PHARAOH REFUSES.
Exo 5:1-23.
After forty years of obscurity and silence, Moses
re-enters the magnificent halls where he had formerly turned his
back upon so great a place. The rod of a shepherd is in his hand,
and a lowly Hebrew by his side. Men who recognise him shake their
heads, and pity or despise the fanatic who had thrown away the most
dazzling prospects for a dream. But he has long since made his
choice, and whatever misgivings now beset him have regard to his
success with Pharaoh or with his brethren, not to the wisdom of his
decision.
Nor had he reason to repent of it. The pomp of an
obsequious court was a poor thing in the eyes of an ambassador of
God, who entered the palace to speak such lofty words as never
passed the lips of any son of Pharaoh's daughter. He was presently
to become a god unto Pharaoh, with Aaron for his prophet.
In itself, his presence there was formidable. The
Hebrews had been feared when he was an infant. Now their cause was
espoused by a man of culture, who had allied himself with their
natural leaders, and was returned, with the deep and steady fire of
a zeal which forty years of silence could not quench, to assert the
rights of Israel as an independent people.
There is a terrible power in strong convictions,
especially when supported by the sanctions of religion. Luther on
one side, Loyola on the other, were mightier than kings when armed
with this tremendous weapon. Yet there are forces upon which
patriotism and fanaticism together break in vain. Tyranny and pride
of race have also strong impelling ardours, and carry men far.
Pharaoh is in earnest as well as Moses, and can act with perilous
energy. And this great narrative begins the story of a nation's
emancipation with a human demand, boldly made, but defeated by the
pride and vigour of a startled tyrant and the tameness of a
downtrodden people. The limitations of human energy are clearly
exhibited before the direct interference of God begins. All that a
brave man can do, when nerved by lifelong aspiration and by a sudden
conviction that the hour of destiny has struck, all therefore upon
which rationalism can draw, to explain the uprising of Israel, is
exhibited in this preliminary attempt, this first demand of Moses.
Menephtah was no doubt the new Pharaoh whom the
brothers accosted so boldly. What we glean of him elsewhere is
highly suggestive of some grave event left unrecorded, exhibiting to
us a man of uncontrollable temper yet of broken courage, a ruthless,
godless, daunted man. There is a legend that he once hurled his
spear at the Nile when its floods rose too high, and was punished
with ten years of blindness. In the Libyan war, after fixing a time
when he should join his vanguard, with the main army, a celestial
vision forbade him to keep his word in person, and the victory was
gained by his lieutenants. In another war, he boasts of having
slaughtered the people and set fire to them, and netted the entire
country as men net birds. Forty years then elapse without war and
without any great buildings; there are seditions and internal
troubles, and the dynasty closes with his son.[9]
All this is exactly what we should expect, if a series of tremendous
blows had depopulated a country, abolished an army, and removed two
millions of the working classes in one mass.
But it will be understood that this identification,
concerning which there is now a very general consent of competent
authorities, implies that the Pharaoh was not himself engulfed with
his army. Nothing is on the other side except a poetic assertion in
Psa 136:15, which is not that God destroyed, but that He "shook off"
Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea, because His mercy endureth for
ever.
To this king, then, whose audacious family had
usurped the symbols of deity for its head-dress, and whose father
boasted that in battle "he became like the god Mentu" and "was as
Baal," the brothers came as yet without miracle, with no credentials
except from slaves, and said, "Thus saith Jehovah, the God of
Israel, Let My people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the
wilderness." The issue was distinctly raised: did Israel belong to
Jehovah or to the king? And Pharaoh answered, with equal decision,
"Who is Jehovah, that I should hearken unto His voice? I know not
Jehovah, and what is more, I will not let Israel go."
Now, the ignorance of the king concerning Jehovah
was almost or quite blameless: the fault was in his practical
refusal to inquire. Jehovah was no concern of his: without waiting
for information, he at once decided that his grasp on his captives
should not relax. And his second fault, which led to this, was the
same grinding oppression of the helpless which for eighty years
already had brought upon his nation the guilt of blood. Crowned and
national cupidity, the resolution to wring from their slaves the
last effort consistent with existence, such greed as took offence at
even the momentary pause of hope while Moses pleaded, because "the
people of the land are many, and ye make them rest from their
burdens,"--these shut their hearts against reason and religion, and
therefore God presently hardened those same hearts against natural
misgiving and dread and awe-stricken submission to His judgments.
