness of his power and justice; and Paul has the highest claims to our regard, both as a man and an inspired apostle. We should therefore read the scriptures with a firm persuasion, that on extraordinary occasions, when the ordinary means are inadequate to the purposes of providence, it becomes the supreme Lord of heaven and earth to employ the extraordinary to save his people, to punish the wicked, and instruct the world in the existence of his eternal power and Godhead. And whether we consider the situation and dispositions of the Israelites, or the wickedness and contumacy of the Egyptians, there surely never was a period in early history, in which miracles were more essential.
Fuente: Sutcliffe’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Exodus 5 – 6
The effect of the first appeal to Pharaoh seemed ought but encouraging. The thought of losing Israel made him clutch them with greater eagerness and watch them with greater vigilance. Whenever Satan’s power becomes narrowed to a point, his rage increases. Thus it is here. The furnace is about to be quenched by the hand of redeeming love; but, ere it is, it blazes forth with greater fierceness and intensity. The devil does not like to let go any one whom he has had in his terrible grasp. He is “a strong man armed,” and while he “keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace.” But, blessed be God, there is “a stronger than he,” who has taken from him “his armour wherein he trusted,” and divided the spoils among the favoured objects of His everlasting love.
“And afterward, Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.” (Ex. 5: 3) Such was Jehovah’s message to Pharaoh. He claimed full deliverance for the people, on the ground of their being His; and, in order that they might hold a feast to Him in the wilderness. Nothing can ever satisfy God in reference to His elect, but their entire emancipation from the yoke of bondage. “Loose him, and let him go” is, really, the grand motto in God’s gracious dealings with those who, though held in bondage by Satan, are, nevertheless, the objects of His eternal love.
When we contemplate Israel amid the brick-kilns of Egypt, we behold a graphic figure of the condition of every child of Adam by nature. There they were, crushed beneath the enemy’s galling yoke, and having no power to deliver themselves. The mere mention of the word liberty only caused the oppressor to bind his captives with a stronger fetter, and to lade them with a still more grievous burden. It was absolutely necessary that deliverance should come from without. But from whence has it to come? Where were the resources to pay their ransom? or where was the power to break their chains? And, even were there both the one and the other, where was the will? Who would take the trouble of delivering them? Alas! there was no hope, either within or around. They had only to look up, their refuge was in God. He had both the power and the will. He could accomplish a redemption both by price and by power. In Jehovah, and in Him alone, was there salvation for ruined and oppressed Israel.
Thus is it in every case. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts 4: 12) The sinner is in the hands of one who rules him with despotic power. He is “sold under sin” “led captive by Satan at his will” – fast bound in the fetters of lust, passion, and temper, “without strength” – “without hope” – “without God.” Such is the sinner’s condition. How, then, can he help himself? What can he do? He is the slave of another, and everything he does is done in the capacity of a slave. His thoughts, his words, his acts, are the thoughts, words, and acts of a slave. Yea, though he should weep and sigh for emancipation, his very tears and sighs are the melancholy proofs of his slavery. He may struggle for freedom; but his very struggle, though it evinces a desire for liberty, is the positive declaration of his bondage.
Nor is it merely a question of the sinner’s condition; his very nature is radically corrupt – wholly under the power of Satan. Hence, he not only needs to be introduced into a new condition, but also to be endowed with a new nature. The nature and the condition go together. If it were possible for the sinner to better his condition, what would it avail so long as his nature was irrecoverably bad? A nobleman might take a beggar off the streets and adopt him; he might endow him with a noble’s wealth and set him in a noble’s position; but he could not impart to him nobility of nature; and thus the nature of a beggarman would never be at home in the condition of a nobleman. There must be a nature to suit the condition; and there must be a condition to suit the capacity, the desires, the affections, and the tendencies of the nature.
Now, in the gospel of the grace of God, we are taught that the believer is introduced into an entirely new condition; that he is no longer viewed as in his former state of guilt and condemnation, but as in a state of perfect and everlasting justification; that the condition in which God now sees him is not only one of full pardon; but it is such that infinite holiness cannot find so much as a single stain. He has been taken out of his former condition of guilt, and placed absolutely and eternally in a new condition of unspotted righteousness. It is not, by any means, that his old condition is improved. This was utterly impossible. “That which is crooked cannot be made straight.” “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?” Nothing can be more opposed to the fundamental truth of the gospel than the theory of a gradual improvement in the sinner’s condition. He is born in a certain condition, and until he is “born again” he cannot be in any other. We may try to improve. He may resolve to be better for the future turn over a new leaf” – to live a different sort of life; but, all the while, he has not moved a single hair’s breadth out of his real condition as a sinner. He may become “religious” as it is called, he may try to pray, he may diligently attend to ordinances, and exhibit an appearance of moral reform; but none of these things can, in the smallest degree, affect his positive condition before God.
