and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.” The LORD God, almighty, alone planned and accomplished the events and movements of the Exodus history.
In the process of succumbing to repetitious commands, Egypt changed. The LORD God convulsed the squalid world order, which calamitously collapsed. In the worst of that dreadful punishment, the unbecoming deities of Egypt found out that before the Almighty they were no gods at all, only imposters of a prodigious kind. Throughout, this convulsing world the LORD revealed that Israel was not of the world. Did in the process Israel change, reform? Faced in the wilderness with the fear of the unknown, they of the covenant proved remarkably un-covenantal—a people of inconsiderate zeal, at its core often motivated corruptively.
REPETITIONS OF DISOBEDIENCE
That a pagan nation refused to listen and hold the LORD’s command in derision, however inexcusable, comes out of a reason, one demonstrated many times and at length throughout Old Testament history, idolatry. Israel had no such pretext, Deut 4:15–24, which Apostle Paul readily recognized for all times of the Church. Rom 1:20–23,
Ever since the creation of the world [God’s] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles.
Egypt over many generations proved the point too. The pantheon of these pagans resembled every known animal, whereby they dismissed the reality of the LORD God. Rather than face the truth of the existence of Israel’s God, the only LORD of heaven and earth, they took to an offensive, underscored by deceit and artifice. At eradicating the covenant people, they planned also to rid themselves once and for all of the God of heaven and earth. Therefore, throughout the Exodus history, the Pharaoh lied, broke his word, and finally attacked with genocidal potential by force of arms. Repetitious refusal to listen marked then the end of that Pharaonic regime, disconnected into a fringe state.
International Disobedience
By means of the covetousness of self-righteousness, i.e., pollution by the deep-grounded sin of the beginning, the whole of Mizraim moved as one to grapple with the God of the Hebrews, the LORD of heaven and earth, for which he held that entire nation meticulously accountable. Exodus-moved, he assured the destruction of Pharaoh’s dominion, therewith mocking and embarrassing its heavily populated pantheon, none of which or together could halt the Savior’s perseverance in liberating his own. Exod 15:11, 18:11. After the discredited Egyptians, subversive Amalekites refused to heed the fact that Israel was not of this world, but holy to the LORD, Exod 17:8–13. Venturing to oppose the LORD headlong, then Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan sought to tear Israel to pieces, Num 21:21–35. Balak tried, with the assistance of a Balaam, to stop Israel short, Num 22:1—24:25. As prophesied, in Canaan, Exod 3:8, the incorrigible Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites strove to waste the people of the covenant.
Israelite Disobedience
Israel’s heart-breaking refusal to hear and obey the LORD, Exod 6:9, by far less inexcusable, God managed in a different manner, only out of faithfulness to now age-old covenant promises. The Almighty heard and saw the oppression of his people, Exod 2:23–25, 3:7–12, in fact, “. . . God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Out of this harmonious remembering only he moved heaven and earth to execute the Exodus.
After the first confrontation with the Pharaoh, also Israel refused to listen, less than eager to leave slavery behind, less than eager to stop serving Egyptian idols. Abraham’s descendants, the covenant people, displayed also thereafter a history of rebellion, which aggrieved Moses voiced before the LORD, Exod 6:12, “Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me; how then shall Pharaoh listen to me, who am a man of uncircumcised lips?” Here the LORD’s point man expressed two perceived problems, one broad-based, one narrowly defined. 1) Israel’s refusal spoke of indiscrete fearfulness, which Pharaoh had cause to exploit. Moreover, Israel’s backwardness at hearing the LORD’s command to come out uncovered layers of unbelief, none of which complimentary to the covenant people. 2) Moses then admitted to an uncircumcision,20 not of the foreskin, but in relation to a speech defect. With this analogical usage of uncircumcision, Moses claimed that he spoke with difficulty, literally, with heaviness of lips. Exod 6:30. For decades, he had worked the silent life of shepherding, labor far removed from confronting kings and leading belligerent people. Specifically, Exod 4:10, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either heretofore or since thou hast spoken to thy servant; but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” This second excuse the LORD counteracted by commissioning and equipping articulate Aaron to speak for Moses; together, the brothers had to lead Israel to Mount Sinai, and beyond.
If Pharaoh resisted the LORD’s command to let Israel go, in this convincing narrative the people of the covenant balked as well. To be precise, the Egyptians in the frightening night of the tenth plague, bewailing the deaths of numerous first-born, forced the LORD’s own to leave. Exod 12:31–32, “. . . [Pharaoh] summoned Moses and Aaron by night, and said, ‘Rise up, go forth from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the LORD as you have said. Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone; and bless me also!” In fact, they of Egypt became desperate, Exod 12:33, “. . . the Egyptians were urgent with the people, to send them out of the land in haste; for they said, ‘We are all dead men.’” Even stronger, Exod 12:39, with Egypt’s ideological scaffolding shattered, Pharaoh, for a moment in touch with reality, thrust them out of the land. Were the maddened Egyptians forceful, the LORD even more; he compelled his reluctant people to leave the proximity of death—proving they were not of the world. No more were they to be comfortable and free among pitiful gods generated by a pagan nation.
Demonstrating that Israel’s sojourn in the world ended suddenly and forcefully, the Savior by various ways revealed the Exodus entirely his dominical doing; in the uproar of Egyptian agony, he hurried his people off in early dawn not to another day of slave labor, but into the beckoning darkness of an unknown future:
• Exod 12:42, “It was a night of watching by the LORD, to bring them out of the land of Egypt.”
• Exod 12:51, “. . . on that very day the LORD brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts.”
This fact Moses called Israel to remember. Constantly throughout the Exodus book, Moses pointed to the LORD who delivered his people to the not of this world life. Some excerpts:
• Exod 13:3p, “Remember this day, in which you came out from Egypt, out of the house of bondage, for by strength of hand the LORD brought you out fromthis place.”
• Exod 13:8, “. . . you shall tell your son . . . ‘It is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.’”
• Exod 13:9p, “. . . for with a strong hand the LORD has brought you out of Egypt.”
• Exod 13:14p, “By strength of hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt, from the house of bondage.”
• Exod 13:16, “. . . for by a strong hand the LORD brought us out of Egypt.”
Instead of Israel voluntarily and eagerly striding away from the house of bondage, on one level the Egyptians, on