For it was against religion also that he was
unyielding. In his ample Pantheon there was room at least for the
possibility of the entrance of the Hebrew God, and in refusing to
the subject people, without investigation, leisure for any worship,
the king outraged not only humanity, but Heaven.
The brothers proceed to declare that they have
themselves met with the deity, and there must have been many in the
court who could attest at least the sincerity of Moses; they ask for
liberty to spend a day in journeying outward and another in
returning, with a day between for their worship, and warn the king
of the much greater loss to himself which may be involved in
vengeance upon refusal, either by war or pestilence. But the
contemptuous answer utterly ignores religion: "Wherefore do ye,
Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their work? Get ye unto your
burdens."
And his counter-measures are taken without loss of
time: "that same day" the order goes out to exact the regular
quantity of brick, but supply no straw for binding it together. It
is a pitiless mandate, and illustrates the fact, very natural though
often forgotten, that men as a rule cannot lose sight of the
religious value of their fellow-men, and continue to respect or pity
them as before. We do not deny that men who professed religion have
perpetrated nameless cruelties, nor that unbelievers have been
humane, sometimes with a pathetic energy, a tenacious grasp on the
virtue still possible to those who have no Heaven to serve. But it
is plain that the average man will despise his brother, and his
brother's rights, just in proportion as the Divine sanctions of
those rights fade away, and nothing remains to be respected but the
culture, power and affluence which the victim lacks. "I know not
Israel's God" is a sure prelude to the refusal to let Israel go, and
even to the cruelty which beats the slave who fails to render
impossible obedience.
"They be idle, therefore they cry, saying, Let us go
and sacrifice to our God." And still there are men who hold the same
opinion, that time spent in devotion is wasted, as regards the
duties of real life. In truth, religion means freshness, elasticity
and hope: a man will be not slothful in business, but fervent in
spirit, if he serves the Lord. But perhaps immortal hope, and the
knowledge that there is One Who shall break all prison bars and let
the oppressed go free, are not the best narcotics to drug down the
soul of a man into the monotonous tameness of a slave.
In the tenth verse we read that the Egyptian
taskmasters and the officers combined to urge the people to their
aggravated labours. And by the fourteenth verse we find that the
latter officials were Hebrew officers whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had
set over them.
So that we have here one of the surest and worst
effects of slavery--namely, the demoralisation of the oppressed, the
readiness of average men, who can obtain for themselves a little
relief, to do so at their brethren's cost. These officials were
scribes, "writers": their business was to register the amount of
labour due, and actually rendered. These were doubtless the more
comfortable class, of whom we read afterwards that they possessed
property, for their cattle escaped the murrain and their trees the
hail. And they had the means of acquiring quite sufficient skill to
justify whatever is recorded of the works done in the construction
of the tabernacle. The time is long past when scepticism found
support for its incredulity in these details.
One advantage of the last sharp agony of persecution
was that it finally detached this official class from the Egyptian
interest, and welded Israel into a homogeneous people, with officers
already provided. For, when the supply of bricks came short, these
officials were beaten, and, as if no cause of the failure were
palpable, they were asked, with a malicious chuckle, "Wherefore have
ye not fulfilled your task both yesterday and today, as heretofore?"
And when they explain to Pharaoh, in words already expressive of
their alienation, that the fault is with "thine own people," they
are repulsed with insult, and made to feel themselves in evil case.
For indeed they needed to be chastised for their forgetfulness of
God. How soon would their hearts have turned back, how much more
bitter yet would have been their complaints in the desert, if it
were not for this last experience! But if judgment began with them,
what should presently be the fate of their oppressors?
Their broken spirit shows itself by murmuring, not
against Pharaoh, but against Moses and Aaron, who at least had
striven to help them. Here, as in the whole story, there is not a
trace of either the lofty spirit which could have evolved the Mosaic
law, or the hero-worship of a later age.
It is written that Moses, hearing their reproaches,
"returned unto the Lord," although no visible shrine, no consecrated
place of worship, can be thought of.
What is involved is the consecration which the heart
bestows upon any place of privacy and prayer, where, in shutting out
the world, the soul is aware of the special nearness of its King. In
one sense we never leave Him, never return to Him. In another sense,
by direct address of the attention and the will, we enter into His
presence; we find Him in the midst of us, Who is everywhere. And all
ceremonial consecrations do their office by helping us to realise
and act upon the presence of Him in Whom, even when He is forgotten,
we live and move and have our being. Therefore in the deepest sense
each man consecrates or desecrates for himself his own place of
prayer. There is a city where the Divine presence saturates every
consciousness with rapture. And the seer beheld no temple therein,
for the Lord God the Almighty, and the Lamb, are the temple of it.