The case is precisely similar as to the question of nature. How can a man alter his nature? He may make it undergo a process, he may try to subdue it, to place it under discipline; but it is nature still. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh.” There must be a new nature as well as a new condition. And how is this to be had? By believing God’s testimony concerning His Son. “As many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his Name: which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” (John 1: 12, 13) Here we learn that those who believe on the name of the only-begotten Son of God, have the right or privilege of being sons of God. They are made partakers of a new nature. They have gotten eternal life. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” (John 3: 36) “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. ” (John 5: 24) “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” (John 17.3) “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.” “He that hath the Son hath life.” (1 John 5: 11, 12)
Such is the plain doctrine of the Word in reference to the momentous questions of condition and nature. But on what is all this founded How is the believer introduced into a condition of divine righteousness and made partaker of the divine nature? It all rests on the great truth that “JESUS DIED AND ROSE AGAIN.” That Blessed One left the bosom of eternal love – the throne of glory – the mansions of unfading light came down into this world of guilt and woe – took upon Him the likeness of sinful flesh; and, having perfectly exhibited and perfectly glorified God, in all the movements of His blessed life here below, He died upon the cross, under the full weight of His people’s transgressions. By so doing, He divinely met all that was, or could be, against us. He magnified the law and made it honourable; and, having done so, He became a curse by hanging on the tree. Every claim was met, every enemy silenced, every obstacle removed. “Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.” Infinite justice was satisfied, and infinite love can flow, in all its soothing and refreshing virtues, into the broken heart of the sinner; while, at the same time, the cleansing and atoning stream that flowed from the pierced side of a crucified Christ, perfectly meets all the cravings of a guilty and convicted conscience. The Lord Jesus, on the cross, stood in our place. He was our representative. He died, “the just for the unjust.” “He was made sin for us.” (2 Cor. 5: 21; 2 Peter 3: 18) He died the sinner’s death, was buried, and rose again, having accomplished all. Hence, there is absolutely nothing against the believer. He is linked with Christ and stands in the same condition of righteousness. “As he is so are we in this world.” (1 John 4: 17)
This gives settled peace to the conscience. If I am no longer in a condition of guilt, but in a condition of justification; if God only sees me in Christ and as Christ, then, clearly, my portion is perfect peace. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom. 5: 1) The blood of the Lamb has cancelled all the believer’s guilt, blotted out his heavy debt, and given him a perfectly blank page, in the presence of that holiness which “cannot look upon sin.”
But the believer has not merely found peace with God; he is made a child of God, so that he can taste the sweetness of communion with the Father and the Son, through the power of the Holy Ghost. The cross is to be viewed in two ways: first, as satisfying God’s claims; secondly, as expressing God’s affections. If I look at my sins in connection with the claims of God as a Judge, I find, in the cross, a perfect settlement of those claims. God, as a Judge, has been divinely satisfied – yea, glorified, in the cross. But there is more than this. God had affections as well as claims; and, in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, all those affections are sweetly and touchingly told out into the sinner’s ear; while, at the same time, he is made the partaker of a new nature which is capable of enjoying those affections and of having fellowship with the heart from which they flow. “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” (1 Peter 3: 18) Thus we are not only brought into a condition, but unto a Person, even God Himself, and we are endowed with a nature which can delight in Him. We also joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.” (Rom. 5: 11)
What force and beauty, therefore, can we see in those emancipating words, “Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.” “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” (Luke 4: 18) The glad tidings of the gospel announce full deliverance from every yoke of bondage. Peace and liberty are the boons which that gospel bestows on all who believe it, as God has declared it.
And mark, it is “that they may hold a feast to me.” If they were to get done with Pharaoh, it was that they might begin with God. This was a great change. Instead of toiling under Pharaoh’s taskmasters, they were to feast in company with Jehovah; and, although they were to pass from Egypt into the wilderness, still the divine presence was to accompany them; and if the wilderness was rough and dreary, it was the way to the land of Canaan. The divine purpose was, that they should hold a feast unto the Lord, in the wilderness; and, in order to do this, they should be “let go” out of Egypt.
However, Pharaoh was in no wise disposed to yield obedience to the divine mandate. “Who is the Lord,” said he, “that I should obey his voice to let Israel go. I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go.” (Ex. 5: 2) Pharaoh most truly expressed, in these words, his real condition. His condition was one of ignorance and consequent disobedience. Both go together. If God be not known, He cannot be obeyed; for obedience is ever founded upon knowledge. When the soul is blessed with the knowledge of God, it finds this knowledge to be life, (John 17: 3) and life is power; and when I get power I can act, It is obvious that one cannot act without life; and therefore it is most unintelligent to set people upon doing certain things, in order to get that by which alone they can do anything.
But Pharaoh was as ignorant of himself as he was of the Lord. He did not know that he was a poor, vile worm of the earth, and that he had been raised up for the express purpose of making known the glory of the very One whom he said he knew not. (Ex. 9: 16; Rom. 9: 17) “And they said, The God of the Hebrews has met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the Lord 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, let the people from their work? Get you unto your burdens . . . . . let there more work be laid upon the men, that they may labour therein; and let them not regard vain words.” (Ver. 3-9)
What a development of the secret springs of the human heart we have here! What complete incompetency to enter into the things of God! All the divine titles and the divine revelations were, in Pharaoh’s estimation, “vain words.” What did he know or care about “three days journey into the wilderness,” or “a feast to Jehovah?” How could he understand the need of such a journey, or the nature or object of such a feast? Impossible. He could understand burden-bearing and brick-making; these things had an air of reality about them, in his judgement; but as to ought of God, His service, or His worship, he could only regard it in the light of an idle chimera, devised by those who only wanted an excuse to make their escape from the stern realities of actual life.
