Exodus 1: 14 “Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were fruitful and increased abundantly; they multiplied and became exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. Then a new king, who did not know Joseph, came to power in Egypt. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become too numerous and too powerful for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase even more; and if a war breaks out, they may join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country. ”
So the Egyptians appointed taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. As a result, they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and flourished; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. They worked the Israelites ruthlessly and made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar, and with all kinds of work in the fields. Every service they imposed was harsh.”
The terrible seven years’ famine has passed into history. Joseph and his brothers are dead, as is the pharaoh who honored Joseph. Thanks to Joseph securing the land of Goshen for his family and their livestock, the Israelites have remained separate from the Egyptians. Though only seventy people came to Egypt with Jacob, his descendants have multiplied so much that “the land was filled with them.”
A new king who never knew Joseph has come to power, and he’s worried about the Israelites as a large minority. What is troubling this new pharaoh is the thought that if war comes, the Israelites might side with the enemy – a perfectly reasonable fear. But this pharaoh is also worried that the Israelites might leave the country. Why should this be a concern? After all, if you are worried about a tribal group becoming numerous, wouldn’t you be relieved if they left the country? But here’s the thing; the Egyptians have been getting a lot of work out of the Israelites. Remember that the Israelites keep livestock, a profession that is anathema to the Egyptians. The Egyptians have been perfectly happy to leave the herding of cattle and sheep and goats to the Israelites. If the Israelites leave, someone else will have to handle livestock.
Pharaoh thinks the answer to the Israelite problem is to turn them into slaves and work them as hard as possible. This plan backfires because the harder the Israelites work, the more they multiply.
APPLICATION: We are beginning a study of how God has demonstrated His mercy in the story told in Exodus. Today’s scripture might have you scratching your head. Nothing in this passage seems to speak of God’s mercy, apart from the fact that the harder the Israelites work and the more they suffer, the more their population grows. But God has a perfect plan. By now, the Israelites have been in Egypt for centuries and have settled there. Conditions might not be perfect, but none of the current generation of Israelites has ever seen the Promised Land or knows anything about it. If God is going to get the Israelites to leave Egypt, it’s going to take something even stronger than dynamite to blast them out of their comfort zones!
There’s also the fact that the Israelites have been enjoying a more leisurely way of life than they did as nomads, becoming physically soft. God knows the challenges that lie ahead; if these people are going to survive the desert, they’re going to have to get a whole lot stronger and tougher. Standing around watching herds and flocks in confined grazing areas does not build the kind of muscle the Israelites are going to need on their journey. So God moves Pharaoh to force the Israelites to work on two cities. They may also have worked on some of the pyramids that were being built around this time.
When I was growing up on the farm, we kept pigs out on open pastures with small houses for shelter. The fun began when we had to move a large group of pigs from one field to another. Using larger gates to create an enclosure and then using smaller hand – held gates, we would herd the pigs close to an open gate hole. But the pigs were arch – conservatives and they had NO interest in moving to a new pasture, no matter how nice it was! They wanted their familiar pasture, thank you, even if they had already consumed all the clover and timothy and alfalfa and had trampled the ground into a quagmire. We soon learned that the most effective way to get the pigs through that open gate hole was to keep moving the large gates so that the pen would become progressively smaller. Eventually, the pigs had no choice and would back through the gate hole VERY RELUCTANTLY. Sometimes we had to bang the pigs on their noses with the smaller gates so that they would turn around and see that there was a path to freedom, if they would only take it.
Most people are like those pigs. It takes a great deal to convince someone that it’s time for a change. All the time that the Israelites were suffering, God was watching and thinking, “There, Shmuel, there Isaac, ten years from now you are going to be really grateful that you have all those muscles.” Today, what is God trying to force you to do that you are resisting? Perhaps there’s an open gate and you just need to turn around and go through it!
PRAYER: Father God, thank you for your mercy! Thank you that you show “tough love” when necessary. Help us to cooperate with your mercy rather than fighting it, and to realize that trials are sent to perfect us and not to destroy us. In the mighty Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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