Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Exodus 5:1

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.

1. Jehovah, the God of Israel ] elsewhere in the Pent. only Exo 32:27 (E), also with Thus saith; cf. on Exo 4:22.

make a pilgrimage ] The Heb. ag means not simply a religious ‘feast’ like our Easter or Christmas, for instance, but a feast accompanied by a pilgrimage to a sanctuary: such as, for instance, were the three ‘ aggim,’ at which every male Israelite was to appear before Jehovah (Exo 23:14-17). The corresponding word in Arabic, aj, denotes the pilgrimage to Mecca, which every faithful Mohammedan endeavours to make at least once in his life.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

1 5. Moses and Aaron ask permission of the Pharaoh for the Israelites to keep a three days’ feast in the wilderness. The request is refused.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Pharaoh – This king, probably Tothmosis II, the great grandson of Aahmes Exo 1:8, the original persecutor of the Israelites, must have been resident at this time in a city, probably Tanis Exo 2:5, of Lower Egypt, situated on the Nile.

The Lord God – Yahweh God of Israel demanded the services of His people. The demand, according to the general views of the pagans, was just and natural; the Israelites could not offer the necessary sacrifices in the presence of Egyptians.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

Exo 5:1

Let My people go.

The deliverance of Gods people

The history of the deliverance of Gods people from the bondage of Egypt, their pilgrimage through the wilderness, and their ultimate settlement in the Land of Promise, bears striking analogy to the history of the human soul.

I. The words Let My people go, regarded as spoken concerning human souls, may be said to contain in themselves the whole gospel history of our redemption. Even the small word My is emphatic.

1. We are Gods people; not Satans people. When God claims us we should remember that He claims His own, and that we are bound to support His claim.

2. The summons to let the people of God go implies a bondage from which they are to be delivered. That which forms the basis of Holy Scripture is the fact that man committed sin. He rebelled against his Maker, and became the slave of one to whom he owed no obedience.

3. If the words Let My people go imply the existence of slavery, they still more emphatically imply the way and the promise of redemption. The Gospel of Christ, as preached throughout the whole world, is just this–Let My people go.

II. The whole system of ordinances and sacraments, in which we find ourselves by Gods providence, like the system of ordinances and sacrifices which was given to Israel when they came out of Egypt, are intended to insure and perfect and turn to the best account the liberty which the Lord has given us, for the soul of man may not be content with emancipation once and for all.

III. The consideration of what Jesus Christ has done for us is the chief means of moving our hearts to seek that liberty which God designs us all to possess. (Bp. Harvey Goodwin.)

Freedom to serve God

I. Perfect freedom is not the thing demanded of Pharaoh, nor is this the prize of their high calling held out before the eyes of the Israelites. To serve God is the perfect freedom held out: to change masters, to be rid of him who had no claim to their allegiance, and to be permitted without hindrance to serve Him who was indeed their Lord and their God. This was the boon offered to the children of Israel, and demanded on their account by Moses as the ambassador of God.

II. This feature in the deliverance of the Israelites is worthy of special notice, when we regard it as typical of the deliverance from sin and the bondage of the devil, which our heavenly Father is willing to effect for each of us. Let My people go,–not that they may be free from a master, but that they may serve; let them go, because they have been redeemed by Christ, and are not their own, but His. The deliverance from sin which God works for His people is, in fact, a change from one service to another: a change from service to sin, which is perfect bondage, to service to God, which is perfect freedom.

III. The blessedness of the service of God is not estimated as it ought to be; men in these days are too like the children of Israel, who seemed to think that they had conferred a favour on Moses by following his guidance, and that the least reverse would be a sufficient excuse to justify them in going back again to Egypt. There is nothing in their conduct more strange or more blamable than in the conduct of men calling themselves Christians, who do not perceive that in the earnest discharge of Gods service is their highest happiness as well as their principal duty and most blessed privilege. (Bp. Harvey Goodwin.)

Lessons

1. Gods ambassadors must proceed orderly in delivering their message–first to Israel, secondly to Pharaoh.

2. Order of persons as well as time is observable by Gods servants.

3. The poorest persons under Gods authority may press into the presence of the proudest kings.

4. Gods ambassadors must speak and declare His will to the greatest potentates.

5. Gods messengers must go in His authority and vouch His name,

6. The true way of making out God unto man is concretely not abstractly. Every nation acknowledgeth God, but not Israels God.

7. The true God hath a peculiar people whom He owneth in the world.

8. The will of God is to have His people set free from all that hinders them from Him.

9. The end of all redemption is that Gods people should serve Him.

10. The true service of God is a festival living to Him.

11. Such feasting with God is better in the wilderness than in Egypt.

12. All such feasting, sacrificing, and worship must terminate in Jehovah. (G. Hughes, B. D.)

Moses before Pharaoh

1. The sense of his high commission enabled him to discharge the duty it laid upon him with dignity and boldness. The sinking of heart that had seized him upon its first announcement had passed away; and in its place had come the spirit of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

2. Aaron was with him; but the relation he sustained to the work is marked, as it is throughout the narrative, by the order of the names, Moses and Aaron–never Aaron and Moses–a companion, aa associate, but only as a helper, a support, a spokesman, though Aaron was the eider. There are chords in our nature that vibrate mysteriously to anothers touch, a magnetism that works by laws imperfectly understood, by which the presence and sympathy of a companion, silent though it be, and without visible action, braces and enlivens the heart; and that, though the disparity be so great that the inferior who cares for us can only think as we think, and feel as we feel, without any contribution of useful counsel or active succour. At my first answer, says St. Paul, no man stood with me, but all men forsook me. Let us not say that we cannot help our friend because we are inferior and of small resources. It is too often but the cover of cowardice or coldness of heart. He that knows the magic there is in a look, a touch, or a word, to alleviate and quicken a pained or fainting soul, feels the falsehood. Nor let us, in our height of pride and self-sufficiency, despise the fellowship of kindred minds because they are below us, and, it may be, without manifest strength to aid. A little childs sympathy is not to be despised. Moses commission was sole, but Aarons presence facilitated its execution. There is a wonderful power in company.

3. What Moses first asked of Pharaoh for his people, then, was a religious privilege–liberty to go out into the wild country beyond the bounds of Goshen, and worship God; sacrifice to that great Being in whom their fathers had trusted, but whose image, we may well believe, had grown dim among them during their long period of depression and enslavement. Moses was a religious reformer. The revival of truth, faith, and loyalty to Jehovah, lay at the bottom of all the other great things he was to do for them. The feast in the wilderness was preliminary to all that was to follow, to stand as the frontispiece of that series of wonderful events in which their deliverance was to be accomplished, the prologue of the great drama of their entrance upon national life.

4. To Pharaoh, in this call, there was a test of faith, and of that obedience in which all real faith finds its true expression. God came forth from His obscurity and spoke to him. Would he hear that voice, recognize it as the voice of Him who is King of kings? In humanity there is a chord that ever vibrates to Gods touch, and an ear that hears His voice. It was the call of Gods mercy to Pharaoh, Jehovahs coming near to him to do him good. Alas! he knew not the time of his visitation. But if the heart of Pharaoh towards God was tested by this call, so was his heart towards man. It was an appeal to his humanity.

5. See the wisdom of acting in great matters with judgment, moderation, and patience. Many a good design has been ruined by abruptness, haste, and grasping greed. Moses did not succeed in his embassy, but he adopted fit and judicious methods to obtain success; and if they failed to secure their object, it was simply because they encountered an opposition that no power or skill could overcome. The eagerness that will have all at once, loses all. The impatience that will reach the goal at a single bound, never reaches it. To have asked the immediate emancipation of the Israelites would have been manifestly useless.

6. Finally, beware of striving against God. It can end in nothing but destruction. Its gains are losses, its successes its most ruinous failures. (R. A. Hallam, D. D.)

Reasons for sending Moses and Aaron

Why did God send Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh, when He could have destroyed Him with a stroke, and have wrought the freedom of Israel?

1. That Gods power might appear in showing His wonders.

2. That the Israelites might see the great care God had over them.

3. To exercise their patience, not being delivered at once.

4. To leave Pharaoh without excuse. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)

A proclamation of God

1. His name.

2. His authority.

3. His regard for His people.

4. His desire for the freedom of man. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)

The freedom of men

1. Earnestly desired.

2. Effectively undertaken.

3. Divinely approved.

4. Successfully achieved. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)

A Divine challenge

The slavery of Israel in Egypt was hopeless slavery; they could not get free unless God interfered and worked miracles on their behalf. And the slavery of the sinner to his sin is equally hopeless; he could never be free, unless a mind that is infinitely greater than he can ever command shall come to his assistance and help. What a blessed circumstance it is, then, for those poor chosen children of God, who are still in bondage, that the Lord has power to say, and then power to carry out what He has said–Thus saith the Lord, let My people go, that they may serve Me.

I. The fulness of the sentence. Thus saith the Lord, let My people go, that they may serve Me. I dont doubt but what there are some of Gods people who have not any idea they are His people. The demand was not made to Pharaoh, Make their tasks less heavy; make the whip less cruel; put kinder taskmasters over them. No, but, Let them go free. Christ did not come into the world merely to make our sin more tolerable, but to deliver us right away from it. He did not come to make our lusts less mighty; but to put all these things far away from His people, and work out a full and complete deliverance. Again, you will mark, it says, Let My people go. It says nothing about their coming back again. Once gone, they are gone for ever.

II. The rightness of it. The voice of justice, and pity, and mercy, cries to death, and hell, and sin, Let My people go free–Satan, keep thine own if thou wilt, but let My people go free, for they are Mine. This people have I created for Myself; they shall show forth My praise. Let My people go free, for I have bought them with My precious blood. Thou hast not bought them, nor hast thou made them: thou hast no right to them; let My people go free. All this is our comfort about poor sinners, and we hope that some of them, though they dont know it, are Gods people.

III. The repetition of this sentence. Observe now, as Pharaoh would not give up the people, the sentence had to be repeated again, and again, until at last God would bear it no longer, but brought down on him one tremendous blow. He smote the firstborn of Egypt, the chief of all their strength, and then He led forth His people like sheep by the hands of Moses and Aaron. In like manner this sentence of God has to be repeated many times in your experience and mine, Thus, saith the Lord, let My people go free, and if you are not quite free yet, dont despair; God will repeat that sentence till at last you shall be brought forth with silver and gold, and there shall not be a feeble thought in all your soul; you shall go forth with gladness and with joy; you shall enter into Canaan at last, up yonder where His throne is glittering now in glorious light, that angel eyes cannot bear. It is no wonder then, if it is to be repeated in our experience, that the Church of Christ must keep on repeating it in the world as Gods message. Go, missionary, to India, and say to Juggernaut, and Kalee, and Brahma, and Vishnu, Thus saith the Lord, let My people go free. Go, ye servants of the Lord, to China, speak to the followers of Confucius, and say, Thus saith the Lord, let My people go free. Go ye to the gates of the harlot city, even Rome, and say, Thus saith the Lord, let My people go, that they may serve Me. Think not though you die that your message will die with you. Tis for Moses to say, Thus saith the Lord, and if he be driven from Pharaohs sight, the Thus saith the Lord still stands, though His servant fall. Yes, brothers and sisters, the whole Church must keep on throughout every age, crying, Thus saith the Lord, let My people go.

IV. The omnipotence of the command. Sin is a Pharaoh, but God is Jehovah. Your sins are hard; you cannot overcome them of yourself, but God can. There is hope yet; let that hope arouse you to action. Say to your soul tonight, I am not in hell, though I might have been. I am still on praying ground and pleading terms, and now, God helping me, I will begin to think. And when you begin to think you will begin to be blessed. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Gods people

I. Who are these whom god calls my people?

1. They are a distinct and separate race. The people of God are not those who agree with each other as to certain theories–in these things they may be sundered far as the poles. It is not that they come together on certain particular occasions and observe the same ceremonies. No ceremonies however ancient, however solemn, however significant, however faithfully observed can make us His people. The distinction is one of birth. It is a difference of nature. Born of God, begotten of God, they arc the children of God. Within them is the very Spirit of God whereby they cry Abba Father.

2. They are Created of God by a distinct and wholly supernatural act. The children of a new life–of the resurrection. And out of that relationship to God come a thousand new relationships. There is a new authority which is ever supreme–there is a new nature, with new hopes, and new desires; and new needs; and new aspirations; and new delights; a nature which can find its only satisfaction in Him in whom it found its source; there is a new relationship to all things. Born of God, they look further; they soar higher; they find more.

II. But if these are His people, why does he suffer them to be here? Forsaken, wronged–has God forgotten to be gracious? Who shall deliver them out of the hand of Pharaoh?

1. That they may know that I am the Lord–this is the key to it all. They are led into the wilderness where there is neither bread nor water, that they may learn to look up to God for their help: so they are hemmed in by all possible evils in Egypt, that they may see the greatness and might of their God in their deliverance. The mightier the nation that oppressed them, the greater the glory of their deliverance. The more hopeless their condition, and the more hopeless the people, so much more room was there for God to show forth His mighty arm. The greatness of life–its breadth and depth, its expanse like heaven above us, its solidity like the earth beneath us–is exactly according to our knowledge of our God. And the deep peace and rest–the blessedness and satisfaction–these too come only from knowing Him. We are most indebted–not to those things for which it is easiest to give thanks, but to those from which we have shrunk, and which set us wondering, fearing, perhaps even doubting. The reaper is a happy man, and poets sing and artists paint the scene of harvest home. But the keen frosts that break the clods, and the patient ploughman plodding wearily behind the share with which he cleaves the soil in chill winter winds and under cheerless skies–these are apt to be forgotten and unthanked. And yet what should the reaper bring if the ploughman went not forth? My people. God sends them to school that they may learn to know Him.

2. Learn further that wherever His people are led, they can never get where God cannot help them. Be sure of that. Whatever clouds gather they cannot hide His child in the darkness. No circumstances can ever shut us out from His help.

3. The Lord knoweth them that are His. He leadeth them in a way that they know not, but He knoweth the way. Fear not: we too may sing–He leadeth us in a right way to bring us to a city of habitation.

4. Notice yet another characteristic of His people. See Israel come forth from Egypt. Every man, every woman, every child bows his head beneath a doorpost on which is sprinkled the blood–each one passes between the side posts whereon is the crimson stain. They arc the redeemed of the Lord–My people–ransomed by a great price. The people of God find their deliverance in the power of the Cross. (M. G. Pearse.)

Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh

We never heard of an insurrection against a tyrannical government, deliberately planned, for which there was not aggregated some sort of preparation in armies and munitions of war. So we inquire in this instance, What was the number of Israels troops now on their belligerent way to beseige the capital of Egypt? Only one organized battalion, consisting of these two old men! What were the arms they carried? These were altogether seven weapons in detail. Any one can count them at his pleasure: one shepherds crook, called a rod, one tremendous name in the Hebrew language, four promises, and a miracle. These were expected to revolutionize Egypt.

I. Inadequacy of conspicuous resources is no argument against success, when God in Person has sent His servants forth to do His errand.

II. The Almighty God has never let go His hold upon any individual of the human race, for all the spiteful rebellion some men have shown.

III. It is of the utmost importance that intelligent people should have a safe creed. Undoubtedly Pharaoh is very much in earnest. He does not know Jehovah; he knows the deities he has been educated to worship. But if we only wait a little longer, and read the story of the exodus clear through to the crossing of the Red Sea, we shall find out whether it made any difference to Pharaoh what he believed in that moment when he defied Jehovah!

IV. See how clearly the all-wise God works up to simple issues with every wilful transgressor before He casts him utterly out. There is only one question which confronts any man, no matter how many are the forms in which it may be put: Will you, or will you not, obey God?

V. Those who seek to help their fellow-men in this world must expect misjudgment.

VI. So we reach our final lesson: the natural and first result of stirring up sin is to aggravate its violence. Satan hates to lose his slaves. The heart is desperately wicked, and seems to grow more malignant than before. It is always darkest just before day. This does not happen so; it is the Divine rule. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

Divine condescension to Pharaoh

At the outset, we observe the more than dutiful manner in which Israel was directed to act towards Pharaoh. Absolutely speaking, Pharaoh had no right to detain the people in Egypt. Their fathers had avowedly come not to settle, but temporarily to sojourn, and on that understanding they had been received. And now they were not only wrongfully oppressed, but unrighteously detained. It was infinite condescension to Pharaohs weakness, on the part of God, not to insist from the first upon the immediate and entire dismissal of Israel. Less could not have been asked than was demanded of Pharaoh, nor could obedience have been made more easy. Assuredly such a man was ripe for the judgment of hardening; just as, on the other hand, if he had at the first yielded obedience to the Divine will, he would surely have been prepared to receive a further revelation of His will, and grace to submit to it. And so God in His mercy always deals with man. He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. The demands of God are intended to try what is in us. It was so in the case of Adams obedience, of Abrahams sacrifice, and now of Pharaoh; only that in the latter case, as in the promise to spare Sodom if even ten righteous men were found among its wicked inhabitants, the Divine forbearance went to the utmost verge of condescension. (A. Edersheim, D. D.)

Divine authority for the message

On one occasion when Whitefield was preaching, an old man fell asleep, and some of the audience became listless. Suddenly changing his manner, Whitefield broke forth in an altered tone, declaring that He had not come to speak in his own name, otherwise they might lean on their elbows and go to sleep. No; I have come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts, and I must and will be heard. The sleeper started wide awake; the hearers were stripped of their apathy at once; and every word of the sermon was attended to. It was thus that Moses addressed Pharaoh; and it is thus all witness for God should address the listeners–with authority.

Hold a feast unto Me.

The first attempt at a religious service

I. That this first attempt at a religious service was made responsive to the call, and in harmony with the will of God.

1. Thus there was a great necessity that the work now attempted by Moses and Aaron should be accomplished.

2. Moses and Aaron were the right men to undertake this work. In the first place, Moses had been directly called by God to do it; also Aaron had been providentially conducted to this sphere of work. In this we see the different methods by which God enjoins work upon good men. Then, again, Moses and Aaron had been Divinely prepared for their work. Men are prepared in different ways. Solitude prepares one man; publicity will prepare another the preparation must be in harmony with the temperament of the man, and the work that he has to perform. The Church requires to think less of results, and more of the methods by which they are to be attained.

3. Moses and Aaron undertook this work in the proper spirit.

II. That our first attest at religious service is often met by open profanity and ignorance.

1. Moses and Aaron were met by a manifestation of ignorance.

2. They were met by deep profanity.

3. They were met by unwarrantable pride.

III. That our first attempt at service is often misunderstood, and its motive maligned.

1. Pharaoh was not sensitive to the claims of duty.

2. Pharaoh was not a disinterested interpreter of the claims urged upon him.

IV. That sometimes our first attempt at religious service appears to be more productive of harm than good, and to have the very opposite effect to that designed. Lessons:

1. Begin at once some enterprise for the moral freedom of humanity,

2. If in the first attempt at service you meet with difficulty and rejection, do not be dismayed.

3. That you must be finally successful in your efforts.

(1) For they are appointed by God.

(2) You are upheld by heaven.

(3) You have the sympathy of all good men. (J. S. Excel, M. A.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

CHAPTER V

Moses and Aaron open their commission to Pharaoh, 1.

He insultingly asks who Jehovah is, in whose name they require him

to dismiss the people, 2.

They explain, 3.

He charges them with making the people disaffected, 4, 5;

and commands the task-masters to increase their work, and lessen

their means of performing it, 6-9.

The task-masters do as commanded, and refuse to give the people

straw to assist them in making brick, and yet require the fulfilment

of their daily tasks as formerly, when furnished with all the

necessary means, 10-13.

The Israelites failing to produce the ordinary quantity of brick,

their own officers, set over them by the task-masters, are cruelly

insulted and beaten, 14.

The officers complain to Pharaoh, 15, 16;

but find no redress, 17, 18.

The officers, finding their case desperate, bitterly reproach Moses

and Aaron for bringing them into their present circumstances, 19-21.

Moses retires, and lays the matter before the Lord, and pleads

with him, 22, 23.

NOTES ON CHAP. V

Verse 1. And afterward Moses and Aaron went] This chapter is properly a continuation of the preceding, as the succeeding is a continuation of this; and to preserve the connection of the facts they should be read together.

How simply, and yet with what authority, does Moses deliver his message to the Egyptian king! Thus saith JEHOVAH, GOD of ISRAEL, Let my people go. It is well in this, as in almost every other case where Jehovah occurs, to preserve the original word: our using the word LORD is not sufficiently expressive, and often leaves the sense indistinct.

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

Moses and Aaron went in, and with them some of the elders of Israel, as may seem from Exo 3:18, though here only the two chiefs be mentioned. Or, because Moses did not seem to be satisfied with the assistance of the elders before offered him, Exo 3:18, God was pleased to give him a more acceptable assistant in their stead, even Aaron his brother, Exo 4:14. Told Pharaoh: either both successively told him; or Aaron did it immediately, and with his tongue, Moses by his interpreter, and by his command. Or, offer a sacrifice, as they express it, Exo 5:3 and Exo 10:9. For both went together, and a good part of many sacrifices was spent in feasting before the Lord and unto the honour of the Lord. See Deu 12:6,7,11,12.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

1. Moses and Aaron went inAsrepresentatives of the Hebrews, they were entitled to ask an audienceof the king, and their thorough Egyptian training taught them how andwhen to seek it.

and told PharaohWhenintroduced, they delivered a message in the name of the God ofIsrael. This is the first time He is mentioned by that nationalappellation in Scripture. It seems to have been used by divinedirection (Ex 4:2) and designedto put honor on the Hebrews in their depressed condition (Heb11:16).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

And afterwards Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh,…. Whose name, some say, was Cenchres, others Amenophis, according to Manetho and Chaeremon h; [See comments on Ex 3:10] went into Pharaoh’s palace, and being introduced by the proper officer at court for that purpose, addressed him in the following manner:

thus saith the Lord God of Israel: as ambassadors of him, who is King of kings, and Lord of lords; and so Artapanus i, the Heathen, says that the Egyptian king, hearing that Moses was come, sent for him to know wherefore he was come, who told him, that the Lord of the world commanded him to let the Jews go, as it follows here:

let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness; in the wilderness of Sinai or Arabia, at Horeb there, where they might keep it more freely and safely, without being disturbed by the Egyptians, and without giving any offence to them; and the demand is just; they were the people of God, and therefore he claims them, and service from them was due to him; and Pharaoh had no right to detain them, and what is required was but their reasonable service they owed to their God. This feast was to be held, not for themselves, but to God, which chiefly consisted in offering sacrifice, as is after explained; the entire dismission of them is not at once demanded, only to go a little while into the wilderness, and keep a feast there to the Lord; though it was not intended they should return, but it was put in this form to try Pharaoh, and that he might be the more inexcusable in refusing to grant what was so reasonable.

h Apud Joseph. contr. Apion. l. 1. c. 26. 32. i Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. 27. p. 434.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Pharaoh’s Answer to the Request of Moses and Aaron. – Exo 5:1-5. When the elders of Israel had listened with gladness and gratitude to the communications of Moses and Aaron respecting the revelation which Moses had received from Jehovah, that He was now about to deliver His people out of their bondage in Egypt; Moses and Aaron proceeded to Pharaoh, and requested in the name of the God of Israel, that he would let the people of Israel go and celebrate a festival in the wilderness in honour of their God. When we consider that every nation presented sacrifices to its deities, and celebrated festivals in their honour, and that they had all their own modes of worship, which were supposed to be appointed by the gods themselves, so that a god could not be worshipped acceptably in every place; the demand presented to Pharaoh on the part of the God of the Israelites, that he would let His people go into the wilderness and sacrifice to Him, appears so natural and reasonable, that Pharaoh could not have refused their request, if there had been a single trace of the fear of God in his heart. But what was his answer? “ Who is Jehovah, that I should listen to His voice, to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah.” There was a certain truth in these last words. The God of Israel had not yet made Himself known to him. But this was no justification. Although as a heathen he might naturally measure the power of the God by the existing condition of His people, and infer from the impotence of the Israelites that their God must be also weak, he would not have dared to refuse the petition of the Israelites, to be allowed to sacrifice to their God or celebrate a sacrificial festival, if he had had any faith in gods at all.

Fuente: Keil & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament

Sufferings of the Israelites Increased.

B. C. 1491.

      1 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.   2 And Pharaoh said, 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.

      Moses and Aaron, having delivered their message to the elders of Israel, with whom they found good acceptance, are now to deal with Pharaoh, to whom they come in peril of their lives–Moses particularly, who perhaps was out-lawed for killing the Egyptian forty years before, so that if any of the old courtiers should happen to remember that against him now it might cost him his head. Their message itself was displeasing, and touch Pharaoh both in his honour and in his profit, two tender points; yet these faithful ambassadors boldly deliver it, whether he will hear or whether he will forbear.

      I. Their demand is piously bold: Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, v. 1. Moses, in treating with the elders of Israel, is directed to call God the God of their fathers; but, in treating with Pharaoh, they call him the God of Israel, and it is the first time we find him called so in scripture: he is called the God of Israel, the person (Gen. xxxiii. 20); but here it is Israel, the people. They are just beginning to be formed into a people when God is called their God. Moses, it is likely, was directed to call him so, at least it might be inferred from ch. ix. 22, Israel is my son. In this great name they deliver their message: Let my people go. 1. They were God’s people, and therefore Pharaoh ought not to detain them in bondage. Note, God will own his own people, though ever so poor and despicable, and will find a time to plead their cause. “The Israelites are slaves in Egypt, but they are my people,” says God, “and I will not suffer them to be always trampled upon.” See Isa 52:4; Isa 52:5. 2. He expected services and sacrifices from them, and therefore they must have leave to go where they could freely exercise their religion, without giving offence to, or receiving offence from, the Egyptians. Note, God delivers his people out of the hand of their enemies, that they may serve him, and serve him cheerfully, that they may hold a feast to him, which they may do, while they have his favour and presence, even in a wilderness, a dry and barren land.