Thus has it, too often, been with the wise and great of this world. They have ever been the most forward to write folly and vanity upon the divine testimonies. Hearken, for example, to the estimate which the “most noble Feasts” formed of the grand question at issue between Paul and the Jews: “they had certain questions against him of their own superstition, and of one Jesus which was dead, whom Paul affirmed to be alive.” (Acts 25: 19) Alas! how little he knew what he was saying! How little he knew what was involved in the question, as to whether “Jesus” was “dead” or “alive!” He thought not of the solemn bearing of that momentous question upon himself and his friends, Agrippa and Bernice; but that did not alter the matter; he and they know somewhat more about it now, though in their passing moment of earthly glory they regarded it as a superstitious question, wholly beneath the notice of men of common sense, and only fit to occupy the disordered brain of visionary enthusiasts. Yes; the stupendous question which fixes the destiny of every child of Adam – on which is founded the present and everlasting condition of the Church and the world which stands connected with all the divine counsels – this question was, in the judgement of Feasts, a vain superstition.
Thus was it in Pharaoh’s case. He knew nothing of “the Lord God of the Hebrews” – the great “I AM,” and hence he regarded all that Moses and Aaron had said to him, in reference to doing sacrifice to God, as “vain words.” The things of God must ever seem vain, profitless, and unmeaning, to the unsanctified mind of man. His name may be made use of as part of the flippant phraseology of a cold and formal religiousness; but He Himself is not known. His precious name, which, to a believer’s heart, has wrapped up in it all that he can possibly need or desire, has no significancy, no power, no virtue for an unbeliever. All, therefore, connected with God, His words, His counsels, His thoughts, His ways, everything, in short, that treats of, or refers to, Him, is regarded as “vain words.”
However, the time is rapidly approaching when it will not be thus. The judgement-seat of Christ, the terrors of the world to come, the surges of the lake of fire, will not be “Vain words.” Assuredly not; and it should be the great aim of all who, through grace, believe them now to be realities, to press them upon the consciences of those who, like Pharaoh, regard the making of bricks as the only thing worth thinking about – the only thing that can be called reel and solid.
Alas! that even Christians should so frequently be found living in the region of sight, the region of earth, the region of nature, as to lose the deep, abiding, influential sense of the reality of divine and heavenly things. We want to live more in the region of faith, the region of heaven, the region of the “new creation.” Then we should see things as God sees them, think about them as He thinks; and our whole course and character would be more elevated, more disinterested, more thoroughly separated from earth and earthly things.
But Moses’ sorest trial did not arise from Pharaoh’s judgement about his mission The true and Wholehearted servant of Christ must ever expect to be looked on, by the men of this world, as a mere visionary enthusiast. The point of view from which they contemplate him is such as to lead us to look for this judgement and none other. The more faithful he is to his heavenly Master, the more he walks in His footsteps, the more conformed he is to His image, the more likely he is to be considered, by the sons of earth, as one “beside himself.” This, therefore, should neither disappoint nor discourage him. But then it is a far more painful thing when his service and testimony are misunderstood, unheeded, or rejected by those who are themselves the specific objects thereof. When such is the case, he needs to be much with God, much in the secret of His mind, much in the power of communion, to have his spirit sustained in the abiding reality of his path and service. Under such trying circumstances, if one be not fully persuaded of the divine commission, and conscious of the divine presence, he will be almost sure to break down.
Had not Moses been thus upheld, his heart must have utterly failed him when the augmented pressure of Pharaoh’s power elicited from the officers of the children of Israel such desponding and depressing words as these: – “The Lord look upon you, and judge; because ye have made our savour to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to slay us.” This was gloomy enough; and Moses felt it so, for “he returned unto the Lord, and said, Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? Why is it that thou hast sent me? For since I came unto Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all.” The aspect of things had become most discouraging, at the very moment when deliverance seemed at hand; just as, in nature, the darkest hour of the night is often that which immediately precedes the dawn of the morning. Thus will it assuredly be, in Israel’s history, in the latter day. The moment of most profound darkness and depressing gloom will precede the bursting of “the Sun of Righteousness” from behind the cloud, with healing in His fingers, to heal eternally, “the hurt of the daughter of His people.”
