ExodusLesson #4

“Moses Confronts Pharaoh”(Exodus 5: 1 – 7: 7)

Review

As we entered Lesson #3 Moses was 80 years old, a man at the end of his life. Adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses had grown up in the palace of Pharaoh as a “Prince of Egypt,” educated in “all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7: 22), a young man groomed for greatness as a statesman, politician or general.After murdering a slave master in Egypt, Moses went on the run, settling “off the grid” in the land of Midian where he spent the next forty years as a shepherd, tending his father-in-law’s flocks. To any objective reader, Moses’ great promise as a young man had come to nothing.And then, in the midst of the barren desert, God appeared to Moses in a burning bush and commanded him to return to Egypt, confront Pharaoh and say to him: “Let my people go!”But it was too late. Moses hadn’t a clue who this god was, and besides Moses was an old man, well beyond his prime. After God browbeats Moses into submission, Moses reluctantly heads for Egypt, accompanied by his brother, Aaron.

PreviewIn Lesson #4 Moses and Aaron arrive in Egypt and confront Pharaoh: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Let my people go . . .” (5: 1).

The meeting doesn’t go well.

Pharaoh replies to their demands: “Who is the Lord that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go” (5: 2). Understandably, Pharaoh sees Moses and Aaron as two senile lunatics, and he has them unceremoniously ejected from the court. Pharaoh then increases the Israelite’s workload, reasoning that the Israelites have too much time on their hands: they are lazy.The Israelites respond to Moses and Aaron’s efforts not with gratitude, but with anger and contempt: “You have made us [a stench in the nostrils of Pharaoh and his servants], putting a sword into their hands to kill us” (5: 21).

 

Master of the Dinteville Allegory. Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh (oil on wood), 1537. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

This extraordinary allegorical portrait depicts the Dinteville brothers, at a critical time in their relationship with the French king, Francis I, acting out a scene from the Exodus.

Afterwards, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast for me in the wilderness.’”

(Exodus 5: 1)

Once Moses and Aaron gain access to Pharaoh, the leader of the greatest civilization on the planet, there is none of the deferential bowing and scraping so conventional in such a scene. They immediately announce: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: “Let my people go . . ..” The announcement begins with a strong imperative verb, absent the expected Hebrew article of entreaty, na’. This command is brutally blunt, and in Pharaoh’s eyes, astoundingly presumptuous.

Pharaoh answered, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go.”

(Exodus 5: 2)

Pharaoh is taken aback at the impudence of these two old men. He responds, “Who is the Lord . . ..” Pharaoh has never heard of this Semitic YHWH (“the Lord”), and even if he has, there is no reason that he, in a polytheistic society and having divine status himself, should recognize the authority of some minor desert god.

This verse is best read with a scathing, sarcastic tone: “Who is this ‘the Lord’ that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know this ‘the Lord,’ and I will not let Israel go.”

They replied, “The God of the Hebrews has come to meet us. Let us go, [please], a three day’s journey in the wilderness, that we may offer sacrifice to the Lord, our God, so that he does not strike us with the plague or the sword.”

(Exodus 5: 3)Moses and Aaron’s initial demand was an unconditional imperative, spoken in the voice of God (“Thus says the Lord”). Now Moses and Aaron change tactics. They speak in their own voice, not God’s, and they use the jussive verb form (“let us go”) with the particle of entreaty (“please” or “pray”—present in the Hebrew, but not present in our NAB translation); they set a timeframe (“a three day’s journey”); and they offer an explanation (“so that he [God] does not strike us with the plague or the sword”).

You shall no longer supply the people with straw for their brick making as before. Let them go and gather their own straw! Yet you shall levy upon them the same quota of bricks as they made previously. Do not reduce it. They are lazy . . ..

(Exodus 5: 7-8)

After unceremoniously tossing Moses and Aaron out, Pharaoh orders the Egyptian taskmasters and their Hebrew foremen to withhold straw for the making of sun-baked bricks, a critical component that creates cohesion and durability. Instead, the Hebrews are to scrabble for stubble and straw on their own, yet maintain the same daily quota of bricks.

The pyramid of Amenemhet III at Hawara, Egypt.Made of mud bricks during the Middle Kingdom period, 12th dynasty, c. 1750 B.C.

Photography by Ana Maria Vargas

Dr. Creasy holding a sun-baked mud & straw brick.Pyramid of Amenemhet, Hawara, Egypt.