      II. Pharaoh’s answer is impiously bold: Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice? v. 2. Being summoned to surrender, he thus hangs out the flag of defiance, hectors Moses and the God that sends him, and peremptorily refuses to let Israel go; he will not treat about it, nor so much as bear the mention of it. Observe, 1. How scornfully he speaks of the God of Israel: “Who is Jehovah? I neither know him nor care for him, neither value him nor fear him:” it is a hard name that he never heard of before, but he resolves it shall be no bug-bear to him. Israel was now a despised oppressed people, looked on as the tail of the nation, and, by the character they bore, Pharaoh makes his estimate of their God, and concludes that he made no better a figure among the gods than his people did among the nations. Note, Hardened persecutors are more malicious against God himself than they are against his people. See Isa. xxxvii. 23. Again, Ignorance and contempt of God are at the bottom of all the wickedness that is in the world. Men know not the Lord, or have very low and mean thoughts of him, and therefore they obey not his voice, nor will let any thing go for him. 2. How proudly he speaks of himself: “That I should obey his voice; I, the king of Egypt, a great people, obey the God of Israel, a poor enslaved people? Shall I, that rule the Israel of God, obey the God of Israel? No, it is below me; I scorn to answer his summons.” Note, Those are the children of pride that are the children of disobedience,Job 41:34; Eph 5:6. Proud men think themselves too good to stoop even to God himself, and would not be under control, Jer. xliii. 2. Here is the core of the controversy: God must rule, but man will not be ruled. “I will have my will done,” says God: “But I will do my own will,” says the sinner. 3. How resolutely he denies the demand: Neither will I let Israel go. Note, Of all sinners none are so obstinate, nor so hardly persuaded to leave their sin, as persecutors are.

Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary

EXODUS – CHAPTER FIVE

Verses 1-3:

This is the first appearance of Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh. On this occasion, they came with a simple message: a request from Jehovah Elohe of Israel that Pharaoh let Israel go a three day’s journey into the “wilderness” or the deserted region east of Egypt, in order to worship Him.

This request was vital to Israel’s worship of Jehovah. This worship required the offering of animals considered sacred to the Egyptians. This would provoke animosity, and could incite riots.

Pharaoh’s initial response was to reject the knowledge and authority of Jehovah. This rejection led to refusal to acknowledge any claim Jehovah might have to his obedience.

This is vital to the understanding of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. The first step was Pharaoh’s. He made a deliberate choice to reject the knowledge of God. This led to his ultimate fatal decline. Paul outlines this process in Ro 1:19-32.

Moses and Aaron repeated the request, adding that Jehovah would send pestilence or sword upon Israel if it were not granted.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

1. And afterwards Moses and Aaron went in. Moses here begins to set forth how many and how great were the proofs of God’s power displayed in the deliverance of his people. For, since the pride, the madness, and the obstinacy of the king were indomitable, every door was closed, until broken down miraculously, and by various means. It was, indeed, possible for God to overwhelm him at once, by a single nod, so that he should even fall down dead at the very sight of Moses; but, as we have already briefly stated, and he will himself presently declare, He, in the first place, chose more clearly to lay open His power; for if Pharaoh had either voluntarily yielded, or had been overcome without effort, the glory of the victory would not have been so illustrious. In the second place, He wished this monument to exist of His singular love towards His elect people; for by contending so perseveringly and so forcibly against the obstinacy of this most powerful king, He gave no doubtful proof of his love towards his Church. In the third place, He wished to accustom His servants in all ages to patience, lest they should faint in their minds, if He does not immediately answer their prayers, and, at every moment, relieve them from their distresses. In the fourth place, He wished to shew that, against all the strivings and devices of Satan, against the madness of the ungodly, and all worldly hinderances, His hand must always prevail; and to leave us no room to doubt, but that whatever we see opposing us will at length be overcome by him. In the fifth place, By detecting the illusions of Satan and the magicians, He would render His Church more wary, that she might carefully watch against such devices, and that her faith might continue invincible against all the machinations of error. Finally, He would convince Pharaoh and the Egyptians, that their folly was not to be excused by any pretense of ignorance; and, at the same time, by this example, He would shew us how horrible a darkness possesses the minds of the reprobate, when He has deprived them of the light of his Spirit. These things must be attentively observed in the course of the narrative, if we desire to profit by it.

Since it is difficult to obtain access to kings, who deign not to admit to their presence any of the lower orders, Moses and Aaron must have been endued with no ordinary confidence, when they boldly approached Pharaoh. For it was a disagreeable message, and one very likely to give offense, that he should permit the people to take three days’ journey beyond the bounds of Egypt; since a suspicion must unquestionably arise that, being thus dismissed, they would no longer remain his subjects, and that thus a part of the land would be emptied of its inhabitants. Still Moses and Aaron do not fear to deliver God’s command, in which there was this additional annoyance to the proud and sensitive ears of the king, viz., that they attributed the glory of Deity to the God of Israel alone; for, by calling Him Jehovah, they imply that the gods worshipped in Egypt were false, and invented by the imaginations of man. We have said elsewhere that there was no deceit in the pretext that God called his people into the wilderness to hold a feast, although He does not reveal His counsel to the tyrant; for it was really His pleasure that a sacrifice of thanksgiving should be offered to Himself on Mount Sinai, and that they should be thus separated from the polluted nation with which they were mixed up; and, assuredly, He wished to arouse the tyrant’s wrath, by ignominiously condemning the whole of Egypt, as not capable of pure worship. For He was obliged by no law to declare openly their deliverance; but that He might draw forth from the mind of the tyrant the venom of his impiety, He asked for nothing connected with the advantage of His people, but merely demanded the worship which was due to Himself. The word which Moses uses means properly to hold a feast, but also embraces whatever is connected with it; and, therefore, by synecdoche, it is taken here, as also in other passages, for the solemn worship of God. (66)

(66) Nam festum celebrare sacrificium complectitur. — Vatablus in Pol. Syn.

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. 5:1. Hold a feast] That is, of course, a religious festival,a holyday, as the same word is rendered Psa. 42:4; with processions and dancing, of we keep close to the primary meaning of the Hebrew word ch ghagh to move in a circle. However open to abuse, we cannot afford to let slip the propriety of joy in worship. The infinitely blessed Jehovah would be served with gladness. His own holy joy seeks to overflow into the hearts of his saints; and this it does if ever, in those direct acts of homage which he himself has instituted.

Exo. 5:2. Neither will I let Israel go] Or, rather: And certainly I will not let ISRAEL go,the language of tyrannical determination and bold defiance. As much as to say: [know not Jehovah; but even if I did, THAT would make no difference.

Exo. 5:3. Hath met with us] And this may be an adequate rendering. But the construction (with the preposition, al, upon), and the context, rather strongly favour the more forcible meaning attributed by Frst and Davies to q r (see under q-r No. II), to strike upon, or hit against a thing. This hint might lead us to interpret the words thus: The God of the Hebrews has encountered us; i.e., has laid an arrest upon usHis call is imperative. It is a wrong done to God, which he must needs resent, when the leisurely joy of worship is denied him. What an affliction to any people to be too hard worked to render God this service. The Pharaohs who impose such an affliction cannot complain if the wronged Jehovah call them very sternly to account. 3 Let us go] The cohortative mood: almost=We must needs go (comp. Ewald Gr. 228); but here blended with the particle of entreaty n, pray: We must needs gopray let us! The joyful, leisurely worship which God demands is needful for us as well as due to Him.

Exo. 5:5. Now are many] The connection between this fact, and the easing of the peoples burdens is not at first sight apparent; but, on reflection, becomes clear. From Exo. 1:11 we learn that the building-tasks exacted of the Hebrews were demanded under the idea of tribute; for the words there rendered task masters (cf. below, on Exo. 5:6) namely s-rey miim mean, princes of tribute Now it is evident that a given sum-total of tributary building would gradually become a lighter burden as the Hebrews multiplied. Hence the meaning of Pharaoh in this place seems to be: The work has not been increased in proportion to the increase of the people: permitting this, you have allowed them to find case by the mere fact of multiplying. It may not have been convenient or desirable to begin building more cities: so Pharaoh would have the labour of finishing those in hand most vexatiously augmented. By the way, we thus get a glimpse of the process by which the sons of Israel were enslaved. Their yoke was imposed under the specious name of tribute: this tribute was imperiously exacted: then the payment was made gallingly bard to render. The enslavement was complete.

Exo. 5:6. Taskmasters] A good rendering of the Hebrew u-ghesim, which literally means exactors, and is. in Job. 39:7, used of the drivers of asses. The Sept. rendering of this word is exceedingly expressive: ergodiktai (), work-pursuers, work-persecutors. These taskmasters seem to be the same as the princes of tribute mentioned Exo. 1:11 (comp. previous note), and manifestly were Egyptians acting under Pharaoh and looking but too well (Exo. 5:14) after his interests. Officers] These were evidently Hebrews (Exo. 5:14-20) who were set over their brethren, and were held responsible for the performance of the required work. Theirs was indeed an unenviable position: they had to wring Pharaohs demands out of their own kinsmen, or be beaten themselves.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Exo. 5:1-9

THE FIRST ATTEMPT AT RELIGIOUS SERVICE

What a long time it takes to get men fairly into any work that is required of them. This is true in the secular sphere of daily life. Men put off till tomorrow what ought to be done to-day. Especially is this the case in reference to the duties that pertain to our moral life; there is much delay before men are willing or ready to undertake them.1 It is now some time since the first indication had been given to Moses that it was the Divine will that he should achieve the freedom of Israel. Yet he has been objecting to the service, reasoning with God, wishing to be liberated from it, and in fact, only now, when he finds escape impossible, is he about to commence it. Men little suspect the time they waste, the energies they weaken, and the unnecessary difficulties they occasion, by such unbelief and delay. Every day we neglect the mission it becomes harder to accomplish. We honour God by speeding immediately upon His errands. They are important, and may be endangered by delay.2 Israel is suffering the hardships of a cruel bondage all the time we are reasoning and objecting to free them, and therefore a tardy obedience is cruel and unwarrantable. The woe and sorrow of the world demands that Christian workers should be immediately brave and active. It is all very well to linger for few moments by the bush, burning but unconsumed, to get a vision of heaven, and to hold communion with God, that the soul may be refreshed and strengthened for the arduous work before it, but the act of worship must soon and naturally break into the act of service, or we shall be guilty of unnecessary delay. In obedient work men hold communion with God quite as truly as when standing near the burning bush. We have here illustrated the first attempt made at religious service.

Exo. 5:1. That this first attempt at religious service was made responsive to the call, and in harmony with the will, of God. 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.

1. Thus there was a great necessity that the work now attempted by Moses and Aaron should be accomplished. It would be almost impossible to realize the condition of Israel at this time. They had been the slaves of a tyrant king, many of them from their birth. They were ignorant. They were heavily worked. They knew not the glad meaning of freedom, nor did their slavery accomplish any worthy political end; it had been achieved by deception, and was marked by severe oppression. Here then was a grand sphere for a brave and heroic man. It is a sphere greatly needing his attention, worthy of his deepest sympathy, and it will require his most potent effort. Hence we see that Moses and Aaron were not seeking to remove a fancied evil, with which a few people were afflicted, but a wide-spread and long-continued woe, which rendered sad the life of a vast nation. Some men seek to remove imaginary evils and fail, and with their failure society at large has little sympathy. They are objects of merriment rather than of serious thought. We shall expect then of these two men entering upon a work so eminently needed, that they will in all probability succeed. It is a source of great strength to a Christian worker to have the consciousness that he is attempting a work that really needs doing. There are hundreds of good men animated by this conviction to-day, and we all know that in the great world round us, there are many enterprises requiring their effort. Humanity is in a condition of servitude, of moral servitude far more dreadful and despicable than that of ancient Israel.3 It is in need of moral emancipation. Are there not many of us willing to make our first effort in such a cause? That wicked alley is without a tract distributor, will you not offer to take it? That class in the Sunday-school is without a teacher, will you not endeavour to instruct it? That pulpit is without a minister, will you not make an effort to deliver the Gospel from it? That heathen town wants a missionary, will you not leave your home to take it the freedom of the cross? The work is a necessity, will you not make an attempt at it? You can go to the tyrant Sin, and demand the freedom of his slaves. This is a work that the world needs doing, and at once. It is rendered imperative by the passion of men, by the pain of society, by the obligations of the cross, and by the distinct call to Christian service.

2. Moses and Aaron were the right men to undertake this work. In the first place, Moses had been directly called by God to do it; also Aaron had been providentially conducted to this sphere of work. In this we see the different methods by which God enjoins work upon good men. He sometimes speaks directly to the soul in such a manner as cannot be mistaken; at other times, He quietly opens up our way to duty, and unexpectedly we find ourselves in the presence of work demanding our immediate attention. I believe in a special call to, and preparation for, Christian Work. Unless a man has heard the voice of God, unless he has beheld the vision of the burning bush, unless his soul has held communion with heaven, unless he has learned to speak the deep name of Jehovah, he has no right to go on the errand of Israels emancipation. He cannot teach to others the meaning of a name he does not understand himself. He cannot reflect the light of a vision he has never seen. A call from God is an absolute necessity of Christian service. We are getting too lax in this matter. We fear that the Church is sending men on errands of freedom whom God has not commissioned. We cannot expect them to succeed. Then, think of the moral preparation that Moses and Aaron had received for this work in relation to Israel. We know right well the discipline through which Moses had passed up to this hour. It is written. The prior life of Aaron is unwritten. God does not always disclose the process by which his servants are prepared for their toil. They are prepared in different ways. Solitude prepares one man; publicity will prepare another; the preparation must be in harmony with the temperament of the man, and the work that he has to perform. The Church requires to think less of results, and more of the methods by which they are to be attained. Sometimes we see a great worker. He conquers every difficulty. He is always successful. We at once regard him as ideal. We laud his talent. We say that Christian toil is easy to him. We only view the result. Had we seen him years ago, we should have seen him curious at the bush, objecting to the service, asking that another may be sent in his place; then he was a feeble, trembling worker, but the Divine preparation and heavenly grace has, through long years, made him what he is. The call to Christian work is of God, and likewise all the qualifications for it.4 The reason why there is so much failure in the toil of good men is because they do not entirely submit themselves to the holy discipline which would qualify them for it. Christian workers seek to be prepared of God for your toil. Thus Moses and Aaron were well qualified for this work. And we have workers in the Church to-day almost equal to them; divinely cultured in soul they are making their first attempt at service. This very day they are standing before Pharaoh. They are seeking the freedom of the morally enslaved. May God prosper them in their mission.

3. Moses and Aaron undertook this work in the proper manner and spirit. There is a right way and a wrong in the performance of any kind of work; but especially when it is of a moral character; then the greatest results are dependent upon the utmost trivialities. It sometimes occurs that God gives a man a pattern of work, and shows him how to execute it. This was the case with Moses and Aaron. They were told to gather the elders of Israel together, and then to proceed to Pharaoh with the request of freedom. The Divine mind is capable of infinite suggestions to moral service, which are always helpful and welcome to the earnest worker, and which should be carefully wrought out. The direction of heaven is needful in the work of spiritual emancipation. There are so many methods to be considered, so many interests to be regarded, so many emergencies to be expected, so much impulse required, and so many difficulties to be encountered, that only God can render us any aid in such a work. But often the gentle methods of service are the most effective, and we want to obtain the sublime and happy art of Christian work, to win men into acquiescence with the Divine will by a word of love, almost unconsciously to themselves. We should strive to present the message of God to them in such a voice and manner as shall the most entice their attention and obedience. Many a good enterprise has been ruined by the lack of a little loving and considerate art, which would have rendered, it successful. But there are times when Christian art is of little use, as in the case now under review; Pharaoh will not yield his profitable slaves to the courteous request of two strangers. Hence Moses and Aaron are bold and determined in their request for the freedom of Israel they plainly make known the word of God in reference thereto.5 So, when we have to attack time-honoured custom, unholy vested interests, and to deal with men who are deaf to all the righteous claims of God, the only method of service is to say, Thus said the God of Israel, let my people go. Thus we should imagine that the work attempted being greatly needed, of divine appointment and preparation, it will be almost certain of success. But how disappointing is the sequel.

II. That our first attempt at religious service is often met by open profanity and ignorance. And Pharaoh said, 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.

1. Moses and Aaron were met by a manifestation of ignorance. Pharaoh seems to know nothing about the God of Israel; or, if he was aware of His existence, to hold Him in very inferior esteem. Perhaps he thought that Jehovah was unable to aid the people in their bondage, or He would have done so long before. And so it often happens, when Christian workers commence their toil, that they are met by wilful and lamentable ignorance,ignorance of the very first principles of religion, by a rejection of moral restraint, of the claims of God and humanity. Such a dark condition of mind is very difficult to contend with, and is a great hindrance to philanthropic toil. Only a Monarch ignorant of God would permit slavery within his realm. Where there is the most religion there will be the truest freedom. But the sequel of the history will show that Pharaoh could not much longer remain ignorant of Jehovah, and that he had reason to tremble before His power.

2. That Moses and Aaron were met by deep profanity. It would seem that Pharaoh had very loose notions about gods; he thought no doubt that one was as good as another. His own country abounded with them. And he had not much regard for those whom he had been brought up from childhood to fear rather than to respect. Besides, he had got to regard himself of as much importance as they were. In short, he was a god unto himself, and wished to be unto his people. He was not therefore prepared to show any consideration for the claim of a Deity of whom he was comparatively ignorant. Yet he must have known something of Jehovah, he would gather indications of his power and supremacy from the enslaved Israelites and their national records. It is great profanity for a man to slight the faintest indication of the Supreme Ruler of the universe, even though he be comparatively ignorant of his true existence. After hearing the request of Moses and Aaron, Pharaoh ought to have thoughtfully and seriously enquired into the matter, and a moments serious reflection would have shown him that he was putting himself in antagonism to the God of the despised Israelites. But, instead of this, he becomes insolent, opposes his authority to that of the most High, and refuses the request of the emancipators of Israel.6 So there are people in these days who have very loose conceptions about the deity, they are comparatively ignorant of Him, they treat His claims with contempt, they regard His servants with scorn, they imagine that they are free from His dominion, and with this profanity Christian workers are frequently called to contend.

3. That Moses and Aaron were met by unwarrantable pride. Pharaoh speaks in the second verse as though he were the supreme monarch of the world, as though there were none to rival his grandeur, or to defeat his power. And thus his pride led him to an unwarrantable defiance of Jehovah. It exposed him to imminent peril, for in a moment the Divine Being could have crushed him as a moth in his hand; so lamentable is the pride of man. And yet this ancient king of Egypt is but a type of many to-day, whose pride, the outcome of ignorance, brings them into open hostility to the will of God, and renders them antagonistic to His servants. Frequently are Christian workers met by manifestations of pride which they find very difficult to conquer. Thus the fact that we are sent by God to our first effort of Christian service, that we are prepared for it by the heavenly discipline of years, and that it is a work greatly required at our hands, does not remove from before us all the difficulties of the case. We have as thoroughly to contend with the ignorance, profanity, and pride of men as though we had never received our commission at the hand of God. It is not the economy of heaven to remove all obstacles out of the way of Christian service, else there would be but little for man to do in the way of sacred toil.

III. That our first attempt at service is often misunderstood, and its motive maligned. And the King of Egypt said unto them, wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works? Get you unto your burdens.

1. Pharaoh was not sensitive to the claims of duty. He was a king, and had learned through a long series of years, by continued practice, to despise the claims of others, nor would he make an exception in the case of Jehovah. He was hardened in heart. He was darkened in mind. He was surrounded by all that could flatter his vanity, or aid him in the event of conflict: hence he was not much troubled by the moral questions of life. He would be far more perplexed by the invasion of a foreign king than by any command from God. And so Christian workers have to appeal to men who are almost destitute of religious feeling and sensibility, to convey to them the stern messages of God. We cannot wonder then that they are so often misunderstood and rejected. Pride always renders men insensible to the claims of duty.

2. Pharaoh was not a disinterested interpreter of the claims urged upon him. Moses and Aaron demanded that the tyrant monarch should announce freedom to all his slaves. But these slaves were of great service and profit to him and his nation: hence Pharaoh could not put a disinterested interpretation upon the demand thus made upon him. And so it is now, Christian workers have frequently to undertake work, and to enunciate requirements which are opposed to the secular interests of men. Can they wonder if these requirements should be rejected, and their motives misrepresented? It is difficult to get a man to do the will of God when it is in apparent antagonism to the interests of his trade or profession. Thus Christian workers can generally explain the opposition to which they are subject; they know that it arises from the enmity of the carnal mind, and from the dictation of self interest, rather than from any rejection of them personally. This misrepresentation may give rise to persecution and slander, but from this God will ultimately deliver those who toil for Him. Their aspersed character will be cleared. Their safety He will ensure, or the service of earth shall break into that of heaven.

IV. That sometimes our first attempt at religious service appears to be more productive of harm than good, and to have the very opposite effect to that designed. And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves, &c. Thus it would appear that Moses and Aaron instead of accomplishing the freedom of Israel, rather increased the pain of their slavery. But we know not by what methods God will accomplish His will, and even this intolerant conduct of the king may be part of the discipline which shall occasion his defeat. How many Christian workers have been in like circumstances to these, apparently having done those whom they sought to benefit more harm than good. And this has been a cause of great regret and discouragement to them. We would urge such not to be discouraged by appa. rent failures, for after all, these may contain the germs of future success. LESSONS:

1. Begin at once some enterprise for the moral freedom of humanity.7

2. If in the first attempt at service you meet with difficulty and rejection, do not be dismayed.

3. That you must be finally successful in your efforts:

(1.) For they are appointed by God.

(2.) You are upheld by heaven.

(3.) You have the sympathy of all good men.

Exo. 5:1. That Christian Workers should go boldly to their duty. And afterwards Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh. These two men had been set about their God-given work; they do not hesitate; there is no manifestation of timidity; they stand before the King of Egypt as equal to him, and as equal to their duty in every respect. So Christian workers should go to their work in a bold spirit, as supported by the Supreme Power.8 They have no need to tremble in the presence of any difficulty. The Lord is their Helper.

II. That Christian Workers should present the direct claims of god to men. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go. We must never go to moral service in our own name, nor must we use our own authority. All our messages and demands must be presented under the authority of God, and only His words are we warranted in uttering. Never leave out the Thus saith the Lord in your effort of service.9

III. That Christian Workers should aim, in harmony with the will of God, to bring the enslaved to a grand moral festival of freedom. That they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.10 All service should have reference to moral festivities; (to times of gladness and hope the world is called.) But the festival which is the accompaniment of the freedom wrought by God is characterised by devotion.

Why did God send Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh, when He could have destroyed him with a stroke, and have wrought the freedom of Israel:

1. That Gods power might appear in shewing his wonders.
2. That the Israelites might see the great care God had over them.
3. To exercise their patience, not being delivered at once.
4. To leave Pharaoh without excuse. Gods ambassadors must proceed orderly in delivering their messagefirst to Israel, secondly to Pharaoh.

Order of persons as well as time is observable by Gods servants.
The poorest persons under Gods authority may come into the presence of the proudest king.
Gods ambassadors must declare His will to the greatest potentates.
Gods messengers must go in His authority, and vouch His name.
A proclamation of God:

1. His name.
2. His authority.
3. His regard for His people.
4. His desire for the freedom of man.

The freedom of men:Earnestly desired.

2. Effectively undertaken.
3. Divinely approved.
4. Successfully achieved.

The end of all redemption is that Gods people should serve him.
The true service of God is a festival of joy.
It is better to serve God in the wilderness than Pharaoh in Egypt.

Exo. 5:2. Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice?

I. Who is the Lord?

1. Thy Creator.

2. Thy Benefactor.

3. Thy Redeemer.

4. Thy Governor.

II. How may we bear His voice?

(11)

1. In the works of nature.

2. In the dispensations of Providence.

3. In our spiritual perceptions.

4. In the Bible.

[Pulpit Analyst.]

PHARAOHS IMPIOUS INTERROGATION

The text is the language of the Pagan and impious Pharaoh. A person whose history and character are fully presented to us in the Divine Word.

I. God has spoken to mankind.

1. He has graciously spoken by His works. The heavens declare, &c., Rom. 1:20. Here the existence, majesty, power, and wisdom are all declared.

2. He has spoken continually by His good providence. The admirable provision made for all creatures, &c Hear Pauls address to the inhabitants of Lystra: Act. 14:15; Act. 14:17.

3. He hath spoken awfully by His judgments. How terrible His voice to the antediluviansPharaoh. By warby pestilence by famineby earthquakes.

4. He hath spoken distinctly in His word.

By the ancient prophetsby His own Son. Hear the Apostle: Heb. 1:1. The Saviour also instituted the Christian Ministry, to convey the words of God to all the world.

II. Why and how you should hear.

1. Why you should hear His voice. Because of His right in and over you. He is your God, Creator, Lawgiver. Because of his condescension to you. It is infinite condescension on the part of Deity to stoop and speak to you. How angels hearken. Because of the design of His speaking, which is your present and eternal welfare.

2. How we should hear His voice. With awe, sacred attention, with holy anxiety to understand and obey it.

III. The impiety and folly of refusing to hear the voice of God. But who are guilty of it? The sceptic, sensualist, worlding, sinner. Pride of heart leads to it.

1. It is flagrant contempt of God.

2. It is open rebellion against the authority.

3. It must be eventually ruinous to the sinner.

[Sketches of Sermons, by Dr. Burns.]

Proud imperious spirits are hasty to reply roughly to Gods messengers.
Idolators are apt to despise God in the true revelation of Him.
Hardened souls vent their contempt upon God Himself more than on His Church.
Contempt of Jehovah will not suffer men to hear His voice.
Disobedience to God ushers in oppression to His people.
Scorners of God:

1. They hear not His voice.
2. They perceive not His Revelation
3. They recognize not His claims.
4. They insult His servants.
5. They enslave His people.
6. They are obstinate in their denial.