We may well question how far genuine faith, or a mortified will, dictated the “wherefore?” and the “why?” of Moses, in the above quotation. Still, the Lord does not rebuke a remonstrance drawn forth by the intense pressure of the moment. He most graciously replies, ” Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh: for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land.” (Ex. 6: 1) This reply breathes peculiar grace. Instead of reproving the petulance which could presume to call in question the unsearchable ways of the great I AM, that ever gracious One seeks to relieve the harassed spirit of His servant, by unfolding to him what He was about to do. This was worthy of the blessed God – the unupbraiding Giver of every good and every perfect gift. “He knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.” (Ps. 103: 24)
Nor is it merely in His actings that He would cause the heart to find its solace, but in Himself – in His very name and character. This is full, divine, and everlasting blessedness. When the heart can find its sweet relief in God Himself – when it can retreat into the strong tower which His name affords – when it can find, in His character, a perfect answer to all its need, then truly, it is raised far above the region of the creature-it can turn away from earth’s fair promises – it can place the proper value on man’s lofty pretensions. The heart which is endowed with an experimental knowledge of God can not only look forth upon earth, and say “all is vanity,” but it can also look straight up to Him, and say, “all my springs are in thee.”
“And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am the Lord: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty; but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them. And I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant.” “JEHOVAH” is the title which He takes as the Deliverer of His people, on the ground of His covenant of pure and sovereign grace He reveals Himself as the great self-existing Source of redeeming love, establishing His counsels, fulfilling His promises, delivering His elect people from every enemy and every evil. It was Israel’s privilege ever to abide under the safe covert of that significant title – a title which displays God acting for His own glory, and taking up His oppressed people in order to show forth in them that glory.
“Wherefore say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgements. And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to yon a God; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land concerning the which I did swear to give it unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; and I will give it you for an heritage: I am the Lord. ” (Ver. 6-8.) All this speaks the purest, freest, richest grace. Jehovah presents Himself to the hearts of His people as the One who was to act in them, for them, and with them, for the display of His own glory. Ruined and helpless as they were, He had come down to show forth His glory, to exhibit His grace, and to furnish a sample of His power, in their full deliverance. His glory and their salvation were inseparably connected. They were afterwards reminded of all this, as we read in the book of Deuteronomy. “The Lord did not set His love upon yon nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people; but because the Lord loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” (Ex. 7: 7, 8)
Nothing is more calculated to assure and establish the doubting, trembling heart than the knowledge that God has taken us up, just as we are, and in the full intelligence of what we are; and, moreover, that He can never make any fresh discovery to cause an alteration in the character and measure of His love. “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” (John 13) Whom He loves and as He loves, He loves unto the end. This is an unspeakable comfort. God knew all about us – He knew the very worst of us, when He manifested His love to us in the gift of His Son. He knew what we needed, and He provided it. He knew what was due, and He paid it. He knew what was to be wrought, and He wrought it. His own requirements had to be met, and He met them. It is all His own work. Hence, we find Him saying to Israel, as in the above passage, “I will bring you out” – “I will bring you in” – “I will take you to me” – “I will give you the land” – “I am Jehovah.” It was all what He could do, as founded upon what He was. Until this great truth is fully laid hold of, until it enters into the soul, in the power of the Holy Ghost, there cannot be settled peace. The heart can never be happy or the conscience at rest until one knows and believes that all divine requirements have been divinely answered.
The remainder of our section is taken up with a record of “the heads of their fathers’ houses,” and is very interesting, as showing us Jehovah coming in and numbering those that belonged to Himself, though they were still in the possession of the enemy. Israel was God’s people, and He here counts up those on whom He had a sovereign claim. Amazing grace! To find an object in those who were in the midst of all the degradation of Egyptian bondage! This was worthy of God. The One who had made the worlds, who was surrounded by hosts of unfallen angels, ever ready to “do his pleasure,” should come down for the purpose of taking up a number of bondslaves with whom He condescended to connect His name. He came down and stood amid the brick-kilns of Egypt, and there beheld a people groaning beneath the lash of the task-masters, and He uttered those memorable accents, “Let my people go;” and, having so said, He proceeded to count them up, as much as to say, “These are mine; let me see how many I have, that not one may be left behind.” “He taketh up the beggar from the dunghill, to set him amongst the princes of his people, and to make him inherit the throne of glory.” (1 Sam. 2)
Fuente: Mackintosh’s Notes on the Pentateuch
Exo 5:1 to Exo 6:1 (Exo 5:1 f. and Exo 5:4 E, the rest J). Pharaohs first refusal to let Israel go, and his increase of their burdens.The bulk of the story is taken from J, but part of the opening shows that E told it too. One spoke of the God of Israel, the other of the God of the Hebrews: both related the demand for leave of absence in order to worship. Observe in J the primitive dread of an approach of the Divine Being unless an acceptable offering be at hand (Exo 5:3, cf. Num 23:3, met him, as here; and Jdg 13:15 f.).
Exo 5:1-5. In Exo 5:1, hold a feast (Heb. hag) is, more exactly, make a pilgrimage to a sanctuary, as pious Mohammedans make the haj to Mecca (cf. Exo 23:14 ff. and p. 103). The Pharaoh, who by the custom of the time was often approached by suitors with private grievances, professes blank ignorance of Yahweh, and treats the request as a mere pretext for a holiday.
