NOTES for Exo 5:1-23

There are many stories in the Bible about faith passing through trials. Their content is similar in many ways: following God's promise unexpectedly leads to the completely opposite result. In this story, Moses' attempts to carry out the task God gave him, the task of saving the people from slavery, lead only to forced labor becoming harsher.

Moses and those who were ready to believe him can no longer keep going "on autopilot," when everything runs smoothly and one can only marvel at how wonderfully God has arranged everything. No, they have to stand before another choice: either all this was deception (or self-deception), or God will be faithful to His promise and will not leave them in slavery. It turns out that faith is a choice in favor of God, and tested faith is a choice in favor of God in spite of everything...

The first request of Moses and Aaron to let the people go ended in failure (vv. 1-2). God Himself, however, had told Moses about this in advance when He sent him to Egypt (Exod. 3:18-20). And then a completely natural question arises: does this mean that Pharaoh's decision was predetermined in advance?

No, it does not. This is about something else: God knows Pharaoh's heart, which is transparent to Him just as every human heart is transparent to Him, and therefore He knows that Pharaoh will not allow the people of God simply to leave the country. But what prevents Pharaoh? After all, at first Moses does not yet even speak about leaving forever; for now he asks only to let the people go for three days so that they may celebrate their religious festival and then return (vv. 1-4). But even this request is refused.

Of course, all this could be explained by administrative and economic considerations alone: such festivals distract the people from work (vv. 4-5). In addition, there was one more consideration, expressed by Pharaoh himself in the words, "I do not know the Lord" (v. 2). The Egyptian government undoubtedly had to be aware of the threat of an awakening of national or tribal self-consciousness among the tribes of the delta, who in that case could well remember other times, when their ancestors came to Egypt as conquerors and a Semitic dynasty sat on the throne of the pharaohs. In such a situation, allowing the Semites to remember their patron gods, and even more to worship them, would have been rash.

And yet the main reason was apparently elsewhere. It is no accident that immediately after the request voiced by Moses and Aaron, the discussion turns to idleness, to the fact that the people are apparently not sufficiently loaded with work, and because of idleness foolish thoughts and absurd ideas begin to enter their heads (vv. 6-9, 17). And here before us is no longer the specific logic of the Egyptian authorities, but a logic inherent in every authority in every age. In essence, every state is a social machine, a mechanism that functions more reliably and smoothly the less the "elements" that make it up think about extraneous things. From the point of view of the logic inherent in an ideally functioning state machine, it would be best for a person to be an ant or a bee, not because they are small, but because they are ideal worker-functionaries, never distracted from work by anything at all.

But a person is never farther from what God intended him to be than when he becomes like a bee or an ant. In the greatest sinner, the image of God is monstrously distorted; in the ant-person, it simply disappears. And therefore the conflict between God and every state is so ineradicable: God needs people, the state needs ants.

It is no surprise that the first failure discouraged the people, who expected immediate results from Moses' intervention and received only additional problems (Ex 5:22-23). Against this background, Moses' own bewilderment looks more strange, since it would seem that God had warned him that the Exodus would be anything but simple or quick (Ex 3:18-20). And then, in response to this bewilderment, God tells Moses something very important about His relationship with His people (Ex 6:2-8).

On the one hand, God reveals to Moses His new name, the name Yahweh (traditionally rendered in the Synodal Translation by the epithet "the Lord"), while emphasizing that He had not revealed Himself to the "fathers" by this name (Ex 6:3); on the other hand, He tells Moses about the new, special, and trusting relationship that from now on will bind Him to the descendants of Jacob (Ex 6:6-8).

Clearly, this is about the Covenant, the union between God and the people, which presupposes a new quality of relationship. The new name points to the same thing: in antiquity, a change of name was usually connected with a serious inner change in the one whose name was changed. Of course, God does not change as a human being does, but His relationship with His people can change. And here we have just such a change, one that is very important for understanding all the later history of the Jewish people: from now on, after the Covenant is concluded, there is no room in the people's life for chance or arbitrariness; everything that happens to them will be determined by their relationship with God and will depend on that relationship.

Of course, this does not mean that God's people will never have problems again, but the dreary hopelessness that marked the last decades of life in Egypt will indeed never return. And if so, there can be no failure in dealing with Pharaoh. All that is needed is time, and not much time at all compared with the hard decades already lived through. But only someone for whom the covenant is an unconditional reality can understand this. Even to Moses himself this reality was not revealed at once. It is no surprise that to everyone else the situation looked hopeless (Ex 6:9). And then God begins to act.