THE REASONINGS OF AN ENSLAVED SOUL WITH ITS TYRANT OPPRESSOR

Exo. 5:3. There are times when men deeply feel the pain and degradation of their slavery; they are awakened, by the messengers of God, to a desire for freedom, when they utter their sentiments in the language of this verse:

I. They urge the Divine uprising on their behalf. The God of the Hebrews hath met with us. God had awakened within Israel the desire and hope of freedom, had urged them to achieve it, and had promised to aid them in so doing. Pharaoh little knew the events that had happened prior to this visit; he was ignorant of the revelation which had been given to Moses and Aaron; but so it is, imperious sinners walk to their doom, ignorant of the agencies that would achieve their ruin. There is another history than that which is seen by the world at large; it is behind in the shade, only known to the favoured servants of God. The meeting of God with his people is an argument for freedom, and should be recognised as such by the proudest monarchs of earth.

II. They urge their own desire for freedom. Let us go, we pray thee. Probably many will not consider this could have been a very great argument with Pharaoh for the freedom of Israel; but it ought to have been. A desire for freedom, on the part of those who are destitute of it, should be a strong plea for its bestowal with all who have it in their power to snap the fetters of the slave. Heaven always respects our wish for freedom.12 True kinghood always will.

III. They urge their desire for solitude. Three days journey into the desert. They had been so long in the crowded cities of the Egyptians, so painful and sad had their condition become, that they longed for the solitude of the desert to refresh their souls, that they might drink in new life and hope.

IV. They urge their desire for devotion. And sacrifice unto the Lord our God. Their better manhood had returned to these Israelites. Their old feelings of worship are awakened. They have struggled through their pain and slavery, to God. They wish to worship him. This is a strong argument for liberty.

V. They urge their fear of pestilence. Lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword. Slavery in any nation is more productive of calamity and retribution than almost any other sin. That country will, in all probability, be the most exempt from pestilence and war which is the most free. There is a healing influence in liberty; hence this is an argument for it.

Just mark the contrast between the Egyptian king, and the Hebrew or Christian messengers. Being threatened, they threatened not; reviled, they reviled not again. They took meekly his remarks; they entreated, but threatened not; for they said immediately, The Lord God of the Hebrews, etc.; speaking calmly, as if not one insulting expression had been used. Now here is a precedent for us. If Pharaoh forgot his place, Moses and Aaron were not to forget theirs. [Dr. Cumming.]

Gods ambassadors must not forsake His message upon mans denial.
Further arguments must urge the message of God, when its mere proposal is not enough.
The God of the Hebrews must be owned by them, though despised by Pharaoh.
Although God commands powers, yet it is fit that his people should entreat them.
To sacrifice to God and to feast with Him are synonymous.
Pestilence and sword are Gods judgments, exacting the neglect of His service.
These plagues are incident on all that neglect God, but much more on them that forbid others to serve Him.
The fear of these judgments should awe souls from slighting His message to them.

Exo. 5:4. Good men are often wrongly judged:

1. In respect to their motives.
2. Actions.
3. Writings.

Persecuting powers return rough answers to humble petitions.
Oppressing kings make nothing of despising, checking, and menacing Gods messengers.
Wicked powers censure the motions for Gods service to be detractions from their work.
Oppressing rulers are angry with men who move souls to serve God.
Cruel masters drive Gods people from serving Him to bear their burdens.

RELIGION NO EXCUSE FOR THE NEGLECT OR DAILY WORK

There is much daily work carried on that is both against the law of God and man; this, religion will suspend, and, instead, will give a man work to do, the performance of which will be in harmony with conscience, and beneficial to the commonwealth.14 True religion is no friend to indolence. Religion is no excuse for the neglect of daily work:

I. Because it commands men to provide things honest in the sight of all men. It gives a man an employment to fulfil, in one station or another, in lowly social grade, or otherwise. It makes men willing to earn their daily bread, to answer the purposes of labour, and to enhance the general welfare of the nation. If men are idle in their daily avocation, it is from the lack of religion, not from the possession of it. True piety consists as much in pursuing our daily toil as in attendance upon the services of the sanctuary. We should render both as a service to God. We must be diligent in business.

II. Because it provides men with forceful motives to work. True religion brings forceful motives to bear upon the souls of those Who are animated by it. It animates men to do their work from love to an unseen God, from faith in an unseen Saviour, and from fear of a coming judgment and eternity. Hence the motives of religion are calculated to make men earnest workers. Whatsoever thy hand findeth, &c.

III. Because it enlarges mans sphere of work. Besides working in the world for daily bread, it opens up to him an enlarged and holy sphere of toil in the church, for the moral welfare of men. Nor will the duties of the one interfere with those of the other; both will admit of careful attention. St Paul wrought at tent making, and also had the care of the churches upon him.

Exo. 5:5. From the multiplied numbers of the church, tyrants expect multiplied labours.

It is the envy of persecutors to see Gods servants have rest from burdens.
It is incident to wicked powers to suggest, that Gods ministers move His people to idleness and sedition.

Exo. 5:6-7. Gods commands, and the interests of his people, are bitterly opposed by wicked powers.

Persecuting powers delay not to vent their malice against God and his people.
Wicked rulers have their agencies by whom they afflict the people of God.
Cruel powers stay the hands of ministers from doing justice to such as they will oppress.
It is savage cruelty to deny means, and expect work and advantage.
Former justice is forgotten where future oppression is intended.
Wicked powers will lose no gain, though they allow poor souls nothing to get it with.
They used straw in making brick.

1. To temper the clay, that it might be firmer.
2. There was a great use for brick in Egypt, not only because they wanted stone, but because the buildings made of brick were durable.

In the pyramid of Fayoun there are found bricks which have been hardened in the sun, containing short particles of chopped straw mixed with the clay, their just idea being that straw would give cohesion to the mass, the brick not being submitted to the action of fire, but only to the heat of the sun. Whilst these bricks would not be suitable for our buildings, you can see their appropriateness in Egypt, where there is no rain. In a dry and sunny clime the bricks would last or thousands of years, whereas in our climate they would be of no use.

Exo. 5:8-9. The world and Satan opposed to the Christians Spiritual Progress. If thou come to serve the Lord, saith the wisdom of the Son of Sirach, prepare thy soul for temptation. This caution too often neglected. Young converts imagine that the victory over Satan will be won at once, by the first blow. The children of Israel had sighed by reason of their bondage. The Lord heard their groaning. Sent Moses and Aaron to the Elders, The people believed. Did the chains of their bondage then fall off at once? Far otherwise. They were now in the way from slavery, towards the liberty for which they panted: but toil, privation, and affliction lay before them in long succession, ere they could sit down every man under his own vine, and every man under his own fig tree, within the consecrated borders of Canaan. Have you listened to the gracious pleading of the Spirit of God, in sincere anxiety for a complete and eternal deliverance? You will meet with hindrances, one of the first will arise from those who make a mock at sin, who deride the privileges and duties of pure and undefiled religion

(15) Such a rock of offence is represented by Pharaoh in this chapter, where we find emblematically pourtrayed:

I. The prejudice of the careless and worldly against sincere and vital Godliness.

1. It is regarded as the dream and vision of a heated and enthusiastic imagination. When the wonders of redemption first break in upon the mind, when the inquirer first beholds the Son of God dying for him, he is ready to exclaim, Whom have I in heaven but thee! Are these feelings visionary; or have they been enkindled within his heart by the Spirit of God?

2. It is regarded as inconsistent with a proper attention to the duties of active life. I grant it possible that the eye of a Christians soul, first open to behold the glories of the Gospel, may be dazzled with their transcendent brightness, and become indifferent to objects of an importance merely temporal; as the natural eye, which has gazed for a moment upon the sun, sees nothing but dimness in the things of earth: but such an exclusive view of eternal things is of rare occurrence.

II. Another temptation which Satan employs to oppose an entire devotion of the heart to God, is by exaggerating the importance of worldly pursuits. Let there be more work laid upon the men. What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, if he shall love his own soul! A double caution may be deduced:

1. To those who would hinder the spiritual freedom of others whom they may control or influence; as Pharaoh would have impeded the political deliverance of Israel. You must settle from Scripture and prayer whether the resolutions and desires you oppose arise from the inspiration of God, or the imagination of men. Woe to him that striveth with his Maker.

2. You who are thus hindered, remember that Scripture addresses you with a cautionary voice. Be not slothful in business.

[Buddicoms Christian Exodus.]

ILLUSTRATIONS

BY THE
REV. WM. ADAMSON

Exo. 5:1-9.

(1)Ready!A gentlemans dog having gallantly rescued a drowning child, the spectators were eager to know the name of his master, in order to publish it. The owner at once exclaimed, Never mind my name; but that of the dog is Ready! Ready! aye, ready! Such was the response of the brave officer to his anxious commanders enquiry whether he was prepared for the fight. We ought to be ready for every good work.

If it were done when tis done, then twere well
It were done quickly.

Shakespeare.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(2)Delay!Every day we neglect the mission it becomes harder to accomplish both as regards ourselves and it. We are less and less disposed towards it. It is more and more inveterate. As with travellers on the Alpine heights overtaken by the pitiless snowstorm at different stages of the mountain ascent, numbness is creeping over one, and the longer the other delays to help his friend by rubbing his limbs, the more profound becomes the torpor of both. Instant action will save both. Activity will give them both a glow.

There is a firefly in the southern clime,
Which shineth only when upon the wing.

Motion is developing beat. Magoon says that it is good policy to strike while the iron is hot; but it is still better to adopt Cromwells procedure, and to make the iron hot in striking. As one has said, Be active and expect Christ to be with you; be idle and the thorns and briars will grow so quickly that He will be shut out. Delaying to obey the call, the ice forms upon our feelingsgradually freezes to greater thickness, until total indifference results. Delaying to obey the call, the slaves condition becomes more wretched, the drowning man sinks the deeper, the enfevered patient is entangled more pitiably in the meshes of delirium. The motto of each servant of God must be that of the indomitable mind of Edmund Burke in his address to his constituents at Bristol: For Gods sake, let us pass on. There is no time to be lost.

Wake ere the earth-born charm unnerve thee quite,

And be thy thoughts to work divine addressd:

Do somethingdo it soonwith all thy might

An angels wing would droop if long at rest.

Wilcox.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(3)Humanity!The whole world lieth in bondage; and no man in his senses will venture to assert that man is today just as man originally way. Even Moncure Conway, who dethrones Jehovah and enthrones his own deification (or definition) of Reason, is perforce ready to acknowledge that man is a dismantled fanea broken shrine, with some gleam of departed glory about him sufficient to give an idea of what he once was, and with (he says) some germs of the original perfection which may be cultivated and developed. It is not now a question how this came about, or why it was allowed to happen. We have the fact that the whole world is in servitude to the wicked onethat from time to time Jehovah has raised up deliverers, either prospective or retrospective of the one great Deliverer, Christ, who was to appear.

He came the prisoners to release
In Satans bondage held,

and now calls upon every man to be the deliverer of his fellow-man. Had Moses refused to obey the call in the spirit of Cain, he would have met with Cains doom, viz., loss of the Divine approbation.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(4)Qualifications!Bishop Wilson wrote that the great secret of the ministry consisted in three things:

1. Christ:
2. Immortal souls: and
3. Self-humiliation. But self-humiliation springs from disciplinethat three-fold discipline of which Luther stoke when he declared that the three requisites or qualifications to do Gods works were prayer, meditation, and temptation. All these Moses had abundance of for yearsare, more than forty long years. God instructs and qualifies as well as calls; for (says Bishop Reynolds) if no prince will send a mechanic from his loom in an honourable embassage to some other foreign prince, is it likely that Jehovah will send forth unqualified instruments about so great a work as the perfecting of the saints?

For well he knows, not learnings purest tides
Can quench the immortal thirst that in the soul abides.

Little.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(5)Decision!Even a foolish man may utter a wise sentiment, as Colton did, when he said that men ought to deliberate with caution, but act with decision. Hood calls attention to the decided man. He may be a most evil man, a grasping, avaricious, unprincipled man; still look how the difficulties of life know the strong man, and give up the contest with him. He walks by the light of his own judgment; he has made up his mind, and having done so, henceforth actionaction is before him. He cannot bear to sit amidst unrealized expectations. To him speculation is only valuable that it may be resolved into living and doing. There is no difference, no delay. To this Jehovah had to bring Moses, so that, his spirit was in arms, all in earnest. As Pompey, when hazarding his life on a tempestuous sea in order to be at Rome on an important occasion, said that it was necessary for him to go, not for him to live. Thus Csar, when he crossed the English Channel, burnt his shipson the Anglican shores, that there might be no return. And so Cortes decided to break up the ships which had brought his soldiers to Mexico from Spain. This daring act had the effect of bracing his men, says Trench, to a pitch of resolution all but supernatural.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(6)Pharaoh versus God!This imperious monarch had never been accustomed to be thwarted. Men who have always thrust obstacles aside come to think their power invincible, and to make them a battering ram against fate and circumstances. When Jehovah came down to oppose Pharaoh in his despotic behaviour towards Israel, he tried to wrestle with Him, and paid dearly for his folly. A bantam may crow in the face of a fighting-cock once too often; and woe to the frail boat that rashly contends with the powerful tail of the whale. As one says, God never wrestles with a man without throwing him: so that we might apply Polloks description of the atheist to Pharaoh

The unbeliever

Despising reason, revelation, God,
And, kicking gainst the pricks of conscience, rushd
Deliriously upon the bossy shield
Of the Omnipotent.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(7)Moral Freedom!Behind the physical and national freedom of Israel was their moral and spiritual disenthralment. The hidden is offtimes most important. It was so here Moral freedom is everything. All sinners are represented as being in bondage, bound with the chain of their sins, servants of him whom they obey, led captive by the devil at his will. He is the great Pharaohthat old dragon, the serpent. He gilds the yoke, and you are not conscious that you wear it; but there are times when you feel its fretting notwithstanding. That giant passion masters you. But a Deliverer has come to the shores of our worldproclaiming liberty to the captive and freedom to those who are fast bound in the misery and iron of sin-thraldom. From the strongest and most frowning fortress, in which tyranny can bind its captives, this Saviour can deliver. He will deliver: for if the Son make you free, you shall be free indeed.And

A dayan hour of virtuous liberty
Is worth a whole eternity of bondage.

It is Dr. Caird who asserts that no languageno emblems can be found to convey any adequate idea of the sesseoness of such a deliverance. Not the poor timid struggling bird springs forth from the snare with a note of more thrilling joyfulnessnot the despairing heartsick captive casts the first look of freedom on the bright heaven, or treads with bounding steps the greensward of home with a more exulting throb of happiness. And never was that ancient song of deliverance sung with a deeper meaning than when the soul, morally freed from the galling tyranny and oppressive yoke of Satan, exclaims: Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler

Tis liberty alone that gives the flowers
Of fleeting life their lustre and perfume,
And we are weeds without it.

Cowper.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(8)Fearless!Moses had a duty to discharge, and no dangers must deter him. When God sends men on a work for Him, He virtually undertakes the responsibility of breakers ahead. His ministers and deliverers must not look askance and hesitate in the fulfilment of their labours because they see a bombshell coming. It is related of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden thatwhilst besieged in Stralsund he was one day dictating a letter to his secretary, when a bomb from the enemys outworks fell through the roof of the house where they were. The report of the shell alarmed the secretary so much, that the pen fell from his hand; whereupon the king enquired what was the matter. The trembling secretary could only ejaculate: The bombshell. The monarchs stern response was: What has the bomb to do with the letter? Go on with your writing. So what had Moses to do with Pharaohs wrath? It was for him to go on with the work of deliverance which God had authorized, and as he had been pleased to appoint. Then

Work, though the enemies laughter

Over the valleys may sweep,

For Gods patient workers hereafter

Shall laugh when their enemies weep.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(9)Divine Authority!Canon Ryle mentions an incident in the life of Whitefield, which illustrates the authority. When preaching on one occasion, an old man fell asleep and some of the audience became listless. Suddenly changing his manner, Whitefield broke forth in an altered tonedeclaring that be had not come to speak in his own name, otherwise they might lean on their elbows and go to sleep. No; I have come to you in the name of the Lord of Hosts, and I must, and will be heard. The sleeper started wide awakethe hearers were stripped of their apathy at onceand every word of the sermon was attended to. It was thus that Moses addressed Pharaoh. It was thus all witnesses for God should address the listeners, with authority:

By Him inspired, they speak with urgent tongue
Authoritative, whilst the illumined breast
Heaves with unwonted strength.

Jenner.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(10)Freedoms Sweets!The Christian deliverer is all the more active and energetic in his work, because he was once himself a slave. A traveller stood one day beside the cages of some birds which, exposed for sale, ruffled their sunny plumage on the wires, and struggled to be free. Sadly he gazed on these captives till tears stood in his eyes; and turning round to their owner, he asked the price of one. As soon as the money was handed over, he opened the door and set the prisoner free. This he did with captive after captive, till every bird was away, soaring to the sky, arising on the wings of liberty. The crowd stated and stood amazed; but his remark soon cleared up their difficulty: I was myself once a captive, and know the sweets of liberty.Liberty! What heart is there that does not feel its pulse quicken at the sound? All instincts teat in unison here. Even the dullest, we are told, kindle into rapture, and the most craven for freedoms sake would strike the unwilling blow

Ah! There lives not a victim of pride and power

But hopes in the future to win release;

But dreams of some bright and golden hour,

When the reign of oppression and wrong shall cease.

Not a toiler who plods neath a burden of care,

But dreams of relief and liberty there.

Dewart.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(11)Voice of God!There are many ways in which God causes us to hear His voice! and the first of all His voices is that of His works. Eliza Cook has In glowing terms written

God has a voice that ever is heard
In the peal of the thunder, the chirp of the bird;
It comes in the torrent all rapid and strong,
In the streamlets soft gush as it ripples along;
Let the hurricane whistle, or warblers rejoice,
What so they tell thee but God hath a voice.

How many have heard Him calling in His Providence, amid the sunshine of prosperity and the shadows of sorrowamid the chimings of the marriage bells and the solemn toll of the funeral knell. But His sweetest voice is that of His Evangel. Pharaoh had heard the Divine voices of nature and Providence, but, like Samuel, he did not understand them. Now he hears the Evangelic voice, and, like the deaf adder, stops his ears. Yet no voice sounds sweeter. As Dr. Hamilton says, on the gospel tree there grow melodious blossomssweeter bells than those which mingled with the pomegranates on Aarons vest. The idea is borrowed from Oriental poetry, which tells of a wondrous tree on which grew golden apples and silver bells. Every time the breeze went by and tossed the fragrant branches, a shower of those yellow globes fell, and the living bells chimed and tinkled forth their airy ravishment. When Moses spoke to Pharaoh the bells rang unheeded in the monarchs ears; so the golden fruit of joy and peace fell among the brick-kilns of Egypt for Israels nurture.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(12)Liberty a Divine Right!Dr. Webster tells a story which admirably illustrates this axiom. In times past, a slave, starting in the darkness and stillness of the midnight hour, and taking the north-star for his guide, toiled on his weary way, resting by day and travelling by night until he reached Vermont. He was pursued by his alleged owner, and seized with the intention of returning him to slavery. The case was brought before Judge Harrington; and the slave-owner, in proof of his claim, called the attention of the judge to a bill of sale. It was returned with an intimation that it was not satisfactory evidence of the sale and purchase; whereupon the indignant slave-owner asked what would be sufficient proof. The judge at once replied that a bill of sale from GOD ALMIGHTY would alone satisfy him. Such God will never give; for freedom is His life

Oh, freedom! terribly thou springest forth,
As springs the flame above a burning pile;
And showest to the nations, who return
Thy shoutings, while the pale oppressor flies.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(13)Wisdom!Nearly every opinion and advice may be stated in a gentle or in an offensive way. An Oriental prince asked two interpreters to explain his dream. One said that he would lose all his relatives, and then himself die. The monarch ordered this prophet of evil to be beheaded. The other assured him that he would survive all his relations. The prince loaded this one with favours, though both interpretations were the same. Moses was gentle in his demand to Pharaoh: Let us go three days journey and sacrifice to our God

Speak gently! it is better far

To rule by love than fear,

Speak gently! let not harsh words mar

The good we might do here.

Bates.

Exo. 5:1-9.

(14)Law of Work!Work is necessity, says Exell. Work gives a feeling of strength, cries Mller. Work is triumph, as Richard Burke exclaimed shortly after an extraordinary display of powers in Parliament by his brother Edmund: When we were at play, he was always at work. But work is also a law. There is such a thing as the Law of Work; and from the particle of dust at our feet to manthe last stroke of Gods great and sublime handiworkall bear the impress of the law of labour. The earth is one vast laboratory, where de. composition and re-formation are constantly going on. As has been aptly added, the blast of natures furnace never ceases, and its fires never burn low. The lichen of the rock and the oak of the forest each works out the problem of its own existence. The earth, the air, the water, teem with busy life. Onward unceasinglyage after agethe world pursues its course; a perpetual lesson, with all it contains, of industry to man. Even the rolling spheres join the universal chorus of labour. Therefore

Work though the world would defeat you;

Heed not its slander and scorn;

Nor weary till angels shall greet you

With smiles through the gates of the morn.

Punshon

Exo. 5:1-9.

(15) Christian Hindrances! The tyrants malice cannot suffer the saints to be in peace: hence the Saviours farewell monition that they must expect tribulation. The Biblical Treasury narrates the case of a soldier in the East Indiesa stout, lion-hearted manonce a noted prizefighter, and a terror to those who knew him. When freed from the bonds of his own passions and guilt the change in his character became most marked and decided. The lion was changed into a lamb, but the lamb had to submit to persecution. One of his comrades, stirred up by Satan, ridiculed him, and taking a basin of hot soup threw it into his bosom. Instead of springing like a tiger upon the insulting comrade he wiped his scalded breast and calmly said, This is what I must expect as a Christian. Every means will be employedevery effort and device madeevery subtle snare enlisted to injure the soul and retard its spiritual enjoyment of Christian freedomyet not without the Divine permissionas with Israel and Job. God allows the tyrants agents and emissaries to surround us with perils, beset us with troubles, and confront our footsteps with red-hot ploughshares as necessary discipline:

If from Thy ordeals heated bars
Our feet are Seamed with crimson scars, Thy will be done.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

THE TEXT OF EXODUS
TRANSLATION

5 And afterward Mo-ses and Aar-on came, and said unto Pha-raoh, Thus saith Je-ho-vah, the God of Is-ra-el, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. (2) And Pha-raoh said, Who is Je-ho-vah, that I should hearken unto his voice to let Is-ra-el go? I know not Je-ho-vah, and moreover I will not let Is-ra-el go. (3) And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, pray thee, three days journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice unto Je-ho-vah our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword. (4) And the king of E-gypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Mo-ses and Aar-on, loose the people from their works? get you unto your burdens. (5) And Pha-raoh said, Behold, the people of the land are now many, and ye make them rest from their burdens. (6) And the same day Pha-raoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying, (7) Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves. (8) And the number of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish aught thereof: for they are idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God. (9) Let heavier work be laid upon the men, that they may labor therein; and let them not regard lying words.

(10) And the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith Pha-raoh, I will not give you straw. (11) Go yourselves, get you straw where ye can find it; for nought of your work shall be diminished. (12) So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of E-gypt to gather stubble for straw. (13) And the taskmasters were urgent, saying, Fulfil your works, your daily tasks, as when there was straw. (14) And the officers of the children of Is-ra-el, whom Pha-raohs taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and demanded, Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task both yesterday and to-day, in making brick as heretofore?

(15) Then the officers of the children of Is-ra-el came and cried unto Pha-raoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants? (16) There is no straw given unto thy servants, and they say to us, Make brick: and, behold, thy servants are beaten; but the fault is in thine own people. (17) But he said, Ye are idle, ye are idle: therefore ye say, Let us go and sacrifice to Je-ho-vah. (18) Go therefore now, and work; for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye deliver the number of bricks. (19) And the officers of the children of Is-ra-el did see that they were in evil case, when it was said, Ye shall not diminish aught from your bricks, your daily tasks. (20) And they met Mo-ses and Aar-on, who stood in the way, as they came forth from Pha-raoh: (21) and they said unto them, Je-ho-vah look upon you, and judge; because ye have made our savor to be abhorred in the eyes of Pha-raoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to slay us.

(22) And Mo-ses returned unto Je-ho-vah, and said, Lord, wherefore hast thou dealt ill with this people? why is it that thou hast sent me? (23) For since I came to Pha-raoh to speak in thy name, he hath dealt ill with this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all.

EXPLORING EXODUS: CHAPTER FIVE
QUESTIONS ANSWERABLE FROM THE BIBLE

1.

After careful reading of the chapter, propose a very brief topic or theme for it.

2.

What people went in to talk to Pharaoh? (Exo. 5:1; Compare Exo. 3:18)

3.

What request did they deliver to Pharaoh? (Exo. 5:1)

4.

What particular wilderness (or desert) did the people propose to go into? (Exo. 14:3; Exo. 14:12; Exo. 15:22)

5.

Did they promise that the people would come back?

6.

What did Pharaoh imply about the LORD by asking, Who is the LORD?

7.

What did Pharaoh NOT know (perhaps deliberately)? What did he refuse to do?

8.

What did the Hebrews request to do in the desert? (Exo. 5:3)

9.

What threat upon themselves did Moses use to strengthen his request to Pharaoh? (Exo. 5:3)

10.

What effect did Pharaoh assume that Moses request would have on the people? (Exo. 5:4)

11.

Where did Pharaoh think that Moses and Aaron ought to be? (Exo. 5:4)

12.

Did Pharaoh regard Moses and Aaron with any honor?

13.

What order did Pharaoh give the Egyptian taskmasters to deliver to the Hebrews? (Exo. 5:6-8)

14.

How was straw used in brick making? (Look this up in some Bible dictionary.)

15.

Did Pharaoh really believe the people were idle, or was this just an excuse to burden them more? (Exo. 5:8)

16.

What vain (or lying) words does Pharaoh speak of in Exo. 5:9?

17.

Where were the people to get straw for brickmaking? (Exo. 5:11)

18.

How far did the people go looking for straw? (Exo. 5:12)

19.

What did the people gather instead of straw? (Exo. 5:12)

20.

Were the taskmasters patient? (Exo. 5:13)

21.

Who were beaten? Why? (Exo. 5:14)

22.

Who came and cried unto Pharaoh? (Exo. 5:15) Why did they not have Moses go do their pleading?

23.

By what title did the Israelite officers refer to themselves before Pharaoh? (Exo. 5:15)

24.