Exo 5:6-19. Increase of Burdens.The brickmaking was organised by Egyptian taskmasters working under Pharaoh, very much as a clerk of the works superintends a building in progress to watch the interests of the owner and to see the instructions of the architect fulfilled. These in turn chose Hebrew officers or foremen who were responsible for the work of their gangs. At Pithom (Exo 1:11) some of the bricks that have been dug up contained chopped straw and some did not. But elsewhere such use of straw is unusual. Perhaps it was needed, Petrie suggests, to separate the soft bricks. In any case the refusal to provide a necessary imposed more work. Driver (CB, p. 39) reproduces illustrations from the monuments of the processes of brickmaking and building by Asiatic captives under supervision, and quotes an inscription (p. 31), The taskmaster says to his labourers, The stick is in my hand, be not idle. The Nile mud had to be dug, carried in baskets, kneaded with water, moulded, dried, carried to the site, and built into the walls. Num 11:5 warns us that, for slaves, the Hebrews were on the whole well treated (MNeile).
Exo 5:8. tale: i.e. set amount. To tell used to mean to count (Gen 15:5*).
Exo 5:9. Read (with LXX, Sam., Pesh.) that they may attend to it (their work), and not attend to lying words.
Exo 5:14. task: in this verse should be prescribed portion.
Exo 5:16. Read (with LXX, Pesh.) and thou shalt sin against thy people. The Heb. is corrupt, and the EV is false to the facts.
Exo 5:20 to Exo 6:1. Moses, reproached for the failure of the appeal to Pharaoh, casts himself on God, and wins promise of effectual aid. Dawn follows the darkest hour.
Exo 5:21. Ye have brought us into ill odour with Pharaoh would be a more modern rendering.
Exo 5:22. evil entreated: i.e. ill-treated.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
GOD’S FURTHER PATIENT PREPARATION
(vs.1-13)
The impatience of Moses and of the children of Israel could not hasten God to act out of impatience. He accomplished matters in His own wise way. He tells Moses, however, that he will see what God would do to Pharaoh, for not only would Pharaoh grudgingly let Israel go, but would use his power to drive them out of his land.
Moses needs reassuring, and God speaks to him of what He had repeated before, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but as Lord (Jehovah) I was not known to them.” He is the same God who had proven faithful to the fathers of Israel, though they were not acquainted with the significance of His name “Lord” or “Jehovah.” This is His name, not only in His great power and dignity, but in covenant relationship with His people, a God of goodness and compassion in dealing with the needs of Israel.
Connected with His name “Jehovah” therefore, He makes three assertions as to what He has done: (1) “I have also established My covenant;” (2) “I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel;”(3) “I have remembered My covenant” (vs.3-5). This is followed by seven “I wills.” Because He is Jehovah, He says, (1) “I will bring you out;” (2) “I will rescue you;” (3) “I will redeem you; ” (4) “I will take you to Me;” (5) “I will be to you a God;”(6) “I will bring you in;”(7) “I will give it (the land) to you” (vs.6-8). He concludes this as He had begun, “I am the Lord.”
When Moses brought this message to Israel, however, they were so burdened with anguish that they were not disposed to listen (v.12). Thus also, when one is brought down with a painful conviction of his own guilt before God, he may feel there is really no hope for him in spite of the gospel being told him.
But God was not defeated. He gives Moses and Aaron a charge both for the children of Israel and for Pharaoh as to Israel’s being brought out of Egypt (v.13).
LEVI CHOSEN FOR PRIESTHOOD
(vs.14-30)
Intervening at this place is a partial genealogy of the first three sons of Jacob. Reuben and Simeon are dismissed with only one verse dealing with each (vs.14-15). For Reuben speaks of the strength of the flesh (Gen 49:3) which can have no place in the true service of God. Simeon stands for the cruelty and divisiveness of nature, which was shared by Levi also (Gen 49:5-7), but Levi’s name (meaning joined) seems to imply that in him evil was exposed and judged, specially since he had three sons, reminding us of resurrection, which is the only true basis of the fulfilment of God’s covenant. These sons were Gershon, Kohath and Merari.
The first son of Kohath was Aniram, who married Jochebed (vs.18-20), of whom Aaron and Moses were born. Others of the line of Levi are mentioned, then Aaron’s wife and four sons (v.24), then his one grandson Phinehas also. The rest of the tribes of Israel are not considered here for God is focusing on the two chosen leaders of Israel, Moses and Aaron (vs.26-27). Verses 28-30 refer back to verses 10-12, 50 that the question of Moses there is answered in the beginning of Chapter 7
Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible
CHAPTER VI.
THE ENCOURAGEMENT OF MOSES.
Exo 6:1-30.
We have seen that the name Jehovah expresses not a philosophic meditation, but the most bracing and reassuring truth–viz., that an immutable and independent Being sustains His people; and this great title is therefore reaffirmed with emphasis in the hour of mortal discouragement. It is added that their fathers knew God by the name of God Almighty, but by His name Jehovah was He not known, or made known, unto them. Now, it is quite clear that they were not utterly ignorant of this title, for no such theory as that it was hitherto mentioned by anticipation only, can explain the first syllable in the name of the mother of Moses himself, nor the assertion that in the time of Seth men began to call upon the name of Jehovah (Gen 4:26), nor the name of the hill of Abraham’s sacrifice, Jehovah-jireh (Gen 22:14). Yet the statement cannot be made available for the purposes of any reasonable and moderate scepticism, since the sceptical theory demands a belief in successive redactions of the work in which an error so gross could not have escaped detection.
