The Book Of Exodus
Exodus 3:14 "And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and He said, Thus shalt thou say
unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you."
CHAPTER 5:
Moses and Aaron stand before Pharaoh, and Aaron delivers God’s message: “…Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.” (v.1) Pharaoh’s response, as I noted in the previous chapter, is boastful and defiant. “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.” (v.2) In Egyptian myth and culture of that time the Pharaoh was not just considered a representative of the gods, but was a god himself. Thus, the Exodus account is a confrontation between gods: Pharaoh vs Yahweh, the one true God. Moses and Aaron respond by explaining that “…The God of the Hebrews…” commands all the children of Israel to go three days’ journey into the desert to perform “…a sacrifice unto the Lord our God…” lest he punish them. (v.3) Pharaoh’s retort is both dismissive and sneering. He tells them, in essence, that the Israelites have no time for such nonsense and that Moses and Aaron should get back to work. (v.4) Verses 5-19: In a further response to Moses and Aaron’s demands, Pharaoh orders his taskmasters to no longer gather the straw for the Israelites that is the main ingredient for making bricks. They are now to gather it themselves, but their daily quota will not change. Since they have so much free time to talk about their God and plan a journey into the desert, Pharaoh reasons, they must have plenty of extra time to gather the straw needed for their work. (v.7-8) This, of course, only increases the physical labor of the Israelites, which leads to harsher punishments of the Israelite officers that the Egyptian taskmasters had set over the other slaves. (v.14). They are unable to meet their daily quota with the newly added burden of gathering the straw. The officers go before Pharaoh to complain about the new rule. (v.15) But Pharaoh dismisses them with the same retort he gave Moses and Aaron. If the children of Israel have time to talk about going into the desert to sacrifice to the Lord, then they must have plenty of time to gather the straw needed to make their daily quota of bricks. (v.17) He demands that they immediately get back to work. (v.18) Verses 20-23: The Israelite officers complain to Moses and Aaron, blaming them for the new conditions and harsher punishments that Pharaoh is inflicting upon them. (v.21) Moses, as he will do so often in the years to come, takes their grievance to the Lord, and adds his own complaint as well. He doesn’t understand why he did what God told him to do, and it only made the situation worse for the Israelites. Where was the deliverance God promised? “Why is it that Thou hast sent me?” he asks with a despairing tone. (v.22) As happens so often in our own lives, Moses can’t understand why obeying God seems to have made the situation worse rather than better. From his – and the Israelites’ – perspective, God had failed in His promise to deliver them. The plight of the children of Israel looks even more hopeless and bleak than ever before. Rather than rebuke and punish Moses for his lack of faith and trust, God once again shows Himself to be the compassionate and loving Father that He is. His initial words to Moses in verse 1 are a reassurance and a reminder of what He first told Moses at the burning bush: “…Now shalt thou see what I will do…”. God reminds Moses that Pharaoh will indeed let the Israelites go, and not only that, but “…with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land.” In other words, Pharaoh would not only release the children of Israel from their enslavement, but he would do so eagerly and forcefully, the complete opposite of his current attitude and disposition of rebellion and pride. CHAPTER 6: Verses 2-9: One of the remarkable attributes of God is His infinite patience and loving kindness towards us, especially when we are so quick to forget His promises and His past providence in our lives. Moses had so quickly forgotten the game plan God had laid out for him just a few weeks earlier at the burning bush, and now God reminds Moses not only of His promise to deliver the children of Israel from their bondage, but also goes all the way back to Abraham, reassuring Moses of the initial promise that God had made with him, Isaac and Jacob. “…I have remembered My covenant,” God says to Moses in verse 5. He then tells Moses to go back to the elders and reassure them of this same covenant. “…I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments.” (v.6) In verse 3, God states that He was known to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob “…by the name of God Almighty, but by My name Jehovah was I not known to them.” (Exodus 3:14-15, 15:3, Psalm 68:4, 83:18, Isaiah 52:6, Jeremiah 16:21, Ezekiel 37:6, 13, John 8:58) Moreover, in verse 7 God tells Moses that “…I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God…” (Genesis 17:7, Exodus 29:45-46, Leviticus 26:12-13, 45, Deuteronomy 29:13, Revelation 21:7) In other words, God had not made Himself truly, personally known to Abraham, Isaac. Jacob and Joseph. He had revealed Himself to them, He had guided them, cared for them, and made a covenant with Abraham, but He had not revealed His true name until now. What God is saying to Moses in this passage is that He will not just deliver the Israelites from their bondage, but He will also have an ongoing, personal relationship with His chosen people. He will reveal Himself to them in ways that He never did with their forefathers. We see this later on in the books of Exodus and Leviticus, when God gives Moses and the Israelites the ten commandments, the law, and the instructions for the priesthood and the tabernacle. God is basically reminding Moses that He’s only just begun to work on behalf of His people, and that they haven’t seen anything yet. God is about to demonstrate His true power and majesty, not only for all the children of Israel to see and to wonder, but also for the benefit of the Egyptians and all the surrounding nations as well. (Joshua 2:10-11) Unfortunately, when Moses relays all of this to the elders of Israel, they don’t believe him because of the despair and anguish caused by their current circumstances. How often are we like them! God promises over and over in His word that He will never leave us, or forsake us, or fail to fight on our behalf, yet we fall into persistent misery and self-pity because our deliverance does not come immediately when we first cry out. Like Job, we often feel like God has abandoned us completely, and it must have been the same for the children of Israel until Moses and Aaron arrived on the scene to relay God’s message of the promise of deliverance. Yet, when that deliverance did not happen immediately, and when the situation only seemed to get worse, the Israelites fell into deeper despair and despondency. Instead of strengthening their faith and trust in God, they blamed Moses and God for making their pain and anguish even worse, and they persisted in their doubt and unbelief. Verses 10-13: God commands Moses once again to go before Pharaoh and demand that he release the children of Israel. (v.11) And, once again, Moses complains that Pharaoh is not going to listen to him since the Israelites didn’t believe him either. Moses gives the excuse that he is not an orator, basically reminding God that He’s picked the wrong man for this mission. (v.12) But God merely, patiently reiterates His command to Moses and Aaron. (v.13) Verses 14-30: What follows here is a brief genealogy that lists the descendants of Jacob’s first three sons: Reuben, Simeon and Levi. As you’ll recall from Genesis 34 and 35, theses three men had each committed a grievous sin. They were immoral, proud, rebellious, quick to anger and slow to forgive, and yet God used each of them to be the fathers of what would soon become the twelve tribes of Israel, God’s chosen people. The reason that only these three and their descendants are listed instead of all of Jacob’s sons is because the point of this passage is to go only as far as the appearance of Moses and Aaron. Moses, when he was later writing all of this down as a record for the Israelites, wanted to convey for the reader the point that God specifically uses the proud, the angry, the immoral, the weak, the broken, and the murderers (Moses, remember, had slain a man in the same vengeful manner as Simeon and Levi), and yes, even the stammerers, to execute His divine will and plan. God has always magnified Himself the most through the most broken, rebellious and sinful of humanity, and He’s about to magnify His name in a mighty way not just through Pharaoh and his hardened, arrogant heart, but through Moses’ weaknesses and shortcomings as well.
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