Where did the blame rest for making fewer bricks? (Exo. 5:16)

25.

How did Pharaoh respond to the protest? (Exo. 5:17-18)

26.

What did the Israelite officers realize after they heard Pharaohs response? (Exo. 5:19)

27.

Where were Moses and Aaron standing? (Exo. 5:20)

28.

How did the Israelite officers feel toward Moses and Aaron? (Exo. 5:21)

29.

Did the Israelite officers now believe that the LORD had sent Moses to deliver them? (Exo. 5:21)

30.

Explain Ye have made our savor to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh. (Exo. 5:21)

31.

Explain the figurative meaning of put a sword in their hands to slay us. (Exo. 5:21)

32.

What did Moses do after the Israelites criticized him? (Exo. 5:22)

33.

How did Moses feel just then? (Exo. 5:23)

34.

What questions did Moses ask of God? (Exo. 5:23)

35.

How had Pharaohs responses matched Moses hopes and beliefs?

36.

What did the LORD tell Moses that he would see? (Exo. 6:1)

37.

What sort of manner is with a strong hand? (Exo. 6:1)

38.

Would Pharaoh let them go or drive them out? (Exo. 6:1; Compare Exo. 12:31-33).

EXODUS FIVE: RESISTANCE TO GODS MAN

I.

RESISTANCE FROM SINNERS (Pharaoh); Exo. 5:1-14.

1.

Willful resistance; Exo. 5:1-5.

2.

Cruel resistance; Exo. 5:6-14.

3.

Intractable resistance; Exo. 5:15-18.

II.

RESISTANCE FROM GODS PEOPLE; Exo. 5:15-21.

1.

Bypassing Moses; Exo. 5:15-19.

2.

Criticizing Moses; Exo. 5:20-21.

It is not surprising that Gods man should get resistance from sinners and outsiders. But the resistance from Gods people is unexpected and more painful. Nonetheless, every man of God experiences it.

EXPLORING EXODUS: NOTES ON CHAPTER FIVE

1.

Whose authority did Moses mention first when he confronted Pharaoh? (Exo. 5:1)

He mentioned first the authority of Jehovah (Yahweh), the God of Israel. By mentioning Jehovahs name first of all, Moses and Aaron set the tone for the whole conflict that was to come (chs. 511). It was fundamentally a conflict between Jehovah God and the gods of Egypt (which included Pharaoh himself). Moses went in to Pharaoh in Gods name, speaking as a prophet. Compare Amo. 1:3; Jer. 2:2.

It took a lot of courage to go in before great Pharaoh and demand that he let Israel go. Moses had had plain warning that Pharaoh would NOT let them go (Exo. 3:19).

Moses requests that they be allowed to hold a feast unto Jehovah in the wilderness. God had told Moses to request permission to keep such a feast (or sacrifice; see Exo. 3:18; Exo. 10:9). Israel had to go into the wilderness for the sacrifice, because they would sacrifice animals sacred to the Egyptians (and almost EVERY animal was sacred to the Egyptians). This could infuriate the Egyptians like the slaughter of a cow would upset a Hindu mob. See Exo. 8:25-27.

2.

Who actually confronted Pharaoh? (Exo. 5:1)

Only Moses and Aaron. The elders had been instructed to go in with Moses (Exo. 3:18). Where were they? The Jewish Midrash[130] says, very plausibly, that they stole furtively away, singly and in pairs.

[130] Amos W. Miller, Understanding the Midrash (New York; Jonathan David, 1965), p. 159.

This confrontation occurred somewhere in the Nile delta area, even though the capital of XVIII dynasty Egypt was in far-off Thebes to the south. XVIII dynasty kings frequently visited the important Nile delta area.[131] The fact that Pharaoh could communicate the same day (Exo. 5:6) indicates that Pharaoh was near the Israelites, who lived by the delta.

[131] G. L. Archer, A Survey of O. T. Introduction (Chicago: Moody, 1964), pp. 215216.

3.

Was Israels request to Pharaoh unreasonable?

Not at all. Every nation presents sacrifices and worship to its gods. Work-journals belonging to the New Kingdom period (time of Moses) in Egypt have furnished, among other reasons for absenteeism, the offering of sacrifices by workmen to their gods.[132]

[132] A. Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt (1894), pp. 124f; quoted in R. K. Harrison, Introduction to the O. T. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1969), p. 577.

Pharaohs refusal shows his complete lack of consideration for people, and his lack of fear of God. By refusing a small request, his real heart-nature was exposed and his conduct condemned. His heart did not need very much hardening to be totally solid!
Note that Moses refers to the God of Israel. This is one of the earliest references to Israel as a people, or nation. Previously, Israel is used only as a mans (Jacobs) name; hereafter, it is mostly the name of the people as a whole.

4.

What did Pharaoh know about Jehovah? (Exo. 5:2)

Perhaps nothing. He asks, Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken to his voice?
Nonetheless, it seems very doubtful that Pharaoh was completely ignorant of Jehovah. The facts of how the Hebrews God had saved Egypt in the days of Joseph were not secrets. Most likely Pharaoh was wilfully ignorant. Pharaoh regarded himself as a god.[133] So he disregarded any God other than Egypts gods.

[133] Davis, op. cit., p. 73.

Pharaoh was soon to regret saying, Who is Jehovah? He was to become VERY well acquainted with the power of Jehovah. Sennacherib of Assyria in later years asked a similar question about Jehovah, with equally disastrous results (2Ki. 18:35).

Unbelieving critics argue that it had been only a short time (a few months) before when Jehovah revealed himself to the Hebrews by the name Jehovah.[134] By this idea Pharaoh could not have known the name since the Hebrews had only recently been introduced to Him. We feel that this idea goes against the Bibles teachings. See notes on Exo. 6:2.

[134] Broadman Bible Commentary (1969), p. 339.

In spite of Pharaohs harsh refusal of Moses request, God later graciously told the Israelites, Thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian (Deu. 23:7).

5.

How did Moses reinforce his request that Pharaoh let Israel go? (Exo. 5:3)

He declared that the God of the Hebrews had met them, and demanded that they sacrifice unto Him, lest he fall on them with a pestilence (disease) or the sword (war). They faced danger if they did not obey God. See notes on Exo. 3:18.

Even though Moses request was strong, it was rather politely worded: Let us go, we pray thee.
Again, we emphasize that Moses was under no illusions that Pharaoh would grant their request. It was only their first barrage in the assault on Pharaoh.

6.

How did Pharaoh regard the Hebrews? (Exo. 5:3)

He probably regarded them only as one of the assorted Semitic peoples who had at various times in history entered into and squatted in Egypt. The Hyksos had been such a people. Such peoples were a threat to the native population. The Egyptians contemptuously referred to them as sandcrossers. They are also called the Habiri (or Habiru, or Khapiru, or Apiru), a name applied to peoples in various places who existed outside the normal establishments of society, somewhat like our Gypsies.

7.

How did Pharaoh regard Moses and Aaron? (Exo. 5:4)

He regarded them as nothing more than slaves who ought to be out working with the rest of their people, at your burdens.

Pharaoh had apparently already learned of the meeting of the Israelites with Moses and Aaron (Exo. 4:29). This had created considerable stir among the Egyptian rulers, because the Israelites had taken time off from their toils to meet with Moses.

8.

Who were the people of the land? (Exo. 5:5)

Apparently they were the Hebrews. The exact implications of this expression are not clear, but it is obviously not complimentary. Perhaps Pharaoh refers to people of the land as contrasted with the city-dwelling high-class Egyptians. The people of the land were the working-class serfs, the riff-raff.

Or it may be that Pharaoh spoke of them as his private property. He owned all the land (Gen. 47:20), and they were the people of the land, people who were permanently associated with the land use.

In any case, the large number of these people was disturbing to Pharaoh, just as their numbers long before had disturbed an earlier ruler of Egypt (Exo. 1:9).

9.

How did the Egyptians feel about idleness? (Exo. 5:5)

They did not tolerate it in slaves. A painting in an Egyptian tomb dated about 1450 B.C. (the very time of the oppression!) shows slaves making bricks while their supervisor watches with a stick in his hand. In the writing along the side of the painting the taskmaster is quoted as saying, The rod is in my hand; be not idle![135]

[135] Ira M. Price, E. L. Carlson, O. R. Sellers, The Monuments and the Old Testament (Philadelphia: Judson, 1958), p. 168.

10.

To whom is Exo. 5:5 addressed?

It is addressed to ye, apparently to Moses and Aaron, just as Isa. 5:4. However, it sounds somewhat like a monologue, as if Pharaoh were thinking out loud while talking to Moses.

Martin Noth claims that Exo. 5:4-5 are remains of two distinct source documents, giving two different accounts of Israels confrontation with Pharaoh. He says that Exo. 5:4 is a fragment of E. . . . inserted into the context of J.[136] It seems to us that there is no clash at all between the verses, and that Exo. 5:5 is only somewhat of a repetition for emphasis by Pharaoh.

[136] Op. cit., p. 53.

11.

What three classes of officials were over the Hebrew workers?

(1) Taskmasters (Heb. sare missim), Egyptian officers apparently over large labor gangs. (Exo. 1:11)

(2) Taskmasters (Heb. nogesim). Literally, the title means oppressors; it seems to refer to Egyptian supervisors of smaller work crews. (Exo. 5:6; Exo. 5:14)

(3) Officers (Heb. shoterim). Literally, the title means writers, scribes, officers, leaders. It seems to refer to Hebrew workers assigned to crews with them. Perhaps they were responsible to turn in written reports of their productivity each day.

12.

When did Pharaoh issue new work orders? (Exo. 5:6).

The same day!

13.

What new work-order did Pharaoh issue? (Exo. 5:7-11).

He ordered that the Hebrew slaves go find their own straw for brickmaking, but make just as many bricks as they did when straw had been brought to them. Obviously specific daily quotas of bricks had been assigned to be made.
Pharaohs response was harsh and unreasonable. For requesting a three-day holiday for religious sacrifices, the people are sentenced to much heavier work on an apparently permanent basis. Probably Pharaoh sensed that their request was only the beginning of bigger aspirations.

14.

What did the straw serve for in brickmaking? (Exo. 5:7; Exo. 5:12)

Egyptian mud sticks together well enough that straw is not actually needed to hold mud bricks together. Therefore, bricks made without straw are found in Egypt, as well as bricks with straw. However, the straw contains an enzyme that makes the mud much easier to mix and handle.[137] Not having straw would make the Hebrews work much harder and more abrasive.

[137] Joseph Free, Archaeology and Bible History (Wheaton, III.: Scripture Press, 1972), pp. 9192.

These mud bricks work well in a dry land like Egypt, where absence of rainfall prevents houses from being softened and washed away.

15.

Why did Pharaoh accuse Israel of being idle? (Exo. 5:8)

Because he was cruel, and was looking for something to accuse them of, so he could oppress them. They had not really been idle, except for the one meeting with Moses and Aaron. Pharaoh still said they were idle even after the Israelite workmen themselves told him their true situation (Exo. 5:16-17). This shows that his charge of idleness was only an excuse to treat them cruelly.

16.

How did Pharaoh regard the words of Moses and Aaron? (Exo. 5:9)

He regarded them as vain, or lying, words, which offered false hopes to the people. Pharaoh seems to have heard indirectly of Gods promise to Moses to deliver Israel. By overburdening the people, he attempted to crush their spirits, remove all hope from them, and destroy all their confidence in Moses and Aaron.

AMENHOTEP II, (14481422 B.C.), Pharaoh of the exodus.

We can understand Pharaohs reactions to Moses much better when we have read the unbearably boastful writings by Amenhotep II, telling of his exploits as a sportsman.

Now, further his majesty appeared as king as a goodly youth. When he had matured and completed eighteen years on his thighs in valor, he was one who knew every task of Montu [the god of war]: there was no one like him on the field of battle. He was one who knew horses; there was not his like in this numerous army. There was not one therein who could draw his bow. He could not be approached in running.
Strong of arms, one who did not weary when he took the oar, he rowed at the stern of his falcon-boat as the stroke for two hundred men. When there was a pause, after they had attained half an iters course [probably five-eighths of a mile], they were weak, their bodies were limp, they could not draw a breath, whereas his majesty was (still) strong under his oar of twenty cubits in its length [about 34 feet!].

He drew three hundred stiff bows in comparing the work of the craftsmen of them, in order to distinguish the ignorant from the wise. When he had just come from doing this which I have called to your attention, he entered into his northern garden and found there had been set up for him four targets of Asiatic copper of one palm in their thickness [A little less than 3 inches], with twenty cubits between one post and its fellow. Then his majesty appeared in a chariot like Montu in his power. He grasped his bow and gripped four arrows at the same time. So he rode northward, shooting at them like Montu in his regalia. His arrows had come out on the back thereof while he was attacking another post. It was really a deed which had never been done nor heard of. . . .[138]

[138] From Pharaoh as a Sportsman, translated by John A. Wilson, in Ancient Near Eastern Texts (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1955), p. 244. Used by permission.

17.

What did the Israelites use for straw? (Exo. 5:12)

They used stubble. The long clean wheat straw that had been cut with sickles, tied into bundles, and probably kept in barns, was no longer brought to them for brickmaking. Instead they had to go out and pull up stubby ends of wheat steams attached to the roots still in the ground. Along with wheat and barley stubble would be all kinds of field rubbish, weeds, twigs, etc. These had to be uprooted, carried home, cleaned, sorted, and chopped.

The presence of stubble indicates this occurred after the barley and wheat harvest, near the end of April, or early May. At this season the pestilential sand-wind blows over Egypt, often for days on end. The Israelites sufferings must have been intense! Why would they ever at later times have longed to return to Egypt (Exo. 16:3)?

18.

Could the Israelites fulfill the heavier work demands upon them? (Exo. 5:14)

By no means! Thereupon the Hebrew straw bosses were beaten with sticks by the Egyptians, because their crews had not made the daily assigned quotas of bricks. The Egyptians had set this up deliberately. The impossibly difficult work quotas were just the excuse for the persecution they intended to lay on them.

19.

Who went to Pharaoh to protest the beatings? (Exo. 5:15-16)

The Israelite officers themselves went. They took matters into their own hands. Moses had failed initially to get them delivered, and so they went to Pharaoh seeking fair treatment. Observe that the Israelites meekly referred to themselves three times as thy servants.

20.

Whom did the Israelites blame for their troubles? (Exo. 5:16)

They blamed Pharaohs taskmasters, thine own people. This was only partly true: the fault was really in Pharaoh himself. His people were only following his orders.

The Greek O.T. (LXX) reads in Exo. 5:16, . . . thy servants have been scourged; thou wilt therefore injure (or deal unjustly with) thy people. Both this translation and that of the Hebrew Bible show how submissive the Israelites felt.

21.

What did the Israelites realize about their situation after their conference with Pharaoh? (Exo. 5:19)

They did see that they were in an evil situation. It impresses us that they were extremely slow in figuring this out. The root of their trouble was Pharaoh himself, not his taskmasters. Perhaps in their desperation they had believed what they wanted to believe, that surely Pharaoh would help them when he knew the truth about them. That hope was now dashed. To whom could they turn now for help? They did not turn to God. Instead they turned to bitterness (Exo. 5:21; Exo. 6:9).

22.

Where did the Israelites meet Moses and Aaron? (Exo. 5:20)

Moses and Aaron were standing in the road from Pharaohs house, evidently having stationed themselves there, probably expecting to hear a more hopeful report.

23.

What use of Jehovahs name did Israel make toward Moses? (Exo. 5:21)

They called on Jehovah to judge (condemn, punish, or damn) Moses and Aaron. Their statement is nearly a curse.
What perversity this shows! While calling upon Jehovah to judge and punish Moses, they show by their complaining that they have no confidence in God or His power to save.

24.

What effects did the Israelites feel that Moses meeting with Pharaoh had had upon them? (Exo. 5:21)

(1) You have made us stink in the eyes (nostrils?) of Pharaoh. Savor, or smell, here means reputation or standing. Similar expressions can be found in Gen. 34:30; 2Sa. 10:6; 1Sa. 27:12. In truth, the Israelites did not have a very good savor before Pharaoh even before Moses arrived; they were already enslaved then (Exo. 2:23-24).

(2) You have put a sword in their hands to slay us. You have given them the provocation and excuse to harm us.

These first accusations of the Israelites against Moses were only the beginning of a torrent of such objections to his leadership that would later grieve Moses. See Exo. 14:11; Exo. 15:24; Exo. 16:2; and on and on.

25.

What did Moses do when the Israelites rejected him? (Exo. 5:22)

He returned unto Jehovah. This expression is beautiful in its simplicity, implying constant communion with God. Gods man must have such closeness with God constantly.

Then he prayed, asking God why He had done evil to the Israelites. Moses words are not critical, but words of inquiry and prayer. They spring from faith instead of doubt. But his words are urgent: Why did you ever send me?

By the word evil Moses referred to calamity, misfortune, or other adversities, rather than to moral evil. Compare Gen. 43:6; Num. 20:15; Job. 24:20.

Moses prayer here is the first of many prayers he uttered after the times when the people challenged his leadership. Compare Exo. 32:1; Exo. 32:11; Num. 11:11.

26.

What answer did God give to Moses prayer? (Exo. 6:1)

You shall see what I will do to Pharaoh . . . he shall drive Israel out of his land.

By a strong hand means with a powerful force and with urgency. It refers to Pharaohs hand, rather than to Gods hand. God indeed laid His hand heavily upon Pharaoh (Exo. 7:4-5; Exo. 13:3). This broke Pharaohs resistance, so that Pharaoh himself thrust Israel out of his land (See Exo. 12:33; Exo. 12:39.)

27.

How do we relate to Moses experiences?

Few people can read Exodus chapters 16 and fail to see therein a reflection of their own experiences with God and His people. In Moses we see our own aspirations and disappointments, faith and fears, hopes and hesitancy, dreams and despair. Moses as Gods man is a picture of every man of God.

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

V.
FIRST APPLICATION OF MOSES TO PHARAOH, AND INCREASE OF THE OPPRESSION.

(1) Went in.Heb., wenti.e., left their usual residence, and approached the Court, which, according to the Psalms (Psa. 78:12; Psa. 78:43), was held at Zoan (i.e., Tanis). This was the ordinary residence of Rameses II. and his son Menephthah.

Thus saith the Lord God of Israel.Heb., Thus has said Jehovah, God of Israel. The Pharaohs claimed to hold direct communications with the Egyptian deities, and could not deny the possibility of the Hebrew leaders holding communications with their God. Menepthah himselfthe probable Pharaoh of the Exodusgave out that he had received a warning from Phthah in the fifth year of his reign (Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. ii., p. 119; 1st ed.).

That they may hold a feast unto me.Gods entire purpose is not at once revealed to Pharaoh. He is tried with a moderate demand, which he might well have granted. By refusing it he showed himself harsh, unkind, and inconsiderate, so tempting God to lay upon him a greater burthen.

In the wildernessi.e., beyond the frontier, or, at any rate, beyond inhabited Egyptthat the Egyptians might not be driven to fury by seeing animals sacrificed which they regarded as sacred. (See Exo. 8:26, and the comment ad loc.)

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

THE INTERCESSION OF MOSES WITH PHARAOH, AND THE RESULT, Exo 5:1-23.

1. The era of preparation ends, and the first act of the struggle begins . Moses and Aaron open their mission to Pharaoh . Thus saith Jehovah, God of Israel, so the phrase should be rendered, since “Jehovah” is the proper name, and not the compound word “Lord God,” as the Authorized Version would indicate. Moses and Aaron do not at first demand national independence. It is a far more moderate request to be permitted to sacrifice according to the command of Jehovah. As all nations had their forms of worship, and as religious claims were everywhere acknowledged to be paramount, this was no unreasonable petition, especially in Egypt, where religious festivals and processions were a most familiar pageant. At the same time it contained the core principle of Israel’s mission recognition of Jehovah. See on Exo 3:18-19. It is a strange and irreverent misconception that has led some interpreters to consider this a deceptive request.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

The Situation Worsens ( Exo 5:1-23 ).

After the wonder of what they had seen probably all the parties involved considered that the future would be plain sailing. For who could resist such wonders? They had overlooked someone who thought of himself as a god and beyond being touched by men and their tribal gods.

The first Confrontation with Pharaoh ( Exo 5:1-4 ).

a Moses and Aaron come to Pharaoh and in the name of Yahweh, the God of Israel, request that he let them go to feast to Yahweh in the wilderness (Exo 5:1).

b Pharaoh contemptuously asks who Yahweh is and says that he does not know Him (Exo 5:2).

b They reply that He is the God of the Hebrews Who has met with them and called on them to make offerings and sacrifices in the wilderness (Exo 5:3).

a The king of Egypt’s reply is to ask why they are seeking to release the people from their obligatory service and to demand that they return to their burdens (Exo 5:4).

Note the parallel between (a) their desire to hold a religious feast to Yahweh and in the parallel the implication that their true service lies in slaving for the king of Egypt. His anger was probably aroused by the request that all may go. That would seriously hinder the building work being done. Permission might have been given to a few.

Exo 5:1

‘And afterwards Moses and Aaron came and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’ ” ’

Moses and Aaron now sought the privilege of approaching Pharaoh. There is no suggestion that Moses is seen as a prince or given special privileges. He and Aaron approach as representatives of the children of Israel and would need to go through all the necessary formalities. We know that even lowly slaves were permitted to appeal freely to Pharaoh, at least in the days of the Ramesside dynasty. Pharaoh probably liked to see himself as a father to his subjects.

“Yahweh, the God of Israel.” The children of Israel are now being depicted as a tribal grouping, Israel, and Yahweh is declared to be their God.

“A feast to me in the wilderness.” No doubt more was said than we have here. Pharaoh would be used to the flowery requests put before him by trained orators, and Aaron would no doubt follow the pattern (it was this that Moses had demurred at). But the end request was made that they be permitted to have a pilgrimage to the place where their God had revealed Himself, which would include a period of worship, followed by feasting, in the wilderness to honour the God Who had appeared to Moses in a great theophany in the wilderness.

Later it would also be pointed out that it was necessary to go out of sight of their Egyptian neighbours because they would be offended at the sacrifices offered by the Israelites at such a great feast (Exo 8:26). For some of the animals slaughtered were seen as sacred by many Egyptians, and to see them killed would be to rouse them to extreme violence.

Exo 5:2

‘And Pharaoh said, “Who is Yahweh that I should listen to his voice to let Israel go? I do not know Yahweh and moreover I will not let Israel go.”

That Pharaoh had been willing to see them indicates that their request, which would have been explained to high officials, was considered appropriate to be offered. But he refused to consider it, and replied with contempt.

“Who is Yahweh? — I do not know Yahweh.” As a god and companion of the gods he indicated that Yahweh was an unknown among the gods. Certainly he did not acknowledge Him, for He was a nonentity. Why then should He listen to Him? His voice would be filled with contempt. He possibly recognised that this Yahweh must be a ‘God of the Hebrews’, but that was different from acknowledging Him and respecting Him. Then he came down to earth. ‘Moreover I will not let Israel go.’ His reply was final. It should be recognised that this revealed this Pharaoh as a particularly unyielding person. Many kings would have been willing to acknowledge the gods of their slaves even though they did not themselves worship them. To refute such gods was to display religious arrogance of an unusual kind. This might point to Amenophis IV as the Pharaoh, for he sought to restrict worship to the worship of Aten.

“I do not know Yahweh.” By this he probably meant that he did not acknowledge that He had any rights. As far as he was concerned Yahweh could be ignored.

“Israel”. Pharaoh usually thinks of the children of Israel as just ‘Israel’ (compare Exo 14:5).

Exo 5:3

‘And they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Let us go, we pray you, three days journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to Yahweh our God, lest he fall on us with pestilence and the sword.”

Courageously they pressed their request further to urge its crucial importance. ‘The God of the Hebrews has met with us.’ They assured him that there had been a wonderful theophany and that He had made certain demands on them. They dare not refuse, otherwise they may suffer pestilence and physical violence by the sword. Pharaoh might not acknowledge Yahweh but they did, and they were fearful of what He might do. It was widely believed that such afflictions resulted from not honouring gods sufficiently.

They possibly hoped that this would give Pharaoh pause for thought. Pestilence would affect his people as well and ‘the sword’ could only indicate an invasion. Significantly Goshen was near the Egyptian northern borders, the direction from which invasion would probably come, and from which the Hyksos had previously come. It was thus in everyone’s interest that the God of the Hebrews be propitiated.

“The God of the Hebrews.” An attempt to explain more of Whom Yahweh is. Pharaoh might not know who ‘Israel’ are, but he will know who ‘the Hebrews’ are. So they explain that Yahweh is their God. To Pharaoh ‘the Hebrews’ would equate with ‘the Habiru’, the landless and wild people who had no settled place, who gathered in bands and came out of the wilderness and even attacked cities, who worked in mines and many of whom he had now himself enslaved. The ‘prw, as the Egyptians called them, are mentioned in a number of Egyptian texts and range from fighting men in Canaan to captives employed as servants to strain wine, to prisoners given to the temples, to workers in the quarries of the Wadi Hammamat.

“Three days journey.” A stereotyped term. Not a great distance but sufficient to be able to reach ‘the wilderness’ proper. It could be less than two actual days (an evening, a day and a part morning) They did not want the request to sound too demanding. They would only be gone a short time.

Exo 5:4

‘And the king of Egypt said to them, “Why do you, Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their works. Get you to your burdens.”

As we have seen constantly, the ancient writer liked to use variety when writing, thus here ‘Pharaoh’, the father of his people, now becomes the stern ‘king of Egypt’. It is not as ‘father’ of his people that he speaks but as the despotic king. He had now lost patience with them and accused them of simply trying to find an excuse to avoid working, to obtain for the people a holiday. He commanded that they cease such foolishness and get down to the tasks assigned to them. Their loyalty lay in serving him. That was where their true religious service lay.

It should be noted that at this point no signs and wonders had been shown to Pharaoh. The appeal had been made to him on the basis of common justice and seeking the favour that would be expected from a just ruler. Pharaoh had been given his chance to prove himself just and wise.