And the true explanation is that this Name was now, for the first time, to be realised as a sustaining power. The patriarchs had known the name; how its fitness should be realised: God should be known by it. They had drawn support and comfort from that simpler view of the Divine protection which said, “I am the Almighty God: walk before Me and be thou perfect” (Gen 17:1). But thenceforth all the experience of the past was to reinforce the energies of the present, and men were to remember that their promises came from One who cannot change. Others, like Abraham, had been stronger in faith than Moses. But faith is not the same as insight, and Moses was the greatest of the prophets (Deu 34:10). To him, therefore, it was given to confirm the courage of his nation by this exalting thought of God. And the Lord proceeds to state what His promises to the patriarchs were, and joins together (as we should do) the assurance of His compassionate heart and of His inviolable pledges: “I have heard the groaning of the children of Israel, … and I have remembered My covenant.”
It has been the same, in turn, with every new revelation of the Divine. The new was implicit in the old, but when enforced, unfolded, reapplied, men found it charged with unsuspected meaning and power, and as full of vitality and development as a handful of dry seeds when thrown into congenial soil. So it was pre-eminently with the doctrine of the Messiah. It will be the same hereafter with the doctrine of the kingdom of peace and the reign of the saints on earth. Some day men will smile at our crude theories and ignorant controversies about the Millennium. We, meantime, possess the saving knowledge of Christ amid many perplexities and obscurities. And so the patriarchs, who knew God Almighty, but not by His name Jehovah, were not lost for want of the knowledge of His name, but saved by faith in Him, in the living Being to Whom all these names belong, and Who shall yet write upon the brows of His people some new name, hitherto undreamed by the ripest of the saints and the purest of the Churches. Meantime, let us learn the lessons of tolerance for other men’s ignorance, remembering the ignorance of the father of the faithful, tolerance for difference of views, remembering how the unusual and rare name of God was really the precursor of a brighter revelation, and yet again, when our hearts are faint with longing for new light, and weary to death of the babbling of old words, let us learn a sober and cautious reconsideration, lest perhaps the very truth needed for altered circumstance and changing problem may lie, unheeded and dormant, among the dusty old phrases from which we turn away despairingly. Moreover, since the fathers knew the name Jehovah, yet gained from it no special knowledge of God, such as they had from His Almightiness, we are taught that discernment is often more at fault than revelation. To the quick perception and plastic imagination of the artist, our world reveals what the boor will never see. And the saint finds, in the homely and familiar words of Scripture, revelations for His soul that are unknown to common men. Receptivity is what we need far more than revelation.
Again is Moses bidden to appeal to the faith of his countrymen, by a solemn repetition of the Divine promise. If the tyranny is great, they shall be redeemed with a stretched out arm, that is to say, with a palpable interposition of the power of God, “and with great judgments.” It is the first appearance in Scripture of this phrase, afterwards so common. Not mere vengeance upon enemies or vindication of subjects is in question: the thought is that of a deliberate weighing of merits, and rendering out of measured penalties. Now, the Egyptian mythology had a very clear and solemn view of judgment after death. If king and people had grown cruel, it was because they failed to realise remote punishments, and did not believe in present judgments, here, in this life. But there is a God that judgeth in the earth. Not always, for mercy rejoiceth over judgment. We may still pray, “Enter not into judgment with Thy servants, O Lord, for in Thy sight shall no man living be justified.” But when men resist warnings, then retribution begins even here. Sometimes it comes in plague and overthrow, sometimes in the worse form of a heart made fat, the decay of sensibilities abused, the dying out of spiritual faculty. Pharaoh was to experience both, the hardening of his heart and the ruin of his fortunes.
It is added, “I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you for a God.” This is the language, not of a mere purpose, a will that has resolved to vindicate the right, but of affection. God is about to adopt Israel to Himself, and the same favour which belonged to rare individuals in the old time is now offered to a whole nation. Just as the heart of each man is gradually educated, learning first to love a parent and a family, and so led on to national patriotism, and at last to a world-wide philanthropy, so was the religious conscience of mankind awakened to believe that Abraham might be the friend of God, and then that His oath might be confirmed unto the children, and then that He could take Israel to Himself for a people, and at last that God loved the world.
It is not religion to think that God condescends merely to save us. He cares for us. He takes us to Himself, He gives Himself away to us, in return, to be our God.
Such a revelation ought to have been more to Israel than any pledge of certain specified advantages. It was meant to be a silken tie, a golden clasp, to draw together the almighty Heart and the hearts of these downtrodden slaves. Something within Him desires their little human love; they shall be to Him for a people. So He said again, “My son, give Me thine heart.” And so, when He carried to the uttermost these unsought, unhoped for, and, alas! unwelcomed overtures of condescension, and came among us, He would have gathered, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, those who would not. It is not man who conceives, from definite services received, the wild hope of some spark of real affection in the bosom of the Eternal and Mysterious One. It is not man, amid the lavish joys and splendours of creation, who conceives the notion of a supreme Heart, as the explanation of the universe. It is God Himself Who says, “I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a God.”
