NOTES for Exo 5:1-23

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.