“Moses and Aaron.” The fact that Moses and Aaron are mentioned together in this way suggests that Moses has approached as a representative of the children of Israel rather than as a prince of Egypt. The latter thought never appears at any stage. It was probably better that Pharaoh did not know who he was.

“The king of Egypt.” This is an indication of what Pharaoh is. In comparison with Yahweh he is only the king of Egypt, an earthly monarch with a limited kingdom.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Exo 5:1  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.

Exo 5:1 “Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness” – Comments – The Lord has used at least two different terms in describing to the children of Israel what to do once they were set free. They were to serve God (Exo 3:12), make a sacrifice (Exo 3:18), and hold a feast unto the Lord (Exo 5:1). However, while Moses was spending forty days and nights upon Mount Sinai, the children of Israel had their own idolatrous way of holding a feast. Aaron built a golden calf, and made the Israelites feast and drink and make sacrifices, as they worshipped the golden image (Exo 32:5).

Exo 3:12, “And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain .

Exo 3:18, “And they shall hearken to thy voice: and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him, The LORD God of the Hebrews hath met with us: and now let us go, we beseech thee, three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God .

Exo 32:5, “And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, To morrow is a feast to the LORD .”

Exo 5:10 “straw” – Comments – Even today in African villages straw is used in making bricks of clay. The straw gives the bricks added strength.

Exo 5:21 Comments – Exo 5:21 gives us the first recorded complaint from the children of Israel against Moses. This plants a seed for these stubborn people to continue a lifestyle of murmuring and complaining which will eventually end with their destruction in the wilderness because of their rebellion against God.

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 Taskmasters Instructed to Burden the People

v. 1. 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. Moses and Aaron here acted not only as representatives of the children of Israel, who had acknowledged their commission from God, but as the ambassadors of the Lord Himself. Their question distinctly stated by whose authority they were acting, namely, by that of Jehovah, the God of Israel.

v. 2. And Pharaoh said, 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. Although Pharaoh’s answer was given with the understanding that the gods governed the countries, and that therefore the Israelites belonged under the jurisdiction of the Egyptian gods and had no business to have a God of their own, Pharaoh here showed an impious, selfish, blasphemous mind, and proved himself a religious tyrant.

v. 3. And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us, He had disclosed, revealed Himself to them in glory, He, the ancient God of the free Hebrews. 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. The plea was that Jehovah would look upon their neglect to bring Him sacrifices as a deliberate act of disobedience, and would therefore come upon them, as their enemy, with severe punishments. Thus both ideas are brought out, that Jehovah was a jealous, and that He was a powerful God.

v. 4. And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works, attempt to secure for them a vacation from their labors, release them from their duties? Get you unto your burdens, your servile labor. He addressed them as though they themselves were slaves, and at the same time intimated that their request was a vain pretext.

v. 5. And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens, you want to secure for them a vacation, a period of rest, and their great numbers caused such a period to result in losses to the crown. The words reveal a boundless contempt for the common people.

v. 6. And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters, the overseers who drove them to their work and while they were at work, and their officers, saying,

v. 7. Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore, chopped straw being used for binding the clay in the bricks before they were dried in the sun ; let them go and gather straw for themselves. In the past this straw had been furnished by the Egyptian overseers, and the Hebrew officers had kept a record of the work done by their countrymen.

v. 8. And the tale of the bricks which they did make heretofore ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish aught thereof, the Israelites were to make and to deliver to the Egyptian overseers the same number of bricks as had always been required of them; for they be idle; therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God. Thus Pharaoh ascribed their request to be allowed to worship their God to a lack of sufficient occupation, to the fact that time was hanging heavy on their hands.

v. 9. Let there more work be laid upon the men that they may labor therein, literally: Let the service rest heavily upon the men and keep them busy therewith; and let them not regard vain words, let them not listen to the lying representations of that man Moses. Similar charges are preferred against the Christians to this day, namely, that they are restless, dissatisfied people, having only worship and prayer in mind and neglecting their duties as citizens false accusations all of them.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

FIRST APPEAL OF MOSES TO PHARAOH, AND INCREASE OF THE OPPRESSION.

EXPOSITION

Exo 5:1-5

Having secured the adhesion of the Israelitish people, Moses and Aaron sought an interview with the Egyptian monarch who was now in possession of the throne. According to the bulk of modern authorities, and according to our own views of Egyptian history, this was Menephthah,the son and successor of Rameses II. Menephthah was a weak prince, whom events had favoured, and who had been thus led to have an exalted opinion of himself. A great invasion of Egypt had occurred at the beginning of his reign, which had been met and completely repulsed, not by his own skill or valour, but by the skill and valour of his generals. Menephthah himself had pointedly avoided incurring any danger. He claimed to be in direct communication with the Egyptian gods, who revealed themselves to him in visions, and pleaded a distinct command of Phthah as preventing him from putting himself at the head of his army. Still, he counted as his own all the successes gained by his generals, and was as vainglorious and arrogant as if he had himself performed prodigies of valour Such was the temper of the king before whom we believe that Moses and Aaron appeared. There would be no difficulty in any Egyptian subject, who had a prayer to make or a petition to present, obtaining an audience of the monarch, for it was an accepted principle of the administration that the kings were to hear all complaints, and admit to their presence all classes of the community.

Exo 5:1

And afterward. The interposition of some not inconsiderable space of time seems to be implied. Menephthah resided partly at Memphis, partly at Zoan (Tanis). Moses and Aaron may have had to wait until he returned from his southern to his northern capital. Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh. Aaron was, no doubt, the sole spokesman, but as he spoke for both, the plural is used. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel. Literally, “Thus saith Jehovah, God of Israel.” Pharaoh would understand Jehovah to be a proper name, parallel to his own Phthah, Ra, Ammon, etc. Let my people go. The rationale of the demand is given in Exo 8:26. The Israelites could not offer their proper sacrificial animals in the presence of the Egyptians without the risk of provoking a burst of religious animosity, since among the animals would necessarily be some which all, or many, of the Egyptians regarded as sacred, and under no circumstances to be killed. The fanaticism of the Egyptians on such occasions led to wars, tumults, and massacres. (See Plutarch, ‘De Isid. et Osir.,’ 44.) To avoid this danger the “feast” must be held beyond the bounds of Egyptin the adjacent “wilderness.”

Exo 5:2

And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord? Rather, “Who is Jehovah?” Either Pharaoh is actually ignorant, or he pretends to be. The former is possible, since Jehovah was a name but little employed, until the return of Moses to Egypt. The latter, however, is more probable. That I should obey his voice. Why am I to obey his voice? What is your Jehovah to me? What authority has he over me? He is, at best, your god, not mine. I know not Jehovah. I acknowledge him not. He is not within the range of my Pantheon. Neither will I let Israel go, i.e. “nor even, if he were, would I consent to such a request as this from him.” The Pharaohs assumed to be themselves gods, on a par with the national gods, and not bound to obey them.

Exo 5:3

And they said. Moses and Aaron are not abashed by a single refusal. They expostulate, and urge fresh reasons why Pharaoh should accede to their request. But first they explain that Jehovah is the God of the Hebrews, by which name the Israelites seem to have been generally known to the Egyptians (See Exo 1:15, Exo 1:16, Exo 1:19; Exo 2:6, Exo 2:7.) Their God, they say, has met with themmade, that is. a special revelation of himself to theman idea quite familiar to the king, and which he could not pretend to misunderstand and he has laid on them an express command. They are to go a three days’ journey into the desertto be quite clear of interruption from the Egyptians. Will not Pharaoh allow them to obey the order? If they do not obey it, their God will be angry, and will punish them, either by sending a pestilence among them, or causing an invader to fall upon them with the sword. The eastern frontier of Egypt was at this time very open to invasion, and was actually threatened by a vast army some ten or fifteen years later.

Exo 5:4

The king makes no direct reply to this appeal, but turns upon his petitioners, and charges them with an offence against the crown. Why do they, Moses and Aaron, by summoning the people to meet together, and exciting their minds with vague hopes, “let the people from their works.” This is damage to the crown, whoso labourers the people are, and he, the Pharaoh, will not have it. “Get youall of you, people and leaders togetherto your appointed tasksyour burdens.”

Exo 5:5

The people are many. This is added as an aggravation of the offence charged in the last verse. The people are numerous. Therefore the greater damage is done to the crown by putting a stop to their labours. With these words the first interview between the Israelite leaders and the Egyptian monarch ends. Moses and Aaron, we must suppose, retired discomfited from the royal presence.

HOMILETICS

Exo 5:1-5

God’s will often opposed by the great of the earth, and his servants rebuffed.

Encouraged by their success with the elders and with the people (Exo 4:29-31), Moses and Aaron would stop boldly into the presence of Pharaoh. It was, no doubt, known that they represented the feelings of an entire nation, a nation moreover of whom the Egyptians had begun to be afraid (Exo 1:9, Exo 1:10). The courtiers would treat them, at any rate, with outward politeness and respect. They knew also that God was on their side, and would ultimately, if not at the first, give them success. Under these circumstances they made their request boldly and with much plainness (Exo 5:1 and Exo 5:3). But they were met with the most complete antagonism. Pharaoh was in his own eves not only the greatest king upon the face of the earth, but an actual god. If we are right in supposing him to be Menephthah, he was the son of a king who had set up his own image to be worshipped side by side with those of Ammon, Phthah, and Horus, three of the greatest Egyptian deities. He viewed the demand made of him as preposterous, and had probably not the slightest belief in the power of Jehovah to do him harm. Who was Jehovah? and what had he to fear from him? A godif he was a godwho had not been able to prevent his people from becoming a nation of slaves. He therefore treated the petition of Moses with absolute contempt. And so it has ever been, and will ever be, with the great of the earth. They are so exalted above their fellows, that they think “no harm can happen unto them.” They do not set themselves to inquire what is really God’s will, but determinately carry out their own will in their own way. Even when they do not openly blaspheme, like this Pharaoh, and Sennacherib (2Ki 18:29-35), and Herod Antipas (Luk 23:11), they ignore God, reject the just demands of his ministers, refuse to be guided by their advice. Thus his servants are ever being rebuffed. They ask that slavery should everywhere cease, and are told that in some places it is a necessity. They plead against the licensing of vice, and are bidden not to interfere with sanitary arrangements. They ask for laws to restrain intoxication, and are denounced as seeking to lessen the national revenue. They cry for the abolition of vivisection, and are held up to ridicule as sickly sentimentalists. All this is to be expected, and should not discourage them. Let them, like Moses and Aaron, continually repeat their demands; urge them, in season and out of season. They may be sure that they will triumph at last. “The Lord is on their side;” they need not fear what flesh can do against them.

HOMILIES BY H. T. ROBJOHNS

Exo 5:1-21

Failure.

“I know not Jehovah,” etc.: Exo 5:2. We now come face to face with the king. As the king here becomes very prominent, we will keep him conspicuous in the outlining of this address.

I. AUDIENCE WITH THE KING. This is a convenient moment for introducing Pharaoh as the terrestrial representative of the Sun, as the vicegerent of Deity upon earth. Does it seem wonderful that men should receive a man in this capacity? But millions of professed Christians in this nineteenth century so receive the Pope. We will take the suggestions of the story in the time-order of the narrative. We have

1. A lesson in courage. The two went to their audience with the king at the peril of their lives. Some might have remembered Moses. Their demand touched the honour and revenues of the king. Courage in facing responsibility is the lesson; leave consequences to our poor selves to God.

2. A suggestion as to the method of evangelic grace. Jehovah here calls himself for the first time in relation to the nation, as distinguished from the man Jacob, “the God of Israel.” A crowd was just becoming a State and a Church, when Jehovah calls himself their God. First he is their God: then all possibilities are before them. Their history begins well. So now: first adopted children, and then the obedience of children.

3. A warning against want of catholicity. The tone of Pharaoh is that of the vicegerent of Deity, as against a tutelary god he deigned not to acknowledge. But he was wrong even on the principles of enlightened pagandom, which was forward to acknowledge the gods of all nations. Compare the policy of imperial Rome.

4. Teaching as to gradation in God‘s demands. Here may be discussed the nature and propriety of the first demand for three days’ absence. Looking at things after the events, it may appear to some that here was a demand which concealed the real intention, viz. to return no more. But this would be to impeach the veracity of God! The demand really was for “a whole day’s prayer-meeting,” with a day to go, a day to return. In the desert, as in consideration of Egyptian feeling; but probably within the frontier, for there were Egyptian garrisons in Forts of the desert of Sinai. A moderate demand! One that Pharaoh might well have complied with. Compliance might have led to further negotiation; and this Pharaoh might have stood out in history as co-operating in the deliverance and formation of the Church of God. Instead of that he set himself against the small demand, and was unready for the greater (Exo 6:11) when it came. And so we see him through the mist of ages, “moving ghost-like to his doom.” It is a picture of the method of God. He asks first for the simple, reasonable, easy etc. etc.

II. ORDERS FROM THE KING. “The very same day!” Such is the restlessness of the tyrant-spirit. The orders were addressed to the “drivers,” Egyptians, and to the “clerks” of the works, Hebrews. Note the large employment of “clerks,” as evidenced by the monuments. The appointment of these “clerks” would contribute much to the organisation of Israel, and so prepare for the Exodus. As to the ordersexplain them. Bricks a government monopoly; witness the royal mark on many to this day. Same number of bricks as before, but people to gather in the corn-fields the straw (in harvest only the ear cut off) previously allowed by the government, chop it, and mix it with the clay. Terrible cruelty of these orders-in-council in such a climate.

III. OBEDIENCE TO THE KING. For the sake of vividly and pictorially bringing up the condition of the people, note the time of straw-collecting: time of harvestend of April; then a hot pestilential sand-wind often blows over the land of Egypt for fifty days; the effects on health, tone, skin, eyes (in the land of ophthalmia), of so working in blazing sun, in clouds of dust, in hopeless slavery. They return to the horrid brickfields; fail; fierce punishments, as to this day in the same land.

IV. EXPOSTULATION WITH THE KING, The “clerks” of the works constitute a deputation to the king, perhaps by virtue of a “right of petition.” The king accuses them of being “idle.” To understand this, think of the gigantic public works, the terrific labour, the perishing of thousands, the likelihood that such a taunt would spring to tyrannical lips. The king refuses, perhaps threatens the lives of the “clerks.” See verse 21″to put a sword,” etc. Here again, that which seemed most against the people made for them. The treatment of the “clerks” brought them into sympathy with their enslaved brethren. Israel closed its ranks. The fellowship of suffering prepared for the companionship of pilgrimage. There was, too, a present blessing. Spiritual feelings were quickened, heaven came nearer, the pitying love of God became more precious. One can imagine such scenes as those in which the slaves of the Southern States, through horrid swamps and over mighty rivers, in the dead of night “stole away to Jesus.”

“In that hour, when night is calmest,
Sing they from some Sacred Psalmist,
In a voice so sweet and clear
That I cannot choose but hear.

“And the voice of their devotion
Fills my soul with strange emotion;
For its tones by turns are glad,
Sweetly solemn, wildly sad.”

[Adaped from LONGFELLOW.]

V. CONSEQUENCES TO THE AMBASSADORS OF THE KING OF KINGS. Moses and Aaron, somewhere near the palace, were waiting to know the result of the audience of the “clerks” with the king. The “clerks,” irritated and angry, turned on the God-given leaders: verse 21. [Note in the Hebrews the expression “to stink in the eyes,” and the fact that pungent odours do affect the eyes! A dreadful trouble to Moses and Aaron!

In conclusion, observe

1. The cruelty that is ever incident to sin. “Man’s inhumanity to man” a universal fact. “The dark places of the earth are full,” etc.; so places alight with modern civilisation. The incidents of any gin-palace! There is, too, a cruelty of word and manner. Soul-wounds deeper than sword-gashes. No cure save under the sanctifying power of the Cross of self-abnegating love.

2. The pain that attends all emancipations. The first efforts of Moses and Aaron led to nothing but disaster. See Heb 6:9. So with the agony of emancipation in America. So always and everywhere. So with reforms within the Church. So with crises of soul-history.

3. The discouragement that may fall to leaders.

4. The encouragement we all have. Note here

(1) The appointment of the “clerks;”

(2) The personal danger into which they came;

(3) The uniting all Israel into a fellowship of grief that they might dare the desert. All this came out of the oppression; but tended to salvation. Our darkest experiences rosy be our best friends.

5. Through what sorrow all come to the final emancipation.R.

HOMILIES BY G. A. GOODHART

Exo 5:1-23

The people of Jehovah detained and oppressed by the representative of the prince of this world; no doubt as to the strength of the latteris it possible for his spoils to be wrested from him? The strong man armed has thus far kept his palace (Luk 11:21), and his goods (cf. Rev 18:13) have been in peace, so far as outward disturbance is concerned. Now comes one who claims to be the stronger. What may be expected to. happen?

I. THE CHALLENGE DELIVERED.

1. The tyrant. Picture the king. Wholly self-satisfied, worshipped as a god, absolute ruler over the lives of thousands. Surrounded by obsequious servantsnone to contradict him, none to disobey. Enthroned in palace. Enter

2. The envoys. Two menone grown old in slavery, one for forty years a shepherd, looking now at all this pomp as a man who dimly recalls some dream. Does he think of what might have been, perhaps he himself seated upon the throne (cf. Heb 11:24)? Greater honour to be the unknown envoy of Jehovah than to be the Pharaoh who receives his message.

3. The message. Strange words for such a king to hear

(1) a command, not a request. The sender of the message speaks as to a servant.

(2) The slaves of Pharaoh claimed as the people of Jehovah; his right denied to the possession of his goods.

4. The reply. The demand met by a contemptuous refusal Who is Jehovah? I know not Jehovah!” If the message is authoritative, yet the envoys are sufficiently humblethey even plead with him that, for the sake of the people, he will grant them permission and opportunity to sacrifice (Exo 5:3). All to no purpose; the strong man is secure in his possessions and means to keep them in his grasp.

II. HOSTILITIES COMMENCED.Pharaoh, was not quite so indifferent as he seemed. If there is to be war, he will gain such advantage as may be gained by making the first hostile movement. His slaves at any rate shall be taught that rebellion is not likely to be successful. Effect of his policy:

1. On people. So long as he had been undisturbed his goods were in peace; now that he is disturbed the miserable peace of his chattels is disturbed too. [Man in prison, treated with greater rigour on the rumour of an attempted rescue.] Early spring, just after the corn has been cut; chopped straw needed to mix with the clay in brickmaking; let these discontented rebels gather their own. Israelites obliged to scatter themselves over the country; all complaints stifled with blows. Result, Exo 5:20, Exo 5:21, great discouragement and distrust of Moses and Aaron. “This comes of interfering.” Six months’ worse tyranny than ever.

2. On himself. Six months to realise the success of his policy; feels more secure than ever; heart is harder; pride greater (cf. Rom 2:4, Rom 2:5).

3. On Moses. Exo 5:22, Exo 5:23. Disheartened, but only for a little; repulsed by Pharaoh, suspected by the people, he is driven back on God; like the giant who gained strength each time he clasped the ground, so becoming more invincible with each new overthrow, finds God his refuge and his strength also. God is pledged to secure final victory. The slaves must be freed; not because they can win freedom, but because God has promised to free them. Apply, from our Lord’s parable, Luk 11:21, Luk 11:22, Satan the strong man who has many slaves. His power seems at first to increase when moved by the rumour of redemption we attempt to follow the dictates of our Deliverer (cf. Rom 7:9-11). Content with slavery, there is quietude; trying after freedom we find trouble and affliction. [Illustr. A habit, not hard to endure, but hard to break. The chain of sin is easy to wear; they only know how fast it holds who try to struggle free of it.] Cf. again Rom 7:1-25. with St. Paul. as with Israel; the bondage seemed worse than ever when the hope of freedom was the most alluring. In either ease the ground of hope, not in the sufferer, but away outside him. God prompts to the struggle against the oppressor, but he does not let victory depend on us; that rests with him. The promise to deliver is contained in the call to freedom. It is not, “I will help you when you are strong,” nothing said about our strength at all; confidence rests on the fact that God. is Jehovah, the changeless One (cf. Exo 6:2; Mal 3:6). Let Israel obey Moses, and God must redeem them from Pharaoh. Let us obey Christ, and God must redeem us from the power of Satan.G.

HOMILIES BY J. ORR

Exo 5:1-4

A first interview.

Accompanied by Aaron, Moses passes again through the hails of the Pharaohs from which he has been so long a stranger. Kings, courtiers, and people are different; but all else gates and pillars, courts, corridors, and reception-roomshow unchanged since first he knew them! The feelings of the quondam prince must have been strangely mingled, as, after forty years of exile, he trod the familiar pavements, and looked upon the old splendours. But the narrative, absorbed in its mightier theme, has no word to spare for the emotions of a Moses. The long contest between Pharaoh and Jehovah is on the eve of its commencement, and the interest centres in its opening scene. It is this which occupies the verses before us.

I. THE REQUEST (Exo 5:1, Exo 5:3). Behold Pharaoh on his throne of state, while the brothers stand before him delivering Jehovah’s message. The request preferred to him was

1. Eminently righteous and reasonable. No monarch has a right to deprive a people of the opportunity of worshipping God according to their consciences. If he does, the people have a right to protest against it. Pharaoh could not be expected to understand the modern views of rights of conscience, but even by the light of his own time people were entitled to be permitted to worship their own gods, and to honour them by appropriate festivals. But not only had Pharaoh deprived the Hebrews of their liberty, and ground them to the earth by cruel oppressionboth offences against righteousness, but he had taken from them, we may be certain, the opportunity of observing in a proper manner the festivals of their God. Moses and Aaron would have been within their rights, even without Divine command, had they demanded that the whole nation be set at liberty. Much more when they only asked that they be allowed for a brief space to retire into the wilderness, there, unmolested by the Egyptians, to sacrifice to the Lord.

2. Supported by Divine command. “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel.” Pharaoh, it is true, could plead that he did not know Jehovah; but when he saw these men’s sincerity, and how they dreaded incurring their God’s anger (Exo 5:3), it was his duty to have inquired further. The evil was that he did not care to know. He treated the whole matter with impious and disdainful contempt.

3. Unaccompanied by signs. Moses and Aaron had no occasion to exhibit signs. Pharaoh was not in a mood to pay the slightest attention to them. He did not even dispute that this was a bona fide message from Jehovah, but took the ground of simple refusal to obey it. Yet there may have been a reason for working no miracles at the opening of the conflict. God proceeds with men step by step. The first appeal is to be made, not to the king’s fears, but to his sense of fairness, his humanity, and feeling of religion. He must be convicted on this lower ground before sterner measures are used to coerce him to submission. It might be true that purely moral considerations would have little effect upon him; but if so, this had to be made manifest. God deals with men first of all in the open court of conscience, and it is therein the region of ordinary moralsthat hardening usually begins.

II. PHARAOH‘S REPLY (Exo 5:2). It was, as already stated, a haughty and angry refusal, showing total disregard of the rights and wishes of the Hebrews, and setting Jehovah at defiance. The king’s disposition, as brought to light in it, is seen to be

1. Proud. He probably regarded the request of the brothers as an instance of astounding audacity. Who were they, two slave-born men, that they should presume to ask from him, the lord of mighty Egypt, that the people be allowed to rest from their labours? His pride may have blinded him to the righteousness of their demand; but it could not lessen his responsibility. We are judged, not according to the impression which righteous and merciful appeals make upon usthat may be hisbut by the inherent righteousness of the appeals, and by the effects which they ought to have produced.

2. Headstrong. Before venturing so defiantly to scout Jehovah and his message, it would surely have been well for Pharaoh to have inquired a little further into the character and powers of this Being of whom the Hebrews stood so much in awe. He had not the excuse which many moderns would plead, that he did not believe in gods or in the supernatural in any shape. Pharaoh had no right, from his own point of view, to scout the possibility of “the God of the Hebrews” having met with them; and neither, so far as appears from the narrative, did he, though he chose to regard the story as a fiction. Many reject the Gospel, never having given its claims their serious attention; but this will not excuse them. They cannot plead that, had they believed it to be true, they would have acted otherwise. Their sin is that in their headstrongness they will not trouble themselves to inquire whether it is true.

3. Profane. After all, what Pharaoh’s reply amounted to was this, that, let Jehovah be who or what he might, he (Pharaoh) set him at naughtwould not obey him. The message might or might not come from a God, he did not care. Thus he “set his mouth against the heavens” (Psa 73:9), and “exalted himself above all that is called God” (2Th 2:4)not an uncommon phase of pride. But the presumptuously wicked will do well to remember that, if Pharaoh thus exalted himself, it was to his own destruction. His very pride was a challenge to Jehovah to destroy him.J.O.

HOMILIES BY J. URQUHART

Exo 5:1-5

God’s demand and Pharaoh’s answer.

I. THE DEMAND.

1. Its modesty. They merely ask liberty to depart on a three days’ journey into the wilderness.

2. It was asked in good faith; it was not a cover for escape. God would give deliverance; but that was left in God’s hand; and meanwhile they asked only for liberty to worship him.

3. Its reasonableness: they could not sacrifice the sacred animals of the Egyptians before their faces.

4. Its necessity. Pharaoh might not know Jehovah, but they knew him, and must serve him, “lest he fall upon us with the pestilence or the sword.” The demand of the Church still is liberty to serve God in his own appointed way. It must be had. Luther’s “God help me; I can do no other! We ought to obey God rather than men” (Act 5:29).

II. THE REFUSAL.

1. Its presumption. He did not know Jehovah, and therefore the message was a lie! Unbelief makes the bounds of its knowledge the bounds of truth and possibility. The pretensions of modern agnosticism.

2. It was a refusal of justice; it was a resolve to continue oppression. Unbelief is the brother and helper of wrong-doing.

3. It was made with reproach and insult. They were encouraging idleness and sedition: “Get ye to your burdens” “These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also.”

4. The rage of the wicked is often the best commendation of God’s servants. It is a testimony to their faithfulness.U.

HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG

Exo 5:2

Pharaoh’s first response: his answer in word.