Nor is it human conversion that begins the process, but a Divine covenant and pledge, by which God would fain convert us to Himself; even as the first disciples did not accost Jesus, but He turned and spoke to them the first question and the first invitation; “What seek ye?… Come, and ye shall see.”
To-day, the choice of the civilised world has to be made between a mechanical universe and a revealed love, for no third possibility survives.
This promise establishes a relationship, which God never afterwards cancelled. Human unbelief rejected its benefits, and chilled the mutual sympathies which it involved; but the fact always remained, and in their darkest hour they could appeal to God to remember His covenant and the oath which He sware.
And this same assurance belongs to us. We are not to become good, or desirous of goodness, in order that God may requite with affection our virtues or our wistfulness. Rather we are to arise and come to our Father, and to call Him Father, although we are not worthy to be called His sons. We are to remember how Jesus said, “If ye being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him!” and to learn that He is the Father of those who are evil, and even of those who are still unpardoned, as He said again, “If ye forgive not … neither will your heavenly Father forgive you.”
Much controversy about the universal Fatherhood of God would be assuaged if men reflected upon the significant distinction which our Saviour drew between His Fatherhood and our sonship, the one always a reality of the Divine affection, the other only a possibility, for human enjoyment or rejection: “Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father Which is in heaven” (Mat 5:44-45). There is no encouragement to presumption in the assertion of the Divine Fatherhood upon such terms. For it speaks of a love which is real and deep without being feeble and indiscriminate. It appeals to faith because there is an absolute fact to lean upon, and to energy because privilege is conditional. It reminds us that our relationship is like that of the ancient Israel,–that we are in a covenant, as they were, but that the carcases of many of them fell in the wilderness; although God had taken them for a people, and was to them a God, and said, “Israel is My son, even My firstborn.”
It is added that faith shall develop into knowledge. Moses is to assure them now that they “shall know” hereafter that the Lord is Jehovah their God. And this, too, is a universal law, that we shall know if we follow on to know: that the trial of our faith worketh patience, and patience experience, and we have so dim and vague an apprehension of Divine realities, chiefly because we have made but little trial, and have not tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious.
In this respect, as in so many more, religion is analogous with nature. The squalor of the savage could be civilised, and the distorted and absurd conceptions of medival science could be corrected, only by experiment, persistently and wisely carried out.
And it is so in religion: its true evidence is unknown to these who never bore its yoke; it is open to just such raillery and rejection as they who will not love can pour upon domestic affection and the sacred ties of family life; but, like these, it vindicates itself, in the rest of their souls, to those who will take the yoke and learn. And its best wisdom is not of the cunning brain but of the open heart, that wisdom from above, which is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated.
And thus, while God leads Israel, they shall know that He is Jehovah, and true to His highest revelations of Himself.
All this they heard, and also, to define their hope and brighten it, the promise of Palestine was repeated; but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage. Thus the body often holds the spirit down, and kindly allowance is made by Him Who knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust, and Who, in the hour of His own agony, found the excuse for His unsympathising followers that the spirit was willing although the flesh was weak. So when Elijah made request for himself that he might die, in the utter reaction which followed his triumph on Carmel and his wild race to Jezreel, the good Physician did not dazzle him with new splendours of revelation until after he had slept, and eaten miraculous food, and a second time slept and eaten.
But if the anguish of the body excuses much weakness of the spirit, it follows, on the other hand, that men are responsible to God for that heavy weight which is laid upon the spirit by pampered and luxurious bodies, incapable of self-sacrifice, rebellious against the lightest of His demands. It is suggestive, that Moses, when sent again to Pharaoh, objected, as at first: “Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips?”
Every new hope, every great inspiration which calls the heroes of God to a fresh attack upon the powers of Satan, is checked and hindered more by the coldness of the Church than by the hostility of the world. That hostility is expected, and can be defied. But the infidelity of the faithful is appalling indeed.
We read with wonder the great things which Christ has promised to believing prayer, and, at the same time, although we know painfully that we have never claimed and dare not claim these promises, we wonder equally at the foreboding question, “When the Son of Man cometh, shall He find the faith (faith in its fulness) on the earth?” (Luke xviii. 8). But we ought to remember that our own low standard helps to form the standard of attainment for the Church at large–that when one member suffers, all the members suffer with it–that many a large sacrifice would be readily made for Christ, at this hour, if only ease and pleasure were at stake, which is refused because it is too hard to be called well-meaning enthusiasts by those who ought to glorify God in such attainment, as the first brethren did in the zeal and the gifts of Paul.
The vast mountains raise their heads above mountain ranges which encompass them; and it is not when the level of the whole Church is low, that giants of faith and of attainment may be hoped for. Nay, Christ stipulates for the agreement of two or three, to kindle and make effectual the prayers which shall avail.
For the purification of our cities, for the shaming of our legislation until it fears God as much as a vested interest, for the reunion of those who worship the same Lord, for the conversion of the world, and first of all for the conversion of the Church, heroic forces are demanded. But all the tendency of our half-hearted, abject, semi-Christianity is to repress everything that is unconventional, abnormal, likely to embroil us with our natural enemy, the world; and who can doubt that, when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, we shall know of many an aspiring soul, in which the sacred fire had begun to burn, which sank back into lethargy and the commonplace, murmuring in its despair, “Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me?”