Startling to our notions of reverence are the words
in which Moses addresses God. "Lord, why hast Thou evil entreated
this people? Why is it that Thou hast sent me? for since I came to
Pharaoh to speak in Thy name, he hath evil entreated this people;
neither hast Thou delivered Thy people at all." It is almost as if
his faith had utterly given way, like that of the Psalmist when he
saw the wicked in great prosperity, while waters of a full cup were
wrung out by the people of God (Psa 73:3, Psa 73:10). And there is
always a dangerous moment when the first glow of enthusiasm burns
down, and we realise how long the process, how bitter the
disappointments, by which even a scanty measure of success must be
obtained. Yet God had expressly warned Moses that Pharaoh would not
release them until Egypt had been smitten with all His plagues. But
the warning passed unapprehended, as we let many a truth pass
intellectually accepted it is true, but only as a theorem, a vague
and abstract formula. As we know that we must die, that worldly
pleasures are brief and unreal, and that sin draws evil in its
train, yet wonder when these phrases become solid and practical in
our experience, so, in the first flush and wonder of the promised
emancipation, Moses had forgotten the predicted interval of trial.
His words would have been profane and irreverent
indeed but for one redeeming quality. They were addressed to God
Himself. Whenever the people murmured, Moses turned for help to Him
Who reckons the most unconventional and daring appeal to Him far
better than the most ceremonious phrases in which men cover their
unbelief: "Lord, wherefore hast Thou evil entreated this people?" is
in reality a much more pious utterance than "I will not ask, neither
will I tempt the Lord." Wherefore Moses receives large
encouragement, although no formal answer is vouchsafed to his daring
question.
Even so, in our dangers, our torturing illnesses,
and many a crisis which breaks through all the crust of forms and
conventionalities, God may perhaps recognise a true appeal to Him,
in words which only scandalise the orthodoxy of the formal and
precise. In the bold rejoinder of the Syro-Phoenician woman He
recognised great faith. His disciples would simply have sent her
away as clamorous.
Moses had again failed, even though Divinely
commissioned, in the work of emancipating Israel, and thereupon he
had cried to the Lord Himself to undertake the work. This abortive
attempt, however, was far from useless: it taught humility and
patience to the leader, and it pressed the nation together, as in a
vice, by the weight of a common burden, now become intolerable. At
the same moment, the iniquity of the tyrant was filled up.
But the Lord did not explain this, in answer to the
remonstrance of Moses. Many things happen, for which no distinct
verbal explanation is possible, many things of which the deep
spiritual fitness cannot be expressed in words. Experience is the
true commentator upon Providence, if only because the slow building
of character is more to God than either the hasting forward of
deliverance or the clearing away of intellectual mists. And it is
only as we take His yoke upon us that we truly learn of Him. Yet
much is implied, if not spoken out, in the words, "Now (because the
time is ripe) shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh (I, because
others have failed); for by a strong hand shall he let them go, and
by a strong hand shall he drive them out of the land." It is under
the weight of the "strong hand" of God Himself that the tyrant must
either bend or break.
Similar to this is the explanation of many delays in
answering our prayer, of the strange raising up of tyrants and
demagogues, and of much else that perplexes Christians in history
and in their own experience. These events develop human character,
for good or evil. And they give scope for the revealing of the
fulness of the power which rescues. We have no means of measuring
the supernatural force which overcomes but by the amount of the
resistance offered. And if all good things came to us easily and at
once, we should not become aware of the horrible pit, our rescue
from which demands gratitude. The Israelites would not have sung a
hymn of such fervent gratitude when the sea was crossed, if they had
not known the weight of slavery and the anguish of suspense. And in
heaven the redeemed who have come out of great tribulation sing the
song of Moses and of the Lamb.
Fresh air, a balmy wind, a bright blue sky--which of
us feels a thrill of conscious exultation for these cheap delights?
The released prisoner, the restored invalid, feels it:
"The common earth, the air, the skies, To him are
opening paradise."
Even so should Israel be taught to value
deliverance. And now the process could begin.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Robinson, "The
Pharaohs of the Bondage."