Coromandel Baptist Church

Sunday 1 March 2009 Exodus 5:1-6:1

Moses Meets Pharaoh

In Exodus 5 we read of the first encounter of the newly called and commissioned Moses with the god-king Pharaoh. In this encounter God’s word is proclaimed as a command to the king, who was assumed to be a god incarnate. At issue is whether the Lord’s word would be heard. We are doubtless familiar with the story. Moses and Aaron appear before Pharaoh in the name of the Lord to demand the release of God’s people. The aim of this release is worship. Pharaoh’s emphatic negative response (Ex. 5:2) on the one hand indicates his own status (as the god-king ruler of all the regional deities, among whom he does not recognize Yahweh) and also the state of his own heart (as being hardened towards the Lord and his word). In response, Moses and Aaron reiterate the demand, though somewhat differently couched (Ex. 5:3), which is met by firm insistence from Pharaoh that he will not let the people go (Ex. 5:4ff.). Instead of relief and release, at Pharaoh’s command the people of Israel endure further hardship, with increasing quotas of bricks demanded using fewer resources. In the end, things have gotten worse not better, and the elders of Israel come with strong complaints against Moses for making their lot harder (Ex. 5:20-21). Moses in turn complains to the Lord that the Lord has placed him in an invidious position, who (he implies) had not honoured his word to set the people free (Ex. 5:22-23). The Lord’s response reiterates his statement that Israel will only be brought out by compulsion (Ex. 6:1).

A number of significant features emerge from this narrative. Firstly, in terms of historical background, every detail here (the method of brick making; the quota system; the layers of authority—Pharaoh, taskmasters, foremen, and some native Hebrews charged with enacting the orders among the Israelite workers; the reluctance to let the Israelites go for a seemingly unimportant religious festival) these and other details all match with what we know of ancient Egypt, its technology, its method of administration and treatment of foreign workforces. The details in this chapter indicate that we have eye witness accounts of life in Egypt.

Secondly, while not being directly mentioned in this passage, it is timely that we consider the matter of Pharaoh’s hard heartedness towards God. This hardness (manifest in his stubbornness and brutal rejection of Moses’ words) emerges as an important element in the unfolding narrative. Pharaoh’s hardness of heart is spoken about in three ways. Sometimes it is God who hardens his heart (e.g. Ex. 4:21; 7:3; 9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:4, 8), sometimes Pharaoh is said to harden his heart (e.g. Ex. 8:15; 8:32; 9:34 cf. 7:23) and sometimes we are just told that ‘his heart was hard/hardened’ (Ex. 7:13; 8:13; 9:7; 9:35). These are not mutually contradictory. The hardening is juridical i.e. at once culpable and the action of the Sovereign Judge, in whose power it lies to turn the heart of the king whichever way he will (Prov. 21:1).

That Pharaoh remains unrepentant throughout the narrative is simultaneously the sovereign action of God and the Lord’s just response to Pharaoh’s arrogant pride. Paul’s commentary on the events (in Rom. 9:17f. cf. Ex. 9:16 with reference to the wider context of Ex. 9:13ff.) emphasizes the twin facts that God’s sovereign rule cannot be questioned and that the Lord disposes of all circumstances for the revelation of his own name and glory. What we see here in relation to Pharaoh is worked out in principle in other OT figures such as Cyrus (Is. 45), Nebuchadnezzar (Dan.4), and Assyria (Is. 10). Significantly, there is evidence in ancient Egypt to suggest that Pharaoh’s heart was understood to be crucial to the good functioning of Egypt. By virtue of Pharaoh’s nature as the incarnation of Re/Horus ‘his heart was thought to be sovereign over creation’ and that it was ‘the all controlling factor in history and society’ (J. Currid, Ancient Egypt and the Old Testament, p. 102). Exodus tells us that Yahweh, not Pharaoh is in control of Egypt’s destiny.

Thirdly, we find that Moses himself is still in the Lord’s schoolhouse. He had been told by the Lord that Pharaoh would not let Israel go except under compulsion (Ex. 3:19; 4:21) and Moses had already heard from Pharaoh himself that he had no intention of letting them go (Ex. 5:2), yet Moses seemed to assume that Pharaoh would simply buckle at the first command. His complaint (in Ex. 5:23) is that the Lord had not delivered his people and the implication is that he expected such deliverance to be virtually instantaneous. Moses is being prepared for the depth and duration of the spiritual battle that lay ahead, not just in the events of the exodus, but in the long and demanding ministry he had been given as the shepherd of Israel. Neither the spiritual preparation of Moses not the battle itself could not short-circuited. Every element of the battle was needed to display God’s glory, and to prepare for the final event of the Passover. God’s conflict with the forces of darkness is far deeper and more difficult than we could ever imagine. Christ’s final battle with them on the cross is beyond any human estimation. There can be no divine fiat, no victory simply by painless decree. Christ had to become sin itself and be abandoned up to hell itself to bring about the spiritual redemption of which the exodus speaks.

Fourthly, we see in Moses the first of the great national prophets of Israel. While Abel may be reckoned as the first prophet (Luke 11:49-51), in Moses we see the first prophet raised up for the nation, to both lead it and deliver it through his word (cf. Hos. 5:12). Moses’ ‘Thus says the Lord’ in Ex 5:2 (cf. 4:22) is the first such recorded utterance, and it becomes the hallmark of the prophets of Israel, who were to shepherd the nation in and through the word of the Great Shepherd. Because the nation was to live by every word which proceeded from Yahweh’s mouth, the question of which was true and which was false prophecy was of enormous importance. Here, Moses’ word is deliberately parodied by Pharaoh’s (Ex. 5:10), whose ‘Thus says Pharaoh’ indicates his own estimate that his (not Yahweh’s) word should be heard. In very small compass we are thus given a picture of the whole of history, with the word of God contradicted, countered and counterfeited by the word of the evil one.