It was the last fear which ever shook the great heart of the emancipator Moses.
At the beginning of the grand historical work, of which all this has been the prelude, there is set the pedigree of Moses and Aaron, according to “the heads of their fathers’ houses,”— an epithet which indicates a subdivision of the “family,” as the family is a subdivision of the tribe. Of the sons of Jacob, Reuben and Simeon are mentioned, to put Levi in his natural third place. And from Levi to Moses only four generations are mentioned, favouring somewhat the briefer scheme of chronology which makes four centuries cover all the time from Abraham, and not the captivity alone. But it is certain that this is a mere recapitulation of the more important links in the genealogy. In Num 26:58-59, six generations are reckoned instead of four; in 1Ch 2:3 there are seven generations; and elsewhere in the same book (1Ch 6:22) there are ten. It is well known that similar omissions of obscure or unworthy links occur in St. Matthew’s pedigree of our Lord, although some stress is there laid upon the recurrent division into fourteens. And it is absurd to found any argument against the trustworthiness of the narrative upon a phenomenon so frequent, and so sure to be avoided by a forger, or to be corrected by an unscrupulous editor. In point of fact, nothing is less likely to have occurred, if the narrative were a late invention.
Neither, in that case, would the birth of the great emancipator be ascribed to the union of Amram with his father’s sister, for such marriages were distinctly forbidden by the law (Lev 18:14).
Nor would the names of the children of the founder of the nation be omitted, while those of Aaron are recorded, unless we were dealing with genuine history, which knows that the sons of Aaron inherited the lawful priesthood, while the descendants of Moses were the jealous founders of a mischievous schism (Jdg 18:30, R.V.).
Nor again, if this were a religious romance, designed to animate the nation in its later struggles, should we read of the hesitation and the fears of a leader “of uncircumcised lips,” instead of the trumpet-like calls to action of a noble champion.
Nor does the broken-spirited meanness of Israel at all resemble the conception, popular in every nation, of a virtuous and heroic antiquity, a golden age. It is indeed impossible to reconcile the motives and the date to which this narrative is ascribed by some, with the plain phenomena, with the narrative itself.
Nor is it easy to understand why the Lord, Who speaks of bringing out “My hosts, My people, the children of Israel” (Exo 7:4, etc.), should never in the Pentateuch be called the Lord of Hosts, if that title were in common use when it was written; for no epithet would better suit the song of Miriam or the poetry of the Fifth Book.
When Moses complained that he was of uncircumcised lips, the Lord announced that He had already made His servant as a god unto Pharaoh, having armed him, even then, with the terrors which are soon to shake the tyrant’s soul.
It is suggestive and natural that his very education in a court should render him fastidious, less willing than a rougher man might have been to appear before the king after forty years of retirement, and feeling almost physically incapable of speaking what he felt so deeply, in words that would satisfy his own judgment. Yet God had endowed him, even then, with a supernatural power far greater than any facility of expression. In his weakness he would thus be made strong; and the less fit he was to assert for himself any ascendency over Pharaoh, the more signal would be the victory of his Lord, when he became “very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of the people” (Exo 11:3).
As a proof of this mastery he was from the first to speak to the haughty king through his brother, as a god through some prophet, being too great to reveal himself directly. It is a memorable phrase; and so lofty an assertion could never, in the myth of a later period, have been ascribed to an origin so lowly as the reluctance of Moses to expose his deficiency in elocution.
Therefore he should henceforth be emboldened by the assurance of qualification bestowed already: not only by the hope of help and achievement yet to come, but by the certainty of present endowment. And so should each of us, in his degree, be bold, who have gifts differing according to the grace given unto us.
It is certain that every living soul has at least one talent, and is bound to improve it. But how many of us remember that this loan implies a commission from God, as real as that of prophet and deliverer, and that nothing but our own default can prevent it from being, at the last, received again with usury?
The same bravery, the same confidence when standing where his Captain has planted him, should inspire the prophet, and him that giveth alms, and him that showeth mercy; for all are members in one body, and therefore animated by one invincible Spirit from above (Rom 12:4-9).
The endowment thus given to Moses made him “as a god” to Pharaoh.
We must not take this to mean only that he had a prophet or spokesman, or that he was made formidable, but that the peculiar nature of his prowess would be felt. It was not his own strength. The supernatural would become visible in him. He who boasted “I know not Jehovah” would come to crouch before Him in His agent, and humble himself to the man whom once he contemptuously ordered back to his burdens, with the abject prayer, “Forgive, I pray thee, my sin only this once, and entreat Jehovah your God that He may take away from me this death only.”
Now, every consecrated power may bear witness to the Lord: it is possible to do all to the glory of God. Not that every separate action will be ascribed to a preternatural source, but the sum total of the effect produced by a holy life will be sacred. He who said, “I have made thee a god unto Pharaoh,” says of all believers, “I in them, and Thou, Father, in Me, that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me.”