Moses and Aaron, somehow or other, have found their way into Pharaoh’s presence. All things, so far, have happened as God said they would happen. The very brevity and compactness of the record at the end of Exo 4:1-31. is an instructive comment on the way in which Moses had mistaken comparative shadows for substantial difficulties. The actual meeting of Moses with Israel is dismissed in a few satisfactory and significant words; as much as to say that enough space had already been occupied in detailing the difficulties started by Moses in his ignorance and alarm. It is when Moses and Pharaoh meet that the tug of war really begins. Moses addresses to Pharaoh the commanded request, and is met, as was to be expected, with a prompt and contemptuous defiance. Observe

I. PHARAOH, IN HIS REJOINDER TO MOSES, PUTS A QUESTION WHICH GOD ALONE CAN PROPERLY ANSWER. “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go?” This was evidently in Pharaoh‘s opinion a question which needed no answer at all. It had nothing interrogative about it, except the form. Taking the form of a question, it served to express more forcibly Pharaoh’s defiant spirit. There was, in his opinion, really no need to consider or confer at all. “Am I not the great Pharaoh, successor to many great Pharaohs before me? Is not my power accepted and undisputed far and wide?” He could not so much as comprehend any danger unless it took the form of physical force; and not only so, but a form plainly visiblenear, threatening, overwhelming. If only some great king had been approachingstrong with the strength of a large and victorious armyto demand the liberation of Israel, Pharaoh would not so have spoken. To him the invisible was as the unreal. Pharaoh listens to Moses, and what does he hear?a claim that seems to dispute his supremacy, from this new deity, whose image he has never seen, whose name mayhap his priests have told him is not that of any deity worshipped in Canaan of which they have ever heard. Certainly it looks a large claim upon the first presentation of it, small as it is in comparison with what is to follow. This, then, is what he hears, and the audacity and presumption of it are not diminished by what he sees. There stand Moses and Aaron, completely devoid in person and surroundings of anything to impress the king with the peril of refusing their request. Surely if the men who say they are sent look so contemptible, the unseen being from whom they say they come may be safely neglected. Such is the reasoning, silently powerful, if not openly expressed, of those who despise and reject the claims of God. Christ is judged of, not as he is in himself, but by the superficial aspect of Christians. Because they are often low in station, or inconsistent in life, or lacking in disposition and ability to make much outward show, the world thinks that there is little or nothing behind them. It’ is the folly of only too many to take Pharaoh’s stand. For the right reception of the things of God we need all possible humility and openmindedness; what then is to be done, if upon the very first approach of religion, we pooh-pooh it as mere superstition, folly, and delusion?

2. This was a question to which Moses could have given a very effective and alarming answer if only he had been allowed opportunity. Moses, fresh from the revelations and sanctities of Horeb, could have told Pharaoh such a story of the workings of Jehovah as would have been enough, and more than enough, to guide the steps of a right-minded listener. Not only his own personal experience; not only the sight of the burning bush, the rod transformed, the leprous hand, the blood where water ought to be; but also the fulness, the terrible fulness of Jehovah’s power in the earlier days of the world, were within his reach to speak about. He could have told Pharaoh very admonitory things concerning Sodom and the Deluge if only he had been willing to listen. We may well believe that the effect of Pharaoh’s defiant attitude would be to send Moses away striving to refresh and sustain his mind with the evidences, so available and so abundant, that in spite of this proud king’s contempt, Jehovah, in his vast power and resources, was indeed no vain imagination. When the proud and self-sufficient ask this Pharaoh-question, it is for us to make such answer as may be reassuring to ourselves; not to doubt our own eyesight because others are blind, our own heating because others are deaf.

How few sometimes may know, when thousands err.

The truth which we may not be able to make even probable to others, we must strive so to grasp and penetrate, that more and more it may be felt as certain and satisfying to ourselves.

3. Thus we see how the Lord himself needed to deal with this question. Knowledge of God is of many kinds, according to the disposition of the person who is to be taught, and according to the use which God purposes to make of him. Pharaoh was evidently not going to be a docile scholar in God’s schoolone who comes to it willing and eager, thirsting for a refreshing knowledge of the living God. But still he had to be a scholar, willingly or not. He had to learn this much at least, that he was transgressing on the peculiar possessions of God when he sported with Israel in his despotic caprice. It is for no man to say that his present real ignorance gives assurance that he will never come to some knowledge of God. It may be as pitifully true of the atheist as it is encouragingly true of the godly, that what he knows not now, he will know hereafter. Now he knows not God, but in due time he will know him; not dubiously, not distantly, but in the most practical and it may be most painful and humiliating manner. Pharaoh says, with a sneer on his face, and derision in his voice, “Who is Jehovah?” That question is duly answered by Jehovah in signs and plagues, and the last answer we hear anything about on earth comes unmistakable and sublime, amid the roll of the Red Sea’s returning waters.

II. But Pharaoh not only puts this defiant question; HE UTTERS A MOST DETERMINED RESOLUTION WHICH GOD ALONE CAN ALTER. “Neither will I let Israel go.” What then are Israel’s chances for the future? There was every certainty that, if left to himself, Pharaoh would go on, tyrannous and oppressive as ever. From a human point of view he had everything to help him in sticking to his resolution. His fears, if he had anythe wealth which he and his people had gained from the incessant toils of Israelthe great dislocations and changes which would have been produced by even a temporary withdrawal of Israelall these things helped to a firm maintenance of the resolution. It was a resolution which had strong and active support in all the baser feelings of his own breast. It is just in the firmness and haughtiness of such a resolution, revealing as it does the spirit of the man, that we get the reason for such an accumulation of calamities as came upon his land. Here is another significant illustration of the manifold power of God, that he could break down so much proud determination. There was no change in Pharaoh’s feeling; no conversion to an equitable and compassionate mind; he simply yielded, because he could not help himself, to continuous and increasing pressure, and God alone was able to exert that pressure. Pharaoh here is but the visible and unconscious exponent of that dark Power which is behind all evil men and cruel and selfish policies. That Power, holding men in all sorts of bitter disappointments and degrading miseries, virtually says, “I will not let them go.” Our confidence ought ever to be, that though we can do nothing to break this bitter bondage, God, who forced the foe of Israel to relax Iris voracious grasp, will by his own means force freedom for us from every interference of our spiritual foe. It was Pharaoh’s sad prerogative to shut his own heart, to shut it persistently, to shut it for ever, against the authority and benedictions of Jehovah. But no one, though he be as mighty and arrogant as a thousand Pharaohs, can fasten us up from God, if so be we are willing to go to him, from whom alone we can gain a pure and eternal life.Y.

Fuente: The Complete Pulpit Commentary

Exo 5:1. And afterward Moses, &c. The elders of Israel, being convinced of the Divine commission wherewith Moses was invested, ch. Exo 3:18 accompany him and Aaron to Pharaoh. Pharaoh’s answer, in the second verse, shews that the Hebrew name Jehovah should have been retained in our version. Thus saith Jehovah, Exo 5:2. Who is Jehovah?I know not Jehovah.

My people, &c. This may be considered either as the substance of their message, or rather, perhaps, as the concise and peremptory declaration of Jehovah’s pleasure. Bishop Warburton observes, that the separation of this people has been arraigned, as inconsistent with the Divine attributes. But it cannot be denied, that it became the goodness of the Deity to preserve the doctrine of the Unity, amidst an idolatrous world. Nor could such a separation be made otherwise, than by bringing a part of mankind under God’s peculiar protection. Now, as some people must needs be selected for this purpose, it seems most agreeable to our ideas of Divine Wisdom, to make the blessings, attendant on such a selection, the reward of some exalted piety and virtue in the progenitors of the chosen people: but, therefore, to pretend that they were chosen as favourites, is both unjust and absurd. The separation was made for the sake of mankind in general; though one people became the honoured instrument, in reward of their forefathers’ piety and virtues.

That they may hold a feast The verb, here rendered, to hold a feast, chagag, signifies, primarily, to dance; to dance round in circles, says Parkhurst; to celebrate a feast with circular dancing. This made an eminent part of the religious rites of the ancient Heathen, as it does of the modern to this day. It seems to have been expressive of the supposed independent power of the sun and heavens, the first and great objects of idolatry.

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

In this Chapter we have a relation of God’s ambassadors, Moses and Aaron., appearing before Pharaoh to demand, in God’s name, permission for Israel to hold a feast unto the Lord in the wilderness. Pharaoh’s answer, in which he despiseth God, is also recorded. The ambassadors urge the necessity of the measure, lest God should punish the Israelites with sickness or the sword. And Pharaoh to manifest his defiance of God’s power, lays upon the people of Israel greater burthens of slavery. In consequence the children of Israel are more rigorously treated: they make complaints to Pharaoh: which are received with inattention: they complain of Moses and Aaron they murmur, at God’s dispensation: and Moses himself is tainted with the dissatisfaction, and returns to expostulate with God.

Exo 5:1 ; Isa 52:4-5 ; Eze 3:26-27 .

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

Exo 5:1

Compare these sentences from Mrs. H. B. Stowe’s appeal to the women of England in 1862: ‘The writer of this has been present at a solemn religious festival in the national capital, given at the home of a portion of those fugitive slaves who have fled to our lines for protection who, under the shadow of our flag, find sympathy and succour. The national day of thanksgiving was there kept by over a thousand redeemed slaves, and for whom Christian charity had spread an ample repast. Our sisters, we wish you could have witnessed the scene. We wish you could have heard the prayer of the blind old negro, called among his fellows John the Baptist, when in touching broken English he poured forth his thanksgiving. We wish you could have heard the sound of that strange rhythmical chant which is now forbidden to be sung on Southern plantations the psalm of this modern Exodus which combines the barbaric fire of the Marseillaise with the religious fervour of the old Hebrew prophet:

Oh, go down, Moses,

Way down into Egypt’s land 1

Tell King Pharaoh

To let my people go!

Stand away dere,

Stand away dere,

And let my people go 1

In his Letters (pp. 42-43) Dr. John Ker observes that ‘the whole history of this time seems to me one of the most remarkable since the Exodus the freeing of as many captives, and the leading a larger nation, white and black, and a whole continent that is to be, out into a higher life for think what would have become of America had this plague-spot spread! It is the more remarkable that, though there was an Egypt, and slaves and a Red Sea, there was no Moses nor Aaron, for honest Abraham Lincoln will stand neither for prophet nor for priest. There was only God, and the rod in His own hand the Northern people, sometimes a serpent, sometimes a piece of wood, used for the most part unconsciously, as one can see. But God is very manifest, and it gives one great comfort to see moral order still working, and a governor among the nations.’

Exo 5:2

‘He had come,’ says Maurice, ‘to regard himself as the Lord, his will as the will which all things were to obey…. He had lost the sense of a righteous government and order in the world; he had come to believe in tricks and lies; he had come to think men were the mere creatures of natural agencies.’

Note (as Wilkie tells us always to do) the hands in Charles I.’s portrait a complete revelation of the man: the one clutching almost convulsively his baton in affectation of power; the other poor hand hanging weak and helpless.

Westcott.

References. V. 14-19. L. M. Watt, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxviii. 1905, p. 349.

Exo 5:17

Moses talks of sacrifice, Pharaoh talks of work. Anything seems due work to a carnal mind, saving God’s service; nothing superfluous but religious duties.

Bishop Hall.

Mistaken Views of Religion

Exo 5:17

That was Pharaoh’s rough-and-ready and foolish estimate of religious aspiration and service. In this matter Pharaoh lives today. There are many people who cannot understand the utility of religion, they think religious people are always going to church, and no good comes of it. We must put up with these things; we have to bear many reproaches, and this we may well add to the number without really increasing the weight or the keenness of the injustice.

Sometimes great men are mistaken, and sometimes they are unwise, and at no time do they really comprehend, if they be outside of it themselves, the true religious instinct and the true meaning of deep religious worship, ceremony, and service. The spiritual has always had to contend with the material; the praying man has always been an obnoxious problem to the man who never prays.

I. This opens up the whole subject of work and its meaning, spiritual worship and its signification, heart-sacrifice and its story in red reeking blood. Who is the worker the architect or the bricklayer? I never hear of the architects meeting in council for the purpose of limiting their hours or increasing their bank holidays. The bricklayer is the worker; so it seems; in a certain aspect he is the worker; but how could he move without the architect? The architect cannot do without the builder any more than the builder can do without the architect; they are workers together; and this is the true idea of society, each man having his own talent, making his own contribution, working under his own individual sense of responsibility, and all men catching the spirit of comradeship and of union and cooperation, united in the uprearing of a great cathedral, a poem in wood and stone, a house of the living God.

II. Insincere religion is idle. People who go to church when they do not want to go that is idleness, and that idleness will soon sour and deepen into blasphemy. Going because I suppose we shall be expected to go that is idleness and weariness.

III. Let us not care what Pharaoh says, but examine our own hearts. The name typified by Pharaoh has given me an opportunity of cross-examining myself, and I will say, Pharaoh, thou thinkest I am idle, and therefore I want to be religious; I wonder if Pharaoh is right; he is a very astute man, he has great councillors about him, he has a great country to administer, and there is a light in those eyes sometimes that suggests that he can see a long way into a motive. I never thought this would come to pass, that Pharaoh would say to me that I am an idle hound, because I want to go and serve the Lord. Is Pharaoh right? It is lawful to learn from the enemy, and if Pharaoh has fixed his eye upon the blemish in my life, if he does see the hollowness of my heart, well, I will think over what the king says. We may learn some things from heathenism. But if I can, by the grace of God, assure myself that by the Holy Spirit I am really sincere in wanting to go to this sermon, this sacrament, this prayer; if I know through and through, really, that I do want to go and serve God, the gates of hell shall not prevail against me.

Joseph Parker, City Temple Pulpit, vol. III. p. 142.

Exo 5:18

Is it not the height of vanity, the height of selfishness to demand affection? How can any one say, ‘I am a great and noble creature: come and worship me, pour yourself out before me: I deserve it all’. Surely, looked at in that way, it seems the height of blasphemy to demand it. And is it not the highest pitch of selfishness to require that a perpetual stream of the same intensity should be continued whatever occupations may distract you, whatever new interests may fill your mind still the most subtle, the most evanescent, the most inscrutable outcome of the human soul is to be exacted from you as by a rigorous taskmaster: you must make your tale of bricks with or without straw, it matters little.

Dr. Mandell Creighton, Life and Letters, vol. 1. p. 117.

Describing in The Soul (part 2) the vain effort after self-amendment made by sensitive hearts, F. W. Newman observes: ‘The conscience taxes them with a thousand sins before unsuspected. The evil thus gets worse; the worshipper is less and less able to look boldly up into the Pure, All-seeing Eye: and he perhaps keeps working at his heart to infuse spiritual affections by some direct process under the guidance of the will. It cannot be done. He quickens his conscience thus, but he does not strengthen his soul; hence he is perpetually undertaking tasks beyond his strength, making bricks without straw; a very Egyptian slavery.’

Reference. VI. 1. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv. No. 1440.

Fuente: Expositor’s Dictionary of Text by Robertson

V

MOSES AT THE BURNING BUSH

Exo 2:23-5:14

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those two wayfarers through the wilderness

Unconsciously upon their shoulders bore

The trembling weight of boundless destinies;

Not only did the future of their race .

Hang on them, but the future of the world.

From east to west, from north to south, nowhere

Within the round earth’s wide horizon lived

Any least hope for rescue of mankind

Entangled sliding down a fatal slope

That ended in the open-jawed abyss

Of utter ultimate despair and death

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

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

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

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

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

QUESTIONS

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

2. What of the symbolism of the burning bush?

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

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

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

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

7. What three attesting signs and their significance?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exo 5:1 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.

Ver. 1. That they may hold a feast. ] “That they may serve me.” Exo 4:23 “Let us keep the feast,” , 1Co 5:8 which is the same with “Let us serve God acceptably.” Heb 12:28 It is a feast, and better, for a good soul to converse with God. Psa 63:5 Isa 25:6

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

told Pharaoh. This was in Zoan (compare Psa 78:12, Psa 78:43), where Pharaoh had made his palace. It could not have been written in Babylon, for there the kings were not seen, and were hidden behind their ministers. Here, in Egypt, the king was his own minister, and could be easily approached. Compare Exo 3:10 and App-37. Note Jehovah’s sixfold (App-10) demand and Pharaoh’s sixfold objection:

I. “Thus saith Jehovah Elohim” (Exo 5:1).

(1) “Who is Jehovah? “(Exo 5:2). Question occurs only here.

II. “Let My People go”(Exo 5:1).

(2) “Go. Sacrifice in the Land” (Exo 8:25).

III. “We will go three days’ journey into the wilderness” (Exo 8:27).

(3) “Go”, only “not very far away” (Exo 8:28).

IV. “Let My People go” (Exo 10:3).

(4) “Who are they that shall go? “(Exo 10:8).

V. All must go (Exo 10:9).

(5) Not so. Men, but not children or flocks (Exo 10:11).

(6) Go. Children, but not flocks (Exo 10:24).

VI. Flocks too: for “we know not. till”, &c. (Exo 10:25, Exo 10:26).

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

Chapter 5

And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told the Pharaoh, Thus saith Jehovah God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? [Well you’ll find out, buddy.] I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go ( Exo 5:1-2 ).

So a definite challenge to God by the Pharaoh. “Who is Jehovah that I should let the people go? I don’t know him and I’m not gonna let them go.”

And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, for 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 back to your burdens. And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land are now many, and you are making them rest from their burdens ( Exo 5:3-5 ).

“Who do you think you are demanding that I let them off work? Get back to work yourself.”

And Pharaoh commanded the same day that the taskmasters of the people, and the officers, and he said, You shall no more give the people straw to make their brick, as you’ve done before: but let them go and gather the straw for themselves. But the number of bricks, that they make, you will lay upon them; you shall not diminish: for they are idle; for they are crying, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God ( Exo 5:6-8 ).

“They don’t have enough to do. They want to go out and sacrifice to their God, so give them more work to do. Make them produce the same number of bricks but don’t furnish the straw anymore. Let them go and gather the straw for themselves.

Let there be more work laid upon the men, that they may labour therein; and let them not regard vain words. And so the taskmasters of the people went out, and the officers, and they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith the Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. You go, get your own straw where you can find it: and yet you must come up with the same quota of bricks. So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt to gather the stubble instead of the straw. And the taskmasters hasted them, saying, Fulfil your works, your daily quotas, the same as when you had your straw. And the officers of the children of Israel, which Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and they demanded, they said, Why haven’t you fulfilled your task in making the bricks both yesterday and today, as you’ve done before? The officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh, saying, Why are you dealing with your servants like this? There’s no straw given to your servants, and yet they say unto us, Make bricks: and, behold, your servants are beaten; but the fault is with your own people. But he said, You are idle, you are idle: therefore you’re saying, Let’s go and sacrifice to Jehovah. Go therefore now, and work; for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall you deliver the same quota of bricks. And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were in an evil case, after it was said, Ye shall not diminish from the number of bricks from your daily task. And so they met Moses and Aaron, who stood in the way, as they came forth from Pharaoh: And they said unto them, The Lord look upon you, and judge; because you 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. And Moses returned to the Lord, and said, Lord, what have you done this evil to the people? why is it that you have sent me? [“God, I told you I didn’t want to come. Why did you send me Lord? Why did you create this evil?”] For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he’s only done evil to the people; and neither has he delivered your people at all ( Exo 5:9-23 ).

Now it is interesting in the city of Pithom, which of course is one of the cities that is mentioned here when the children of Israel made for the Pharaoh, that the archeologists in uncovering the ancient city of Pithom found walls wherein the lower layers the bricks have cut, even straw in the bricks. As you get into the higher layers of the same wall, the bricks have uneven straw scattered in them, and in the upper layer of the bricks in the same wall there is all kinds of stubble, roots and everything else mixed in with the bricks which are a perfect proof of the story that is here in Exodus. There in the walls, in the ruins of Pithom, you can see the various bricks as the task was made harder. As first of all they refused to give them the straw, and made them gather straw, and then later said, “You just gather stubble whatever you can”. And so there’s the weeds and the roots and all that were in the upper level of the bricks. So a great confirmation of this particular chapter in Exodus is there today for the visitors to see, the proof of God’s word, as that indeed did happen.

Moses is beginning his problems with the children of Israel. They are complainers and grumblers from the word “go”. Here they’re crying unto God, “Oh God deliver us.” Now God sends a deliverer, and the first thing they do is start to give him a bad time. They continue to give him a bad time the rest of his life. I really feel for Moses and the task that he had in leading these people out and into the wilderness, that wandering in the wilderness. But we read how that Moses then went to the Lord and began to pour out his complaint to the Lord, “Lord why have You done this? Why did You send me, God? Things aren’t getting better; they’re getting worse since You sent me. The people aren’t, they’re worse off.”

You know quite often Satan, when you embark on a work of God, throws so many things in the way that things look like they’ve just gotten so much worse, you wonder, “Oh man, did God really tell me that?” Or, “Did God really call me?” He does his best to discourage you right at the onset of any program that you endeavor for God. You’d be amazed how many problems can arise when you make a commitment to God, you desire to serve the Lord. Not gonna be peaches and cream, not gonna be roses. Satan will do his best to discourage you. So often things look like they have just gone from bad to calamity because you’ve launched out in faith to do a work for God. Satan will do his best to hinder it and stop it at the beginning. He’ll do anything to stop it, discouragement, lies, anything to stop that work of God that you endeavor for Him. So that secret is “just keep on”. If God has called you to a task, “just do it”. Don’t get discouraged at initial responses.

Years ago I thought God called me to the ministry. So I trained, went to school, prepared, and spent seventeen years trying to minister, until I got so discouraged that I thought “Well, maybe God didn’t call me to the ministry.” I was ready to quit, ready to give up so many times. Put out applications for different kinds of work, get out of the ministry, get into something secular. I was discouraged, I was tired, fighting, hassles, trying to feed a family, to patch the squabbles of people. The thing, the interesting thing is it was just after my period of greatest discouragement, I really just sort of resigning from the ministry, and going into home Bible studies that God really began to bless and anoint me. Just when I had a good job, started making money. Satan will do his best to discourage you. He’ll make you question your call. He’ll challenge you on every corner. If God has called you to do it, stick with it, God will bring you through. God will work.

I know exactly how Moses felt. I turned in my resignation to God so many times, “I’ve had it, through. Thought You called me to the ministry, but Lord there’s nothing happening, I’m tired.” Lord said, “Ah get out there and get back to work. What are you doing crying to Me?”

Next week we’ll take the next five chapters of Exodus as we continue on and we find out how Moses finds out who Jehovah is. He’ll be sorry he ever asked that question when God gets through with him. “

Fuente: Through the Bible Commentary

Here we have the last picture of the people in bondage. As we follow the history, we shall be particularly interested in noticing the process through which Pharaoh passed. Here Moses and Aaron came to him and uttered the simple requirement of Jehovah in the words, “Let My people go.” The answer was immediate, daring, and stubborn. Pharaoh declared his ignorance of Jehovah and practically challenged Him as he bluntly said, “I will not let Israel go.” His refusal was followed by brutality. He assumed the attitude of insolent ignorance.

As we read the story of the suffering of these people, we cannot wonder at their complaint. Everything surely seemed to be against them and as though the intervention of Moses was turning out for ill rather than good. The whole transaction constituted a trial for Moses in the pathway of faith and obedience. There is a touch of impatience and evidence of wavering faith in what he said in the presence of God. Yet the profounder truth is that there is a remarkable evidence of his faith in his going directly to God with his difficulty. Happy is the man who when he cannot understand the divine movement and, indeed, doubts it has yet faith enough in God Himself to tell Him all his doubt.

Fuente: An Exposition on the Whole Bible

the Request to Worship Jehovah Answered by Oppression

Exo 5:1-14

The bondage of Israel in Egypt is an apt type of our bondage to sin. See Joh 8:34-36; Rom 7:23-25. The weary tyranny of our besetting sins; the imperious demands of Satan; the absence of all reward to our hopeless toils-these are striking points of analogy. Though we weep and struggle, there is no help for us but in God. No straw! No lessening of the tale of bricks! The charge of idleness! Cruel beatings! Deliverance apparently more distant than ever! But the darkest hour precedes dawn.

The hue and cry is always raised when a prisoner is escaping. The tyrant, who has so long held his prey, is not minded to surrender it without a struggle. The devil convulsed the child, as he was about to depart. Moreover, Israel must be taught to look beyond Moses or Aaron to the Eternal Jehovah.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

Exo 5:1

The history of the deliverance of God’s people from the bondage of Egypt, their pilgrimage through the wilderness, and then ultimate settlement in the Land of Promise, bears a striking analogy to the history of the human soul.

I. The words “Let My people go,” regarded as spoken concerning human souls, may be said to contain in themselves the whole gospel history of our redemption. Even the small word “My” is emphatic. We are God’s people; not Satan’s people. When God claims us we should remember that He claims His own, and that we are bound to support His claim. (2) The summons to let the people of God go implies a bondage from which they are to be delivered. That which forms the basis of Holy Scripture is the fact that man committed sin. He rebelled against his Maker, and became the slave of one to whom he owed no obedience. (3) If the words “Let My people go” imply the existence of slavery, they still more emphatically imply the way and the promise of redemption. The Gospel of Christ, as preached throughout the whole world, is just this-“Let My people go.”

II. The whole system of ordinances and sacraments, in which we find ourselves by God’s providence, like the system of ordinances and sacrifices which was given to Israel when they came out of Egypt, are intended to insure and perfect and turn to the best account the liberty which the Lord has given us, for the soul of man may not be content with emancipation once and for all.

III. The consideration of what Jesus Christ has done for us is the chief means of moving our hearts to seek that liberty which God designs us all to possess.

Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Penny Pulpit, No. 643.

References: Exo 5:2.-Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 65; Parker, vol. ii., p. 309.

Exo 5:22-23

When Moses saw the vision at Horeb, he had passed many more years in the world than Jacob at the time of his vision at Bethel; he knew much of which Jacob was ignorant, and had experienced a kind of sorrow which had never reached him. He had passed through the sore trial of feeling himself the member of an utterly degraded race, which he had dreamed of helping and could not help; in the very sufferings of which he was not allowed to share. He had an early inward intimation that he might unite and deliver this people. The intimation had come to nothing. He might call himself an Egyptian, a Midianite, an Ethiopian, as well as a Hebrew.

