Chapter 5
Commentary:
5:1- This is the first time Moses has appeared in the Egyptian court again in 40 years. Imagine living in the town you were born in for 40 years, leaving overnight as a fugitive for murder, and then returning 40 years later to tell the city officials that you needed to lead a large portion of the workforce out of town forever. None of this trip could have been easy for Moses. Aaron’s presence is a lot more important than we often consider. If he was going to be the representative of a new priesthood, his demonstrations in front of the magicians of Egypt would be quite significant in establishing his new authority. Notice what is missing in this verse—the elders of Israel. In Ex 3:18, God commanded Moses to take the elders of Israel with him when he visited Pharaoh. There is also no mention yet of the staff Moses was supposed to have with him. Furthermore, Moses references a feast, a celebration of some form, that God did not specifically mention in the message He said to relay to Pharoah (cf Ex 3:18; 4:22-23). So, is Moses changing the message, or is the text leaving out details? It’s possible God told Moses something else about a celebration. It’s also possible that Moses brought his staff or the elders and the text just didn’t mention that. The Bible doesn’t record every detail of every story it tells. And neither do you. If you’re sharing the story of when you bought your first car, you’re probably not mentioning anyone else who was at the dealership looking to buy a car that day. You’re not lying by leaving them out of the story. You’re not trying to remove them from the story or suggest their own stories aren’t important. They just don’t fit into the narrative you’re trying to tell. The Bible is the same way. It has a point it’s trying to make, and details are included or excluded based on their relevance to the story at hand. So, you cannot make an argument off silence. It is possible God and/or Moses said more than what was recorded. But if anything, we should assume that the Biblical authors were intentional in what they put in and left out. If Moses is depicted as leaving out a portion of God’s message or adding to it, the narrator is probably trying to suggest Moses wasn’t fully following the directions he had been given. Wilderness in the Bible is referring to uninhabited, uncultivated land. It has less to do with the terrain or the climate and more to do with the absence of civilization. It’s not a jungle or even a desert like we might use the term. It’s open land where nobody is.
5:2- Depending on which Pharaoh was in power at the time, he was either considered a god or a son of a god. In this verse, Pharaoh is saying he doesn’t recognize Yahweh as someone having authority over his domain.
5:3- Notice the designation “God of the Hebrews.” First it was God of Israel, but that didn’t work, so Moses tried God of the Hebrews instead. Why might that be more significant? The Tanakh doesn’t refer to the Jews as Hebrews that often. They’re usually called Jews or Israelites. But in Genesis 39-41, Joseph is called a Hebrew 4 times. I think perhaps Moses was hoping this Pharaoh might have heard something of Joseph the Hebrew and would respond better if he knew the connection. Unfortunately that was not the case. Again, we have to ask, is Moses adding in the pestilence and sword part? God did possibly threaten Pharaoh's firstborn already (see last week’s discussion on Ex 4:23), but Moses is saying this as if he is at risk too. God did not say He would punish Israel if Israel couldn’t worship Him outside Egypt.
5:4- Pharaoh is literally asking, “What are you doing unattended?”
5:5- Pharaoh accused Moses of giving the people shabbat, rest. Indeed, that’s exactly what he was trying to do. They had been overworked in slavery for centuries, and God was looking to restore their state of Eden rest in the land.
5:8- Tale means number or the amount of bricks.
5:9- Anyone who says “Let the work be heavy upon them” is not living out God’s goal for humanity. Anyone who is adding to the commands of God and making burdens heavier is missing the point. Even Jesus said that He seeks to lift burdens and restore rest (Matt 11:28-30). Pharaoh's reasoning was “So that they don’t gaze after lies.” He was trying to rewrite the message of Moses as what we would today call “fake news.”
5:12- The verse would better read “for” not “instead of.” It seems like the Egyptians had a designated area from which they gathered straw. When Pharaoh demanded the people find their own straw, he likely shut off access to the old areas, forcing them to gather whatever stubble they could find for straw. Because of the poor supply, the Israelites would be doing shoddy work now. Isn’t it ironic how when you get vindictive at other people, you usually end up hurting yourself too. . . .
5:14- It seems like the Egyptians used Israelites to oversee the slavery of their brethren. These people were in a very uncomfortable spot. They probably got slightly better treatment from Egypt when they helped but were then shunned by Jews. Perhaps these people were the source of some of the complaining that would soon come once in the wilderness.
5:21- The people literally said, “You have made our odor to stink in the eyes of Pharaoh.” “In the eyes of someone” is a Hebrew figure of speech meaning “in front of them” or “in their presence.” The Egyptians were despising the Israelites even more than they did before. Racism was increasing in the land.
