submitted to this worsening repressive regime and presented brawling obstacle upon obstacle to the Exodus, preferring death in slavery to life in freedom. Exod 14:10–11a, 15:22–25a; etc.
Exod 6:10–13, therefore, reiterated past commands, both to the offending Pharaoh and to unruly Israel; the LORD willed the provocative Exodus, adding to the extensive body of evidence that his people lived in the world, yet were not of this world. Because the LORD had heard the groaning of his own and remembered the covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob for life, food, and space, he reversed Egypt’s religious violence and dark compulsion to violate the Hebrews. Exod 2:23–25. With pastoral intensity and incorruptible commitment, he listened. “In the course of those many days the king of Egypt died. And the people of Israel groaned under the imposed bondage, and cried out for help, and their cry under bondage came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God saw the people of Israel, and God knew their condition.” To achieve the Exodus, the Lord clarified with determination his mandate to Moses and to the callous Pharaoh.
To begin the Exodus, Moses and Aaron in the name of the LORD commanded the ruling Pharaoh to allow Israel initially a brief respite from slavery in order to call upon the Name in communal worship. Exod 5:1, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’” Over centuries, deplorably pressured by servitude, the numerous descendants of Abraham had lost the sacrosanct ethic of worship. Seven days of slaving per week washed away freedom to call upon the name of the LORD. Obvious to the Egyptians, this people differed from all others; even under the hard conditions of enforced labor, they resisted assimilation. Circumcision and multiplication marked them a cohesive people. Though the Pharaoh ordered the immediate death of newborn sons by drowning, the Hebrews grew numerically, for the Egyptians at an alarming rate. With the initially, “Let my people go,” the LORD, the Almighty, for Israel’s liberty planned to reveal to the observant world along the Upper Nile and far beyond his omnipotence in salvation.
At this stage of history, Egypt dominated the known world; all proximate nations and peoples bowed before the Pharaoh. At Genesis’s end, Joseph’s vice regal rule revealed the far-flung and subduing powers of the Egyptian king. He, conscious of his authority and god-like confidence, responded blasphemously to Moses’s command. Exod 5:2, “Who is the LORD, that I should heed his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and moreover I will not let Israel go.” God Almighty did not belong in Egypt’s pantheon and Israel, as far as this Pharaoh was concerned, belonged in the world subject to him alone in the large space he dominated by force of arms, his to do with as he pleased.
Moses and Aaron, Aaron speaking, Exod 4:16, refused the Pharaoh’s negative response. In the name of the God of Israel and commissioned to represent him, these two spoke once more. Exod 5:3, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us; let us go, we pray, a three days’ journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice to the LORD our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.” When the LORD God speaks at any time he expects obedience, not only from his own, also from all outside the covenant boundaries. The foolish king of Egypt, however, had his own ideas about the LORD’s commanding presence. Exod 5:4, “But the king of Egypt said to them, ‘Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get to your burdens.” Thus he concluded that first confrontation uneasily bulging with disaster.
Slavery for Israel meant: serving the king of Egypt, a god (so-called), a recent member to the ancient collaboration of sinister deities worshiped in Egypt; thereby all of the LORD, even if forced and unwilling, served multitudinous Egyptians idols by constructing store-cities, Pithom and Raamses. Exod 1:11. Slavery in this instance also required submission to the Egyptians’ legal system as imposed and enforced by the reigning pharaoh. Long days the Hebrew men slaved, dawn to dusk, seven per week, preparing bricks and building cities under watchful eyes of whip-carrying taskmasters as well as coerced Israelite overseers.
Under these aristocratic pressures, worshiping the LORD God faithfully fell away, except for the circumcision rite, the only aspect of covenant obedience mentioned. However, for this servitude God Almighty had not called Abraham, nor for his descendants to slave away in subservience generation upon generation, uncertain of life, maltreated into the wild factors of unbelief.
The Pharaoh out of formidable reverence for his gods and for himself was a man hard to persuade. Instead of acquiescing to the LORD’s command, combatively he increased Israel’s crippling workload. Exod 5:6–9, “The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, ‘You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as heretofore; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks which they made heretofore you shall lay upon them, you shall by no means lessen it; for they are idle; therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’ Let heavier work be laid upon the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words.’” Hence, in addition to already burdensome and life-robbing toil, the men also had to gather necessary straw for brick making. With bottomless contempt for the Hebrews, the cantankerous man on the throne burdened Israel’s tyrannical yoke more, its pace and pattern unmanageable.
Whatever hopes of liberation Israel undervalued before Moses and Aaron’s arrival, the leaders of the people of Israel, resisting, resented Pharaoh’s increasing oppression, and responded to Moses and Aaron. Exod 5:21, “The LORD look upon you and judge, because you have made us offensive in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have set a sword in their hands to kill us.” Rather than marveling trust in the Savior of Israel to accomplish his ineffable promises of life, food, and space to Abraham, these woefully unfocused elders of the covenant community rebelled, intent on saving their own lives. Better slavery in the world with ignominious death than freedom and life in the LORD.
At this point, neither the Pharaoh with his people nor the Hebrews listened to the LORD’s commissioned men. This may reasonably be expected of an Egyptian king. But of the Church? Exod 6:9, “Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel; but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and their cruel bondage.” Despite the general negativity generated by acute suffering, the LORD God held Moses fast to his commission; he persevered to reveal that his own were not of the world.
Contrary to collective manifestations of negativity in Egypt and in Israel, the LORD nevertheless commanded Moses to proceed, “Go in, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the people of Israel go out of his land.” The God of Israel had, Exod 6:5, heard the tortured groaning of his people and remembered his covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Exod 6:6–8, “. . . I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD.” This royal affirmation shaped unfolding events with untrammeled authority, an anxious thing, for all on the wrong side of the old divide.
The intemperate king of Egypt, however, challenged the LORD God to combat, whereas the Lord of all creation omnipotently intended to renew his covenant promises of life, food, and space:
• By way of the Exodus, the LORD promised to remove his people from death within the house of bondage to life first in the wilderness, then in the abundance of the Land of Promise.
• By way of the Exodus, the LORD promised in comparison to the fleshpots in the land of Egypt the remarkable sustenance in the land of milk and honey.
• By way of the Exodus, the God of Israel promised to settle his people in Canaan, precisely the inheritance long before allotted to Abraham.
However much irreconcilable Pharaoh lashed out to govern events, the Savior disclosed to Moses, Exod 6:1, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, yea, with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.” To that end, in effect, and gloriously, the LORD accomplished his purpose. Exod 3:7–9, ”I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their