Photography by Ana Maria Vargas

The confrontation with Pharaoh begins, “Thus says the Lord” (5: 1) and it ends with “Thus says Pharaoh” (5: 10). This deliberate framing in the story positions

God and Pharaoh as opponents, each with divine imperative and iron will.

Get ready to rumble!

Amunhotep II Louvre Museum, Paris.

GodMichaelangelo, Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.

As we begin Exodus 6, God reiterates his vow to bring Israel out of Egypt and “into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (6: 8), and he does so on the strength of his proclamation that “I am the Lord.”

As God “stepped out of the shadows” in the burning bush episode (2: 23-25) where “God” (Elohim) is repeated 5 times, so the phrase “I am the Lord” (YHWH) is repeated 5 times in God’s reiterated vow to bring the Israelites out of Egypt and into the Promised Land in 6: 1-13, framing the vow in verses 2 and 8, and repeating “Lord” (YHWH) 3 times in between.

In the first episode God “heard,” “was mindful,” “saw” and “knew,” and thus he reenters the story that began in Genesis. Here in the second episode, God vows action to correct what he “heard,” “was mindful” of, “saw” and “knew.” God’s involvement is intensified from the first episode to the second, as is his presence, reflected in the movement from “God” (Elohim) in the first episode to “Lord” (YHWH) in the second.

Moses’ response to God’s intensified presence and to his vow is not to believe him!

Moses protested to the Lord, “If the Israelites did not listen to me, how is it possible that Pharaoh will listen to me, poor speaker that I am?” [literally, “a man of uncircumcised lips”].

Our story is then abruptly interrupted by a genealogy of Moses and Aaron’s family:

The House of Jacob(First three sons)

RubenSimeonLevi

Gershon, Kohath and Merari Amram, Izhar, Hebron, Uzziel Aaron, Moses, Miriam Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, Ithamar

Phinehas

After the genealogical interruption, we continue our story, employing another example of “resumptive repetition” (repeating the sentence or phrase where the interruption began, as we saw in Exodus 1: 1-7)—

Moses protested to the Lord, “If the Israelites did not listen to me, how is it possible that Pharaoh will listen to me, poor speaker that I am?” (6: 12).

***** [Genealogical interruption]

But Moses protested to the Lord, “Since I am a poor speaker, how is it possible that Pharaoh will listen to me?” (6: 30).

How is it possible that Pharaoh will listen to Moses?

I will make Pharaoh so headstrong that, despite the many signs and wonders that I work in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Therefore I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring my armies, my people the Israelites out of the land of Egypt. All Egyptians will know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of their midst.

(Exodus 7: 3-5)

“I will make Pharaoh so headstrong that, despite the many signs and wonders that I work in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you” (7: 3).

The traditional translation here is, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart . . ..” Three different Hebrew verbs are used in our story for “hardening Pharaoh’s heart”: 1) hiqshah, “to harden”; 2) hizeq, “to toughen”; and 3) kaved, “to be heavy,” not “heavy” in the English sense of “sorrowful,” but in the sense of “unfeeling” and “inflexible.”

When God “hardens” Pharaoh’s heart he is not putting something into Pharaoh’s heart that is not there; rather, he is applying pressure to bring out of Pharaoh’s heart what is already in it: anger, contempt and arrogance.

Hardening Pharaoh’s heart allows God to unleash his power and to demonstrate vividly Pharaoh’s impotence and the impotence of the Egyptian gods.

The Lord is a

warrior;YHWH is his

name!

(Exodus 15: 3)

And with that, God declares war on Pharaoh and the gods of Egypt, launching his first assault: turning the Nile River into blood, bringing massive death and destruction from the very life-source of Egypt.

Questions for discussion and thought

1. If you were Pharaoh, how would you respond to Moses and Aaron at their first meeting?

2. If you were an Israelite slave making bricks, how would you respond to Moses and Aaron?

3. How does the God portrayed in Exodus differ from the God portrayed in Genesis?

4. Nowhere in Genesis or Exodus does God claim to be the only god. Why not?

5. Why is a genealogy inserted between 6: 13 and 6: 28?

Copyright © 2014 by William C. Creasy All rights reserved. No part of this course—audio, video, photography, maps, timelines or other media—may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval devices without permission in writing or a licensing agreement from the copyright holder.