I. This education in an Egyptian court, in the family of a Midianitish priest, in an Ethiopian desert, was just the one which was to prepare him for understanding the vocation of a Hebrew in the world; just the one which was to make him fit for a deliverer and lawgiver of his people.

It required that he should be far from kinsmen and from country-from every external association with the covenant of his fathers-that he might hear and understand the words, “I AM THAT I AM;” that he might receive the assurance, “I AM hath sent thee.”

II. Moses was called to be the deliverer and founder of a nation. Either that nation stood upon this Divine Name, or it and all that has grown out of it are mockeries and lies from first to last. “The Lord God of the Hebrews, the God of our nation, the God of our family, has established and upholds the order of human existence and all nature,”-this is the truth which Moses learnt at the bush; the only one which could bring the Jews or any people out of slavery into manly freedom and true obedience.

F. D. Maurice, Patriarchs and Lawgivers of the Old Testament, p. 154.

References: Exo 5:22, Exo 5:23.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. viii., p. 141; Congregationalist, vol. vii., p. 208. 5-11. (14)-J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era, p. 31. Exo 6:1.-Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv., No. 1440. Exo 6:2, Exo 6:3.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. x., p. 93; Homiletic Magazine, vol. viii., p. 211. Exo 6:3.-A. M. Fairbairn, The City of God, p. 123; Parker, vol. ii., p. 310. Exo 6:6-8.-Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. xii., p. 145.

Fuente: The Sermon Bible

Let my people

Cf. Exo 4:22; Exo 4:23. Possibly Moses and Aaron shrank from delivering the message concerning the firstborn.

Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes

and told: 1Ki 21:20, Psa 119:46, Eze 2:6, Jon 3:3, Jon 3:4, Mat 10:18, Mat 10:28, Act 4:29

a feast: Exo 10:9, Isa 25:6, 1Co 5:8

Reciprocal: Gen 15:13 – thy Exo 3:18 – and thou Exo 6:11 – General Exo 6:27 – spake Exo 7:16 – serve Exo 8:1 – Let my Exo 8:27 – three days’ Exo 9:1 – General Exo 12:14 – a feast Num 12:2 – Hath the Lord 1Ki 18:21 – if the Lord Jer 27:4 – Thus

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

LET MY PEOPLE GO!

Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let My people go.

Exo 5:1

The history of the deliverance of Gods people from the bondage of Egypt, their pilgrimage through the wilderness, and their ultimate settlement in the Land of Promise, bear a striking analogy to the history of the human soul.

I. The words Let My people go, regarded as spoken concerning human souls, may be said to contain in themselves the whole gospel history of our redemption. Even the small word My is emphatic. We are Gods people; not Satans people. When God claims us we should remember that He claims His own, and that we are bound to support His claim. (2) The summons to let the people of God go implies a bondage from which they are to be delivered. That which forms the basis of Holy Scripture is the fact that man committed sin. He rebelled against his Maker, and became the slave of one to whom he owed no obedience. (3) If the words Let My people go imply the existence of slavery, they still more emphatically imply the way and the promise of redemption. The Gospel of Christ, as preached throughout the whole world, is just thisLet My people go.

II. The whole system of ordinances and sacraments, in which we find ourselves by Gods providence, like the system of ordinances and sacrifices which was given to Israel when they came out of Egypt, is intended to insure and perfect and turn to the best account the liberty which the Lord has given us, for the soul of man may not be content with emancipation once and for all.

III. The consideration of what Jesus Christ has done for us is the chief means of moving our hearts to seek that liberty which God designs us all to possess.

Bishop Harvey Goodwin.

Illustration

The great fact for us is this, that the very first step towards liberty taken by Gods own servants, in His time and way, not only failed apparently, but actually intensified the horrors of the situation. To a believing Israelite only one refuge was possible, viz. the promise of God. He has said it, and would He do it, despite all appearances to the contrary? So did God seek, kindly but sternly, to discipline them to naked faith in His word. Of set purpose, circumstances were made so forbidding that hope could find nothing whatever to rest on. Israel was thus shut up to faith.

Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary

The contrast between the end of chapter 4 and the beginning of chapter 5 is very marked. The children of Israel believed the words of God when they saw the signs, and they worshipped. Pharaoh heard the words of God with unbelief and replied with insolence.

The word to him was, “Let My people go…” Thus the Lord at once claimed the people as His, whilst for a century or two the Pharaohs of Egypt had regarded the people as theirs, and enslaved to them. So from the outset the issue was joined. Jehovah claimed the people that Pharaoh regarded as his own. Which claimant would prevail? The issue could not be in doubt for one moment.

It is evident that from the first Pharaoh boldly challenged the might of Jehovah. He knew very well the many gods of Egypt, but to him Jehovah, God of Israel was the unknown God, and he flatly refused to obey. He adopted the hard and stubborn attitude, which became characteristic of him under the government of God.

In reply to the further appeal of Moses and Aaron he simply increased the burdens upon the people, making their enslavement more thorough and more bitter. From this incident has come the common saying about “making bricks without straw,” signifying having to undertake an almost impossible task. Their brick-making was to the end that Pharaoh might pursue his building schemes. Under the task-masters they were beaten into helping to consolidate the power of the king who tyrannized over them.

In 1Co 10:6; 1Co 10:11, we are told that the things that happened to Israel were “our examples,” or, “types” for us, and at this point we begin to see the type taking shape. Pharaoh held the power of death over the children of Israel, and thereby kept them in bondage. He is thus a type of Satan as he is presented in Heb 2:14, Heb 2:15. Egypt with all its magnificence is clearly a type of the world, enslaving the people of God under the direction of the devil, and, ironically enough using them to increase the power and glory of the system that oppressed them. God was now setting in motion the power that was to deliver them.

But the first effect of this intervention was to increase the bondage and miseries of the people. They were made to realize that they were under a sentence of death, as verse Exo 5:21 reveals. They had but little faith and hence their reaction was to blame Moses and Aaron, who had begun to act on their behalf. Even the faith of Moses shook under the strain and he turned to God with a complaint that had the character of a reproach, as the two verses, closing Exo 5:1-23, record. How often it is the case that, when God begins to deal with a soul in grace, the adversary is immediately stirred up and his energy increases, so that, for a time at least, things are worse rather than better.

The first eight verses of Exo 6:1-30 record, however, the gracious way in which the Lord answered this failure on the part of both Moses and the people. Let those verses be read with care and it will be seen that His answer was virtually to present Himself as, Jehovah, the I AM, faithful to the covenant of promise, made to the fathers. There are chapters in the Bible, such as Job 29:1-25, Ecc 2:1-26, Rom 7:1-25, marked by the constant repetition of “I,” by foolish men. In the case of Job we listen to a self-satisfied “I,” in the case of Solomon to a self-gratified, in the case of Paul to a self-condemned. God Himself is the only One who can rightly and truly speak much of “I,” and here we find it repeated 18 times in the 8 verses.

Moses had just seen and been painfully impressed by what Pharaoh had done to the people, so Jehovah’s word to him was, “Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh.” As a result of what He was about to do, the strong hand of Pharaoh, which had been at work to keep the people in slavery; should be stretched forth to drive them out of his land. Pharaoh and his kingdom would be turned upside down.

Moreover God greatly emphasized the Name under which He had just revealed Himself. He had revealed Himself to Abraham and the fathers as God Almighty but not as Jehovah. They had known the name but the significance of it had been hidden from them. Now its meaning had come to light, and it was to be displayed in His dealings with the insolent man who had begun to defy Him. This furnished the occasion for God to display Himself as the great “I AM” – ever-existing, unchangeable, ever true to His purpose and word, supreme above all the power that would aim at deflecting Him from or thwarting His plan.

In verse Exo 5:4 He specifically mentions the covenant of promise, under which He was going to act, in delivering them from Egypt and bringing them into the land He had purposed for them. Their redemption from Egypt, their establishment in Canaan which had been the land of their pilgrimage, when they were but strangers in it, all was to be under that covenant, which was made 430 years before the covenant of the law. Gal 3:17 tells us this, as also that the law could not disannul the promise that had been made. Of course it could not, for Jehovah had made it, though the implications of that great name were not known to Abraham. God is true to what He is in Himself irrespective of what we may know Him to be. Great comfort comes to our souls when we-apprehend this. So this great statement begins and ends with the same words, “I am Jehovah” (verses Exo 5:2; Exo 5:8).

For the moment the anguish of the Israelites was so great that the recital to them of these wonderful words had no effect. Even Moses had lost heart and felt that Pharaoh would not heed anything he might say. Nevertheless the word of the Lord stood.

But before we proceed with the record of how it did stand we have a parenthesis. The last verse of the chapter repeats the words of Moses recorded in verse Exo 5:12, and in verses 14-27 we are given genealogical details concerning the sons of Reuben and Simeon, and then more particularly of the sons of Levi leading up to Moses and Aaron and their immediate descendants. The identity of these two chief actors on God’s behalf is thus established.

The dealings with Pharaoh were now to start in earnest, so the first seven verses of Exo 7:1-25 give us the instructions under which Moses and Aaron were to act. Moses directly represented God before the king, and Aaron was to act as his “prophet,” or, spokesman. God is invisible, so Moses was to be His visible representative. Aaron was to speak and act under the direction of Moses, though in point of fact he was the elder. Once more we see how the first has to give place to the second.

Pharaoh, who had no faith, was sure to demand some visible and miraculous sign to accredit Moses, so the sign of the rod of Moses becoming a serpent was given. Aaron performed this, but the magicians of Egypt showed that they also could bring this wonder to pass. Acting under the power of Satan, who is the serpent, they too could show that the casting down of authority produces what is satanic. The next move they did not expect and it was beyond them. Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods. Divine power, even if cast down, proved itself stronger than the power of the foe. But in spite of this there was no softening in the heart of Pharaoh.

So the first of the plagues in Egypt was scheduled to take place in the morning, when Pharaoh made his visit to the Nile. The demand for the release of the people was again to be made, and if refused the rod that had been turned to a serpent, and that had devoured the rods of the magicians, was to be stretched out over the river and its waters turned to blood. The river that was the very life of Egypt was turned into a river of death and stinking.

But again the magicians proved that they could similarly produce death and stinking, so that Pharaoh’s heart remained hard. That Satan could produce death, or that which is symbolic of death, is not at all surprising, since he is the author of sin, and by sin death has come to pass. Though Pharaoh made light of this first plague, the common people felt the weight of it and it lasted for seven days. This, we suppose, is what the last verse of the chapter indicates.

At the end of that time the Lord through Moses reiterated His demand for the release of His people, and announced a second plague if the demand was refused. The demand was refused and the frogs in their millions appeared out of the waters that had been smitten (Exo 8:5, Exo 8:6). The magicians showed however that they too could produce frogs out of the waters, thus minimizing the effect of the miracle in the mind of Pharaoh. Those conversant with Egypt and its history tell us that a “red Nile” is something that used to happen annually and that the river was a breeding place of frogs; but what came to pass here was quite out of the ordinary both as to time and intensity, and the invasion of the whole land by the frogs was a dreadful affliction.

Again, we are told by Egyptologists that a special goddess was supposed to preside over the frogs, so as to protect the land from them. She was named Heki, and is represented on the monuments sometimes with the head of a frog. The Egyptians had to learn that Heki was as nothing before Jehovah. It illustrates the word, “Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment” (Exo 12:12). It is probable also that when the first plague fell, just as Pharaoh approached the river, he was going to worship the god that the Nile was supposed to represent.

While Pharaoh disregarded the first plague, as we saw in verse Exo 5:23 of the last chapter, he was not unmoved by the second, as we see in verse Exo 5:8. Out of every branch of the river, the irrigation canals, the reservoirs, as indicated in verse Exo 5:5, the slimy creatures came, penetrating into houses, into their beds, their food vessels, their ovens, defiling everything. The magicians may have helped to increase their numbers slightly, but they could not take them away. He had to recognize the hand of the Lord was in this dreadful affliction. So he made pretence of yielding to the demand of God in order that the plague might be removed.

The removal was made the more impressive by Moses asking him to stipulate when the frogs should go. The words, “Glory over me,” are rendered in the Septuagint “Fix for me.” His answer was, “Tomorrow.” Moses replied that Jehovah the God of Israel would prove His power by removing the plague just as the king had stipulated. It seems obvious that their removal in this fashion was an even more impressive miracle than their being brought up.

But even so, the effect of the plague was not yet over for, save in the river, the frogs all died that day in a miraculous manner, and gathered in heaps the land stank with their carcases. Yet even this was a respite, and directly Pharaoh saw it he hardened his heart and continued to defy God. The judgment had not produced any vital change.

Hence, without further delay or appeal to the king, Moses was to stretch out his rod and smite the dust, when it was to become lice throughout all the land. This was done by Aaron on behalf of Moses and the trying plague came to pass. At this point the magicians of Egypt were baffled. Out of the dead dust the living lice had come. The magicians could not imitate it, and they had to confess as much. Only God can bring life out of death. They could only confess, “This is the finger of God,” and retire from the contest. From this point we hear of no more attempts to belittle the acts of God by satanic power.

From those who are experts in ancient languages we learn that the word translated ” lice ” is an unusual one, and in the Septuagint is translated by a word which means a kind of small mosquito. It is of small moment what exactly the word means, but it is of interest to learn that the difficulty is occasioned by the word not being a strictly Hebrew one. It is an importation from the language used in Egypt, and is one of the many internal proofs that the Pentateuch was not written about the time of Ezra, as the “higher critics” would have us imagine. It was written when these Egyptian terms were well known and quite intelligible to the Hebrew reader.

Darby’s New Translation gives us “gnats” as the plague, which accords with what we have just written. We may well be thankful to God that He has caused to be woven into the very texture of the Scripture these little signs that Moses, who was so well acquainted with Egypt, its words and its ways, was indeed the writer under the inspiration of the Spirit of God. This fact is the more striking, as we shall see when we consider the fourth plague, since the word, used there for the “swarms” that came up, is again not a Hebrew one but rather one that was peculiar to Egypt.

Fuente: F. B. Hole’s Old and New Testaments Commentary

The Controversy Between Pharaoh and God

Exo 5:1-23

INTRODUCTORY WORDS

The concluding verses of chapter 4, which link our last message with this one, are most interesting. It would hardly do to pass these by altogether, and so we will discuss them under various headings as introductory to the study proper.

1, Leaving Jethro. After God had spoken to Moses, Moses went from the Mount of God, where God met him, and, returned to Jethro, his father-in-law, and said to him, “Let me go, I pray thee, and return unto my brethren which are in Egypt.” Jethro said to Moses, “Go in peace.”

It seems striking to us that a man of eighty years of age should have shown such respect and courtesy to his father-in-law, and yet so it should be. As long as our parents live, or our parents by marriage, we should give them due deference and respect. Moses had the right to go where he pleased, but he approached his father-in-law seeking permission and saying, “Let me go, I pray thee.” Would that the children of today would honor their fathers and their mothers with this kind of respect.

2. Leaving under Divine guidance. Exo 4:19 reads, “And the Lord said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return into Egypt.” How wonderful it is when we take any vital step in our lives to know that we are taking it in the will, and under the command of God. When we can assure ourselves that He is with us, we may also assure ourselves that He will carry us through.

It is not in a man to guide his steps. There is a verse of Scripture which reads, “He knoweth the way that I take.” Job found himself in difficult circumstances. His friends had proved to be his foes. His wife had derided him. The darkest clouds of affliction bore heavily upon him, and yet Job could truly say, “He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.”

3. Leaving with a Heavenly commission. Moses went back to Egypt to fulfill an assigned task. Each life has its own responsibility. To set out on a journey without any knowledge or plan from God is utter madness. If God tells us to go, that is good. If God tells us to go and do a certain task, that is better. Moses had been assigned the work of leading Israel out of bondage. He was to go to Pharaoh, and say unto him, “Let my son go, that he may serve me.” Israel was God’s son.

Let us set ourselves on our high mountain and listen. Let us see what the Lord will say unto us. It is written, “To every man his work.” Let us, therefore, discover our own task.

4. Leaving under the promise of aid. Many difficulties were to beset Moses but the One who sent him, promised to stand by him. When Jesus Christ was about to leave the earth, He met His disciples by appointment and said, “Go ye into all the world.” However, He prefaced that commandment with the pledge, “All power is given unto Me in Heaven and in earth.” Thus it was with Moses, he was to go to Pharaoh, sent from God, and panoplied by God. God was to prosper his journey, and complete his undertaking successfully.

5. Met by his brother. As Moses approached Egypt, Aaron went forth to meet him. It was God who spoke to Aaron saying, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” He met him in the Mount of God and kissed him. It was a happy greeting! After forty years of separation the two brothers came together under the guiding hand of the Almighty. Thus Moses recounted to Aaron all that God had spoken, and all the signs that He had wrought.

I. THE OBEDIENT SERVANTS (Exo 5:1)

1. Moses and Aaron have now reached Egypt. According to God’s command they have gone to tell Pharaoh that God commanded him to let His people go. When God speaks it is for us to act. A difficult task is not one to be shunned, but to be undertaken. The opening words of our key verse read, “And afterward Moses and Aaron went in.” After what? After the vision of the burning bush. After the message of Divine Revelation. After the miracles of the three signs with the rod that became a serpent. After the hand had become leprous, and the water had become blood. After the Lord had made Himself known unto Moses as the great “I Am.” After Moses and Aaron had met under the direction of God. It was after all these things, and under the inspiration of them, that Moses and Aaron together approached Pharaoh, and presented their case.

2. It is interesting to note the Divine Hand in Exo 4:1 : “Let My people go.” Is not this the call of God to Satan? He has no more claim upon the one who is redeemed. Whenever God calls any of us, “My people”; He has a right to say to Satan, “Let them go.” We remember the story of Lazarus raised from the dead, and how the Lord Jesus said, “Loose him, and let him go.” The child of God is not bound by Satan, and he has a right to be set free from servitude to him.

3. A proposed feast. The last statement of Exo 4:1 is illuminating. “That they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness.” What a contrast! From serving the Egyptians, to feasting with God. This, however, is true of every redeemed soul. David wrote, “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” The call of the Lord was, “Come; for all things are now ready.” It was the feast that was ready, and a marriage feast, at that. What Heavenly Manna belongs to them who walk with the Lord! To Their own, the Father and the Son say, “We will come in and sup with thee.”

II. A REBELLIOUS KING (Exo 5:2)

“And Pharaoh said, 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.” We have three things in this verse.

1. There is a confessed ignorance concerning God. One would think that the king who reigned over earth’s greatest nation would at least have known God, but he said, “I know not the Lord.” Beloved, wealth and wisdom, culture and refinement, do not necessarily ensure the knowledge of God. There are many today who do not know God in any personal sense. “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, but the world knew Him not.”

2. A stubborn front. Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice?” The king of Egypt dared to throw himself and his authority and power over against the Lord of Heaven and earth. He seemed to say, “There is no reason for me to bow down to Him. There is no reason that I should give attention to His command, or obey His voice.” When we hear these words we think of how the Spirit through Isaiah said, “We have turned every one to his own way.” The negation of God on the one hand, and the enthronement of self on the other, is the very essence of sin. Sin is “My way, as against God’s way.” When we come to the Lord we are told, “Let the wicked forsake his way, and the righteous man his thoughts.”

3. A blank refusal. Pharaoh concluded his statement by saying, “Neither will I let Israel go.” He acknowledged no obeisance, and now He dared to refuse any obedience to God. We can almost hear the Lord as He gives the parable concerning the nobleman who delivered unto his servants the pounds and told them to occupy until he returned. Certain ones were spoken of as his enemies. These said, “We will not have this man to reign over us.” How many there are today who are shutting God purposefully out of their knowledge, and willfully reject the Almighty.

III. THE CALL OF GOD THROUGH MOSES (Exo 5:3)

As Moses and Aaron stood before Pharaoh they said, “The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days’ journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the Lord our God.”

1. God’s call was a call to separation. “Let us go, * * a three days’ journey.” Between every saved soul of this age and the world, God has placed the act of baptism. Baptism stands for the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and the believer’s union with Christ in that death, burial, and resurrection. This is our three days’ journey.

Christ was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. We are saved out of the world, therefore, we are not of the world. God says unto us, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate.” He says, “What communion hath light with darkness?” Our separation is explained to us in Galatians where we read, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross * * by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.”

2. God’s call was a call to worship. The Bible expression is “and sacrifice unto the Lord our God.” The sacrifice stood for the basis of approach to God. It is by the Blood of Christ that we have, our right of access. Jesus said, “If I be lifted up * * will draw all men unto Me.” It is through the Cross that God came down to us. It is through the Cross that we approach God. There is no other basis by which we have right of entrance. When we come into His presence we come to worship Him, and to adore Him as the mighty God.

3. God’s call was a call to fellowship. Separated from Egypt they could now walk with God. It is striking that Our key verse says, “Three days’ journey into the desert.” The very word “desert” suggests a life shut up alone with the Almighty. If we come out from the rush of the world, from the path of pleasure, we will enter into the garden of God. We will enter into His desert where the flowers of Heaven bloom.

IV. THE PAIN OF LIVING IN EGYPT (Exo 5:4-5)

1. The place of galling servitude. The king of Egypt, instead of acceding to the request of Moses and Aaron, cried out, “Get you unto your burdens.” Beloved, Satan is a hard taskmaster. His heart knows no pity, and shows no mercy. The man who revels in sin may think himself a free man. Far is it from the truth. He is the rather, a man taken captive of the devil. He is a man driven of the devil. He is a man chained with chains and dwelling in the tombs. He is a man whose form is bent beneath a burden that galls and staggers.

2. The heavier task. Instead of letting the people go, Pharaoh gave orders to the taskmasters of Israel, saying, “Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves.” Thus the taskmasters increased their work and their difficulties.

The longer we serve Satan the wilder and the rougher will become our path. When we think of Israel under the taskmasters, chastened by their whips, we cannot but think of the people who today are under the dominion of the flesh. Never was there a fiercer taskmaster than the flesh. Pharaoh did not whip the Children of Israel; this was done by the taskmasters under Pharaoh’s power. It is not Satan who personally opposes us, but the flesh which madly strives against us, and drives us on.

V. THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL (Exo 5:15)

1. The officers appealed to Pharaoh. When the officers from among the Israelites found out concerning Pharaoh’s madness they came unto Pharaoh and cried unto him, “Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants?” Their pleas, however, were all in vain. The last verses of Rom 7:1-25 give us one of the most pitiful cries of the Bible. It reads, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”

This anger of Pharaoh did not in the least stir up Israel to any hope of deliverance. Israel knew the power of Pharaoh, knew his armed strength; knew her own helplessness, and therefore, her officers utterly despaired and bewailed her estate. As we stand in the presence of Satan, and of sin, we are awake to Satan’s power, as well as to our own inability to save ourselves.

Eph 2:1-22 describes the sinner as dead in trespasses and in sins, as walking according to the prince of the power of the air. Such an one is helpless, promiseless, covenantless, Godless, Christless, and hopeless. If he turns to the right hand, there is no help, and to the left, there is no one who is near.

2. The officers appealed to Moses. As the officers left Pharoah they met Moses and Aaron. Immediately they turned upon the two men who had promised them deliverance, and they said unto them, “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.” How Moses must have felt as these, his brethren, cried against him in their despair. We will be interested to follow the sequel to their sad plight.

VI. MOSES FLIES TO GOD (Exo 5:22-23)

No sooner had the officers of the Children of Israel left Moses, than Moses sought the face of 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 to Pharaoh to speak in Thy Name, he hath done evil to this people; neither hast Thou delivered Thy people at all.”

Moses seemed, for the moment, to forget that God had forewarned and foretold him that Pharaoh would not let the people go. He should not have been overcome by the fierceness of Pharaoh and his taskmasters. The despair of Israel overwhelmed God’s servant.

1. The great “Why.” Moses said, “Wherefore hast Thou so evil entreated”; then he added, “Why is it that Thou hast sent me?” Do we show wisdom when we question God’s dealings with its? This was exactly what poor Job did. For days he dwelt under clouds of question marks. Have we ever in our own despair cried piteously, “How is my soul cast down?”

2. A seeming defeat. To Moses, for a moment, it seemed that his mission had collapsed. He saw from the human viewpoint no possibility of any change oh Pharaoh’s part. He knew the king’s hardness of heart. He knew his bitterness, and that he was foreign to pity. He knew, on the other hand, that Israel was a vassal people unarmed and helpless.

How often does God allow us to get to the end of our own selves. Then, when hope is gone, and when the arm of the flesh has utterly collapsed, God steps to the rescue.

VII. “I AM THE LORD” (Exo 6:2-8)

We now bring before you an expression which occurs at the close of Exo 6:2 and again at the close of Exo 6:8. It is composed of four words, viz., “I am the Lord.”

1. These four words hold the answer of God against Pharaoh’s wrath and in behalf of Israel’s cry. These four words reassured Moses. These four words were enough to settle every question: “I am the Lord.” Included within this twice-told statement, “I am the Lord,” are the following expressions:

1.I appeared unto Abraham.

2.I have also established My covenant.

3.I have also heard the groaning of the Children of Israel.

4.I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

5.I will rid you out of their bondage.

6.I will redeem you with a stretched out arm,

7.I will take you to Me for a people.

8.I will be to you a God.

9.I will bring you in unto the land.

10.I will give it you for an heritage.

We cannot speak of each of these wonderful promises in detail. We can say that every one of them was included within the expression, “I am the Lord.” It was because He was the Lord that He appeared unto Abraham, and established His covenant. It was because He was the Lord, and had heard the groaning of Israel, that He would bring them out and rid them of their bondage, redeem them, and take them unto Himself, to be to them a God, and bring them into the land, and give it them for an heritage.

Had the Children of Israel sought deliverance from their bondage through their own prowess, their hope had been folly.

When an unsaved man seeks salvation through anything that lies within himself, or within men, he seeks in vain. When a Christian attempts to deliver himself, and tries to deliver himself from the dominion of the world, the flesh, and the devil, he seeks in vain.

Let us renew then the wonderful all-assuring, all-comforting words, “I am the Lord.” “I will”

AN ILLUSTRATION

ARE THEY HAPPY?