5:22- Evil in Hebrew can also be a general term for bad. If someone told you a family member was in the hospital, that would be called evil news in Hebrew even though there was no malicious force behind the statement. It’s just bad or negative. In a way that is evil because the world was never meant to have suffering like that. So anything bad is a form of evil or at least a result of it, in a way. From this perspective, Moses and the people were not accusing God of being evil per se but rather of allowing bad things to happen without repercussions.
5:23- In Hebrew, you can place two words stemming from the same root next to each other to create an intensive statement with extra punch. It would be like saying, “Running, I ran to store.” In English we wouldn’t say that. We might say, “Running, I went to the store.” Or just “I ran to the store.” But in Hebrew, putting the two forms next to each other gives the idea that I ran to the store really fast or I rushed. Moses uses that construction at the end of verse 23, literally saying, “To rescue, you have not rescued your people.” In other words, “You ain’t done none of what you said you would!”
Suggested Meditation:
While it is true that chapter and verse divisions are not inspired, I do find some significance in the way this chapter ends. Moses’ accusation is rather bold, and by not hearing God’s response until the next chapter, we might imagine a deafening silence hanging in the air for a moment between the dialogue. Often in life, our chapters end with an uncomfortable silence from God, forcing us to ask why and to demand that He make good on His promises. Yet let us always remember that no matter how a chapter of our lives ends, a flip of the page often brings about the next chapter in which we will likely find God is already ready and waiting with His answer. If you haven’t seen God working the way He promised to in your life, remember that the story isn’t over and that this is just a chapter in the greater book of His redemptive love and grace.
Q&R:
Q: Explain some of the difference/similarity between Judaism and Christianity. If Jesus was Jewish, why are we Christian?
R: Today, Christianity and Judaism are completely separate entities that tend not to see eye to eye on a good bit of doctrine. But Christianity’s roots are completely Jewish. Jesus was Jewish. Each of the apostles and most of the disciples were Jewish. Most of the NT writers were Jewish. Easter is connected to Passover. Communion is a reworking of the Passover seder. Baptism was a Jewish ritual from the 400 years between the testaments. Over half our Bible is Jewish Scriptures. As you read the Gospels and Acts, the early church was made up almost entirely of Jews. Jesus and His followers were not looking to start a new religion. They retained their Jewish culture and just reworked it. They still observed Jewish feasts and holidays and customs. They still observed the sabbath. They just added in meeting with people on Sundays who believed Jesus was the Messiah. I believe a misreading of Paul has led to a lot of the separation between Christianity and Judaism, causing Christianity to become an entirely new religion instead of a branch of Judaism. Paul wrote much on the relationship of the Torah, the Law, to grace. Many have read that as His saying that the Jewish religion was bad and needed to be replaced with Christianity. But Paul still preached in synagogues. He still kept Jewish vows. He didn’t reject his Jewish culture just because he started following Jesus. He integrated his new beliefs about Jesus into his preexisting faith in Yahweh. But as time went on and the Jesus movement spread, the ratio of Jew to Gentile followers quickly changed. By the time of Augustine and Constantine just a few hundred years after Jesus, Christianity was the state religion of the Roman Empire, and it was actively trying to forcibly convert Jews to Christianity. A good deal of Christian writing began to be anti-Semitic. During Medieval times, the church decided not just to try to convert Jews but to kill any who wouldn’t convert. While we have thankfully moved past much of the physical violence, we have in many ways become unrecognizable from our roots. Christianity was never meant to be its own religion. Jesus and His early followers did not give up their Jewishness to be Christian. They retained their cultural heritage while living out the teachings of Jesus as the best way to honor their religious beliefs. We are not required to follow any Jewish practices or rituals to be Christian, but it's wise to be familiar with our the Jewish roots of our faith as they help us to understand our own practices and rituals better.
Q: Was time measured differently in the Bible, particularly in reference to 2 Peter 3:8, “One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day”?
R: While many have used 2 Peter 3:8 to argue one point or another over the years, Peter was not trying to set up a divine mathematic formula for determining the passing of time in heaven. He was writing to Christians who had been scattered from Jerusalem, possibly during Nero’s persecution. They were likely feeling discouraged and like God had forgotten about them (much like the Israelites in our passage this week). Peter’s statement was not a specific formula, but rather an encouragement that even when we feel like too much time has passed for God to do something special in our lives, He is still at work. We get so focused on life as we perceive it that sometimes we feel stuck in one spot forever. But God is still working, and since He exists in eternity outside of time, He can step in at any point as if no time had passed at all. That being said, it is worth noting that calendar systems were different in Ancient Near Eastern (ANE) cultures. Many of them were lunar-based while our calendar today is solar-based. There are some differences in exactly how many days were in a month or months in a year, but the general passing of time was measured without too much variance from what we’re used to today.
Next Week:
Did the Patriarchs know who their God was, introducing redemption, a surprise genealogy