Little did the rebellious Pharaoh know what judgment awaited his rejection of God.

“Do you account him a happy man who is condemned to die, because he hath a plentiful allowance till his execution? Or him a happy man that makes a fair show abroad and puts a good face upon his ruinous and breaking condition, while at home he is pinched with want and misery, which is ready to come upon him like an armed man; one who revels in all manner of pleasure today, but is to die at night? Then those who remain in the guilt of their sins may be happy.” If we view unpardoned sinners aright we shall heartily pity them. Let their condition be what it may, at this present the wrath of God abideth on them, and they are “condemned already”; and as for the future, it is black with certain doom. Alas for the unhappy man against whom God sets His face! What misery can be greater than to be reserved against the great day of the wrath of God? We wonder at the mirth of men condemned to hell, their infatuation is terrible to behold.

Hence we cannot join with them in their carnal mirth. Sinners may dance, but it will not be to our piping. They may revel and riot, but we dare not countenance them in their jollity, for we know that, their day is coming. Let no desire to share their base delights lurk in your mind if you be indeed a child of God. Be not envious at the transgressors. Who would envy a criminal about to be executed his last draught of wine? Let not their frivolities attract you. Every sensible man pities the wretch who can dance under the gallows. Sinners on the road to hell sporting and jesting are worse than mad, or their singing would turn to sighing.-Chas. H. Spurgeon.

Fuente: Neighbour’s Wells of Living Water

Exo 5:1. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel Moses, in treating with the elders of Israel, is directed to call God the God of their fathers; but in treating with Pharaoh, he and Aaron call him the God of Israel, and it is the first time we find him called so in Scripture. He is called the God of Israel, the person, (Gen 33:20,) but here it is Israel, the people. They are just beginning to be formed into a people when God is called their God. Let my people go They were Gods people, and therefore Pharaoh ought not to detain them in bondage. And he expected services and sacrifices from them, and therefore they must have leave to go where they could freely exercise their religion, without giving offence to, or receiving offence from the Egyptians.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

Exo 5:1. Moses and Aaron, accompanied by the elders, as in Exo 6:26, went to Pharaoh.

Exo 5:2. Who is Jehovah? I know not JEHOVAH. The mythology of the gentiles supposed every city, and every country or nation to have its own god, or rather goddess, mothers being supposed to be more tender-hearted than fathers. Thus Minerva was supposed to be the presiding divinity over Athens; and Diana to be the goddess of the Ephesians. Thus we find Moses accommodating himself to the ideas of the Egyptians in saying, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us. Exo 3:6.

Exo 5:3. Three days journey, the distance to Horeb. Pharaoh was a wicked man, and therefore God proposed the emancipation of his people in the easiest form. The request was not unreasonable, for God had rights as well as the king.

Exo 5:6. Taskmasters, or exacters. They were Egyptians; but the officers or overlookers were Israelites, as appears from the fourteenth verse.

Exo 5:7. Ye shall no more give the people straw. In Egypt the people use straw and chaff for their ovens; the straw was here used to burn the bricks, and to preserve the mass of clay from drying too fast. Hence the tasks, by the refusal of straw, were almost doubled. The clay was mixed with straw, and often only dried in the sun; but all the bricks exposed to the weather were burned.

REFLECTIONS.

The grand links of the chain which led to Israels redemption, appear more and more in sight. In the first place, St. Paul seems to have classed Moses among those, who out of weakness waxed strong. At first he feared greatly, but now he feared not the wrath of the king. They most assuredly make the best ministers and servants of God, who enter on his ways and work with a proper degree of scrupulosity and diffidence.

In Pharaoh, who despised the Lord and rejected his servants, we have the genuine portrait of a wicked man. When addressed by ministers to abandon his unlawful gains, and reform his wicked courses; all the pride of his heart rises into high revolt. He exalts his own will above the divine law, and says, by his conduct, Who is the Lord that I should obey him? Thus he goes on, hardened the more by impunity, and setting the thunderbolts of Jehovah at defiance, till the vengeance which overtook Pharaoh falls on his head.

In Israel, groaning beneath the accumulated bondage of Egypt, we have a figure of the awakened sinner, with a law-work on his mind, groaning for deliverance. The more he sees his bondage, the more he sighs for redemption; and the more he wishes to reform, the more is the carnal mind irritated against the work of grace on his heart; and the bondage of sin is worse than the Egyptian servitude. So the arduous conflict is described in the seventh chapter of the epistle to the Romans. But let the man persevere, let him call in the aids of grace, and Jesus Christ will surely deliver him from the body of that death.

The petition, in Gods name, to let Israel go for the divine service, not only failed of effect, but it excited the anger of Pharaoh, and induced him to augment the afflictions of the people. Hence we learn, that mild measures having failed with very wicked men, there is no way to keep them in awe, but by the terrors of justice. It is just the same with regard to the corruptions of the flesh; the old man must be crucified with his deeds. The strong man armed and keeping the heart must be vanquished and bound by a stronger than himself, and all his goods or works destroyed. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth and crucify the flesh, with its affections and lusts.

In the reproachful complaints which the Hebrew officers made against Moses, we see that unregenerate men will never bear the reproach of Christ. The carnal heart ever revolts against the cross; no man will bear persecution for his sake who has not first seen his glory, and received salvation in his name.

Let not the ministers of religion be too much discouraged, though their efforts may hitherto have proved unsuccessful; let them cry again to God like Moses, and return with vigour to the charge; for the proudest sinner shall surely bow the knee to Jesus, either for mercy or judgment. The strong and mighty arm of the Lord shall clothe itself with salvation and strength.

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

THE FIRST APPEAL TO PHARAOH AND THE RESULTS

(vs.1-23)

Moses and Aaron then gain an audience with Pharaoh, and simply tell him the message that the Lord God of Israel has for him, “Let My people go, that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.” But Pharaoh’s response was both contemptuous and defiant: “Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go.” In spite of this decisive refusal, Moses and Aaron plead with Pharaoh, telling him that the God of the Hebrews had met with them, and it was He whom they represented in asking that Israel might go three days’ journey into the desert, to sacrifice to Him. His Word was authoritative, and He could bring serious repercussions upon them if they did not go.

This only irritated Pharaoh, however, who told them they were hindering the Israelites from the work of slaving for Pharaoh, and told them to get back to their work. Not content with this, however, he commanded his servants to increase the labor put on the shoulders of the Israelites, requiring them to not only make brick, but to gather the straw to put into the bricks. They must not reduce the quota of bricks required, but gather the straw for them also (vs.8-11). There is a spiritual lesson here too. The world’s building is like bricks of Nile mud with no straw, no cohesion. Now Israel is to be forced to supply the cohesion. What bondage it is to a child of God to have to labor for the unity of a world that rejects his Lord!

As well as this increasing their labor, it resulted in the Israelites being scattered throughout the land to find straw (v.12). This was a cunning way of destroying unity among Israelites and to keep them weak. The officers of the children of Israel appealed to Pharaoh because of the increased pressure on them making their work intolerable, and because they were beaten when they failed to produce as much as when they were given straw (vs.15-16). But Pharaoh was adamant, telling them they were idle and that for this reason they were talking about going to sacrifice to the Lord (v.17).

The wisdom of God was behind all this in a way that Israel was not prepared to understand. God would not deliver them until it came to a point that they felt the oppression so deeply as to cry out to God for deliverance, rather than to look at second causes. So it is for us today too. It is always man’s way to look for someone to blame for the misery that his own sins have caused him. God has to therefore deepen such exercise in our hearts that we realize that it is only our pride that blames others for our sins, so that when deliverance comes, we are the more deeply thankful, and delivered from a state of complaining.

Feeling the situation to be intolerable, the officers of Israel were ready to blame Moses and Aaron for it as they came out from Pharaoh’s presence, telling them it was they who made Israel abhorrent in the sight of Pharaoh, simply because they had given the Word of God to Pharaoh. They said “the Lord look on you and judge” (v.21). Did they expect the Lord to pass judgment on Moses and Aaron because they had obeyed the Lord? But this is only one of the tribulations a servant of the Lord is often called upon to bear. Thus they are in the middle, having to suffer both from Pharaoh and from Israel. But by such afflictions the Lord sees fit to educate His own, to develop spiritual strength.

Moses therefore could appeal only to the Lord (v.22), but not as pleading for help, rather in complaining and questioning as to why the Lord had brought further trouble to Israel, and why He had sent Moses. Did he not remember that God had forewarned him of Pharaoh’s refusal to listen, and that Israel’s sorrows would be increased before their deliverance? But he complains that since he had spoken to Pharaoh, God had not delivered the people, but that Pharaoh had only harmed them. Thus, though God had sought faithfully to prepare Moses for what would happen, Moses has not been prepared. How like our own perplexity when hard things happen that God has before warned us of in His Word!

Fuente: Grant’s Commentary on the Bible

5:1 And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told {a} Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may {b} hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.

(a) Faith overcomes fear, and makes men bold in their calling. {b} And offer sacrifice.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

At Moses and Aaron’s first audience with Pharaoh they simply presented God’s command (Exo 5:1). [Note: For an introduction to Liberation Theology, see Wolf, pp. 130-31.] They did not perform miracles but asked for permission to leave Egypt.

The Israelites could have worshipped the gods of Egypt in the land, but they had to leave Egypt to worship a non-Egyptian God. Moses’ request was a request to exercise a basic human right, namely, freedom of worship.

"Exo 5:1-5 introduces another aspect of labour in Egypt: claims for time off work, and specifically for worship or religious holidays. On this topic, useful background comes from the extensive, fragmentary and often very detailed records kept for the activities of the royal workmen (who lived at the Deir el-Medina village), who cut the royal tombs in the Valleys of the Kings and Queens in Western Thebes, c. 1530-1100 B.C.

"Daily notes were kept for the men’s attendances at work or of their absences from it. Sometimes reasons for absence are given. . . . The entire workforce might be off for up to 8 or 14 days, especially if interruptions, official holidays and ’weekends’ came together. In Ancient Egypt-as elsewhere-major national festivals (usually main feasts of chief gods) were also public holidays. Then, each main city had its own holidays on main feasts of the principal local god(s). Besides all this, the royal workmen at Deir el-Medina can be seen claiming time off for all kinds of reasons, including ’offering to his god,’ ’(off) for his feast’; even ’brewing for his feast’ or for a specific deity. Not only individuals but groups of men together could get time off for such observances. And a full-scale feast could last several days.

"What was true in Thebes or Memphis would apply equally at Pi-Ramesse (Raamses). So, when Moses requested time off from Pharaoh, for the Hebrews to go off and celebrate a feast to the Lord God, it is perhaps not too surprising that Pharaoh’s reaction was almost ’not another holiday!’" [Note: Kenneth Kitchen, "Labour Conditions in the Egypt of the Exodus," Buried History (September 1984):47-48.]

Pharaoh was not only the king of Egypt, but the Egyptians regarded him as a divine person; he was a god (Exo 5:2). [Note: See Frankfort, ch. 2: "The Egyptian State."] Consequently when Moses and Aaron asked Pharaoh to accede to the command of Yahweh, Pharaoh saw this request as a threat to his sovereignty. He knew (i.e., had respect for) the gods of Egypt, but he did not know (have respect for) Yahweh, the God of his foreign slaves. If Yahweh had identified Himself with these slaves, and if He had not already delivered them, why should Pharaoh fear and obey Him?

"It required no ordinary daring to confront the representative of a long line of kings who had been taught to consider themselves as the representatives and equals of the gods. They were accustomed to receive Divine titles and honours, and to act as irresponsible despots. Their will was indisputable, and all the world seemed to exist for no other reason than [to] minister to their state." [Note: Meyer, p. 88.]

"These words ["Who is the LORD that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the LORD . . ."] form the motivation for the events that follow, events designed to demonstrate who the Lord is.

"Thus as the plague narratives begin, the purpose of the plagues is clearly stated: ’so that the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD’ (Exo 7:5). Throughout the plague narratives we see the Egyptians learning precisely this lesson (Exo 8:19; Exo 9:20; Exo 9:27; Exo 10:7). As the narratives progress, the larger purpose also emerges. The plagues which God had sent against the Egyptians were ’to be recounted to your son and your son’s son . . . so that you may know that I am the LORD.’" [Note: Sailhamer, The Pentateuch . . ., pp. 249-50.]

"The point is clear from the chapter: when the people of God attempt to devote their full service and allegiance to God, they encounter opposition from the world." [Note: The NET Bible note on 5:1.]

In their second appeal to Pharaoh, Moses and Aaron used milder terms (Exo 5:3). They presented themselves not as ambassadors of Yahweh but as representatives of their brethren. They did not mention the name "Yahweh," that was unknown to Pharaoh, or "Israel," that would have struck him as arrogant. They did not command but requested ("Please . . ."). Moreover they gave reasons for their request: their God had appeared to them, and they feared His wrath if they disobeyed Him.

"Moses . . . appealed to him [Pharaoh] almost precisely as, centuries after, Paul addressed the assembly on Mars Hill . . . [cf. Act 17:22-23]." [Note: Meyer, p. 107.]

The Egyptians regarded the sacrifices that the Israelites would offer as unacceptable since almost all forms of life were sacred in Egypt. They believed their gods manifested themselves through cows, goats, and many other animals.

"The Egyptians considered sacred the lion, the ox, the ram, the wolf, the dog, the cat, the ibis, the vulture, the falcon, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the cobra, the dolphin, different varieties of fish, trees, and small animals, including the frog, scarab, locust, and other insects. In addition to these there were anthropomorphic gods; that is, men in the prime of life such as Annen, Atum, or Osiris." [Note: William Ward, The Spirit of Ancient Egypt, p. 123.]

"Where did Moses get the idea that they should have a pilgrim feast and make sacrifices? God had only said they would serve Him in that mountain. In the OT the pilgrim feasts to the sanctuary three times a year incorporated the ideas of serving the LORD and keeping the commands. So the words here simply use the more general idea of appearing before their God. And, they would go to the desert because there was no homeland yet. Only there could they be free." [Note: The NET Bible note on 5:3.]

Pharaoh’s reply to Moses and Aaron’s second appeal was even harsher than his response to their first command (Exo 5:5; cf. Exo 5:1). Their aggressive approach may have been what God used to cause Pharaoh to harden his heart initially.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

1. Pharaoh’s response to Moses and Aaron’s initial request 5:1-6:1

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

CHAPTER V.

PHARAOH REFUSES.

Exo 5:1-23.

After forty years of obscurity and silence, Moses re-enters the magnificent halls where he had formerly turned his back upon so great a place. The rod of a shepherd is in his hand, and a lowly Hebrew by his side. Men who recognise him shake their heads, and pity or despise the fanatic who had thrown away the most dazzling prospects for a dream. But he has long since made his choice, and whatever misgivings now beset him have regard to his success with Pharaoh or with his brethren, not to the wisdom of his decision.

Nor had he reason to repent of it. The pomp of an obsequious court was a poor thing in the eyes of an ambassador of God, who entered the palace to speak such lofty words as never passed the lips of any son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He was presently to become a god unto Pharaoh, with Aaron for his prophet.

In itself, his presence there was formidable. The Hebrews had been feared when he was an infant. Now their cause was espoused by a man of culture, who had allied himself with their natural leaders, and was returned, with the deep and steady fire of a zeal which forty years of silence could not quench, to assert the rights of Israel as an independent people.

There is a terrible power in strong convictions, especially when supported by the sanctions of religion. Luther on one side, Loyola on the other, were mightier than kings when armed with this tremendous weapon. Yet there are forces upon which patriotism and fanaticism together break in vain. Tyranny and pride of race have also strong impelling ardours, and carry men far. Pharaoh is in earnest as well as Moses, and can act with perilous energy. And this great narrative begins the story of a nation’s emancipation with a human demand, boldly made, but defeated by the pride and vigour of a startled tyrant and the tameness of a downtrodden people. The limitations of human energy are clearly exhibited before the direct interference of God begins. All that a brave man can do, when nerved by lifelong aspiration and by a sudden conviction that the hour of destiny has struck, all therefore upon which rationalism can draw, to explain the uprising of Israel, is exhibited in this preliminary attempt, this first demand of Moses.

Menephtah was no doubt the new Pharaoh whom the brothers accosted so boldly. What we glean of him elsewhere is highly suggestive of some grave event left unrecorded, exhibiting to us a man of uncontrollable temper yet of broken courage, a ruthless, godless, daunted man. There is a legend that he once hurled his spear at the Nile when its floods rose too high, and was punished with ten years of blindness. In the Libyan war, after fixing a time when he should join his vanguard, with the main army, a celestial vision forbade him to keep his word in person, and the victory was gained by his lieutenants. In another war, he boasts of having slaughtered the people and set fire to them, and netted the entire country as men net birds. Forty years then elapse without war and without any great buildings; there are seditions and internal troubles, and the dynasty closes with his son.[9] All this is exactly what we should expect, if a series of tremendous blows had depopulated a country, abolished an army, and removed two millions of the working classes in one mass.

But it will be understood that this identification, concerning which there is now a very general consent of competent authorities, implies that the Pharaoh was not himself engulfed with his army. Nothing is on the other side except a poetic assertion in Psa 136:15, which is not that God destroyed, but that He “shook off” Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, because His mercy endureth for ever.

To this king, then, whose audacious family had usurped the symbols of deity for its head-dress, and whose father boasted that in battle “he became like the god Mentu” and “was as Baal,” the brothers came as yet without miracle, with no credentials except from slaves, and said, “Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let My people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness.” The issue was distinctly raised: did Israel belong to Jehovah or to the king? And Pharaoh answered, with equal decision, “Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His voice? I know not Jehovah, and what is more, I will not let Israel go.”

Now, the ignorance of the king concerning Jehovah was almost or quite blameless: the fault was in his practical refusal to inquire. Jehovah was no concern of his: without waiting for information, he at once decided that his grasp on his captives should not relax. And his second fault, which led to this, was the same grinding oppression of the helpless which for eighty years already had brought upon his nation the guilt of blood. Crowned and national cupidity, the resolution to wring from their slaves the last effort consistent with existence, such greed as took offence at even the momentary pause of hope while Moses pleaded, because “the people of the land are many, and ye make them rest from their burdens,”–these shut their hearts against reason and religion, and therefore God presently hardened those same hearts against natural misgiving and dread and awe-stricken submission to His judgments.

For it was against religion also that he was unyielding. In his ample Pantheon there was room at least for the possibility of the entrance of the Hebrew God, and in refusing to the subject people, without investigation, leisure for any worship, the king outraged not only humanity, but Heaven.

The brothers proceed to declare that they have themselves met with the deity, and there must have been many in the court who could attest at least the sincerity of Moses; they ask for liberty to spend a day in journeying outward and another in returning, with a day between for their worship, and warn the king of the much greater loss to himself which may be involved in vengeance upon refusal, either by war or pestilence. But the contemptuous answer utterly ignores religion: “Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their work? Get ye unto your burdens.”

And his counter-measures are taken without loss of time: “that same day” the order goes out to exact the regular quantity of brick, but supply no straw for binding it together. It is a pitiless mandate, and illustrates the fact, very natural though often forgotten, that men as a rule cannot lose sight of the religious value of their fellow-men, and continue to respect or pity them as before. We do not deny that men who professed religion have perpetrated nameless cruelties, nor that unbelievers have been humane, sometimes with a pathetic energy, a tenacious grasp on the virtue still possible to those who have no Heaven to serve. But it is plain that the average man will despise his brother, and his brother’s rights, just in proportion as the Divine sanctions of those rights fade away, and nothing remains to be respected but the culture, power and affluence which the victim lacks. “I know not Israel’s God” is a sure prelude to the refusal to let Israel go, and even to the cruelty which beats the slave who fails to render impossible obedience.

“They be idle, therefore they cry, saying, Let us go and sacrifice to our God.” And still there are men who hold the same opinion, that time spent in devotion is wasted, as regards the duties of real life. In truth, religion means freshness, elasticity and hope: a man will be not slothful in business, but fervent in spirit, if he serves the Lord. But perhaps immortal hope, and the knowledge that there is One Who shall break all prison bars and let the oppressed go free, are not the best narcotics to drug down the soul of a man into the monotonous tameness of a slave.

In the tenth verse we read that the Egyptian taskmasters and the officers combined to urge the people to their aggravated labours. And by the fourteenth verse we find that the latter officials were Hebrew officers whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them.

So that we have here one of the surest and worst effects of slavery–namely, the demoralisation of the oppressed, the readiness of average men, who can obtain for themselves a little relief, to do so at their brethren’s cost. These officials were scribes, “writers”: their business was to register the amount of labour due, and actually rendered. These were doubtless the more comfortable class, of whom we read afterwards that they possessed property, for their cattle escaped the murrain and their trees the hail. And they had the means of acquiring quite sufficient skill to justify whatever is recorded of the works done in the construction of the tabernacle. The time is long past when scepticism found support for its incredulity in these details.

One advantage of the last sharp agony of persecution was that it finally detached this official class from the Egyptian interest, and welded Israel into a homogeneous people, with officers already provided. For, when the supply of bricks came short, these officials were beaten, and, as if no cause of the failure were palpable, they were asked, with a malicious chuckle, “Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task both yesterday and today, as heretofore?” And when they explain to Pharaoh, in words already expressive of their alienation, that the fault is with “thine own people,” they are repulsed with insult, and made to feel themselves in evil case. For indeed they needed to be chastised for their forgetfulness of God. How soon would their hearts have turned back, how much more bitter yet would have been their complaints in the desert, if it were not for this last experience! But if judgment began with them, what should presently be the fate of their oppressors?

Their broken spirit shows itself by murmuring, not against Pharaoh, but against Moses and Aaron, who at least had striven to help them. Here, as in the whole story, there is not a trace of either the lofty spirit which could have evolved the Mosaic law, or the hero-worship of a later age.

It is written that Moses, hearing their reproaches, “returned unto the Lord,” although no visible shrine, no consecrated place of worship, can be thought of.

What is involved is the consecration which the heart bestows upon any place of privacy and prayer, where, in shutting out the world, the soul is aware of the special nearness of its King. In one sense we never leave Him, never return to Him. In another sense, by direct address of the attention and the will, we enter into His presence; we find Him in the midst of us, Who is everywhere. And all ceremonial consecrations do their office by helping us to realise and act upon the presence of Him in Whom, even when He is forgotten, we live and move and have our being. Therefore in the deepest sense each man consecrates or desecrates for himself his own place of prayer. There is a city where the Divine presence saturates every consciousness with rapture. And the seer beheld no temple therein, for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple of it.

Startling to our notions of reverence are the words in which Moses addresses God. “Lord, why hast Thou 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 evil entreated this people; neither hast Thou delivered Thy people at all.” It is almost as if his faith had utterly given way, like that of the Psalmist when he saw the wicked in great prosperity, while waters of a full cup were wrung out by the people of God (Psa 73:3, Psa 73:10). And there is always a dangerous moment when the first glow of enthusiasm burns down, and we realise how long the process, how bitter the disappointments, by which even a scanty measure of success must be obtained. Yet God had expressly warned Moses that Pharaoh would not release them until Egypt had been smitten with all His plagues. But the warning passed unapprehended, as we let many a truth pass intellectually accepted it is true, but only as a theorem, a vague and abstract formula. As we know that we must die, that worldly pleasures are brief and unreal, and that sin draws evil in its train, yet wonder when these phrases become solid and practical in our experience, so, in the first flush and wonder of the promised emancipation, Moses had forgotten the predicted interval of trial.

His words would have been profane and irreverent indeed but for one redeeming quality. They were addressed to God Himself. Whenever the people murmured, Moses turned for help to Him Who reckons the most unconventional and daring appeal to Him far better than the most ceremonious phrases in which men cover their unbelief: “Lord, wherefore hast Thou evil entreated this people?” is in reality a much more pious utterance than “I will not ask, neither will I tempt the Lord.” Wherefore Moses receives large encouragement, although no formal answer is vouchsafed to his daring question.

Even so, in our dangers, our torturing illnesses, and many a crisis which breaks through all the crust of forms and conventionalities, God may perhaps recognise a true appeal to Him, in words which only scandalise the orthodoxy of the formal and precise. In the bold rejoinder of the Syro-Phoenician woman He recognised great faith. His disciples would simply have sent her away as clamorous.

Moses had again failed, even though Divinely commissioned, in the work of emancipating Israel, and thereupon he had cried to the Lord Himself to undertake the work. This abortive attempt, however, was far from useless: it taught humility and patience to the leader, and it pressed the nation together, as in a vice, by the weight of a common burden, now become intolerable. At the same moment, the iniquity of the tyrant was filled up.

But the Lord did not explain this, in answer to the remonstrance of Moses. Many things happen, for which no distinct verbal explanation is possible, many things of which the deep spiritual fitness cannot be expressed in words. Experience is the true commentator upon Providence, if only because the slow building of character is more to God than either the hasting forward of deliverance or the clearing away of intellectual mists. And it is only as we take His yoke upon us that we truly learn of Him. Yet much is implied, if not spoken out, in the words, “Now (because the time is ripe) shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh (I, because others have failed); for by a strong hand shall he let them go, and by a strong hand shall he drive them out of the land.” It is under the weight of the “strong hand” of God Himself that the tyrant must either bend or break.

Similar to this is the explanation of many delays in answering our prayer, of the strange raising up of tyrants and demagogues, and of much else that perplexes Christians in history and in their own experience. These events develop human character, for good or evil. And they give scope for the revealing of the fulness of the power which rescues. We have no means of measuring the supernatural force which overcomes but by the amount of the resistance offered. And if all good things came to us easily and at once, we should not become aware of the horrible pit, our rescue from which demands gratitude. The Israelites would not have sung a hymn of such fervent gratitude when the sea was crossed, if they had not known the weight of slavery and the anguish of suspense. And in heaven the redeemed who have come out of great tribulation sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb.

Fresh air, a balmy wind, a bright blue sky–which of us feels a thrill of conscious exultation for these cheap delights? The released prisoner, the restored invalid, feels it:

“The common earth, the air, the skies, To him are opening paradise.”

Even so should Israel be taught to value deliverance. And now the process could begin.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Robinson, “The Pharaohs of the Bondage.”

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary