And they set over them service-masters to oppress them with their burdens. And they built store-cities for Pharaoh, Pithom and Rameses.
Pharaoh's fear of a growing people turns into state policy. He sets taskmasters over Israel and puts the nation to work building two cities for himself.
Pharaoh's cruelty had a strategy behind it.
His plan was to reduce all Israelites to the status of slaves. He put them under slave-drivers to keep them under constant pressure of work, so they would have no chance to organise and no strength to resist. They were forced to build two store cities, which held supplies for Pharaoh's troops. In this way they went on forging the chains of their own slavery.
One of the two cities has left solid traces in the ground.
Excavation has uncovered enough of the stronghold Pithom, long buried in the sand, to tell us today that Israel worked in Egypt just as the Bible says. The monuments and papyri show that in it we have "Pi-tom," that is, "the town of the sun-god Tom." In these times of doubt about Bible history, God lets one discovery follow another, until bricks and stones lift up their voices and declare that His Word is true.
Israel's own work built Israel's prison. One writer takes that straight into ordinary life.
They built "treasure cities" — storehouse cities, cities of war supplies. Pharaoh sets to work to keep the people down and in slavery, and for this he uses their own strength against them. He makes them labour to rivet their own chains, for these cities stood in Goshen, the land given to Israel themselves. And that is what happens everywhere the world over. Take the drunkard. Every cup he takes makes him more and more a slave to it, though he knows what a hard and bitter service it is. If it is money that a man covets, every dollar he puts into his treasury only makes his heart more set upon it.
One writer looks behind Pharaoh to the power he stands for, and to the motive behind the burdens.
Pharaoh in fact is the god of this world, and as such he must stand against the Lord's people. So we read at once of his crafty schemes and malicious plans. Their aim was to destroy Israel's prosperity and reduce the people to helpless and hopeless slavery. And what was his motive? "Lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land." Satan knows what we tend to forget: the world must hate the children of God.
Pharaoh called his plan wise. He had left one factor out of the sum.
He did not know that hundreds of years earlier, before he had ever drawn a breath, God's word and oath — "two unchangeable things" — had surely secured the full and glorious deliverance of this very people. These were the people he was now going, in his wisdom, to crush. He imagined in vain that his own management could stop the increase of a people about whom God had said, "they shall be as the stars of heaven, and as the sand on the seashore." So his wise dealing was nothing but madness and folly.
The pressure did the opposite of what Pharaoh intended.
This did not, however, hinder what God had purposed. Verse 12 records that "the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew." So here was an illustration and confirmation of the word spoken by the Psalmist: "You have given me relief when I was in distress" (Ps. 4:1). The abundant increase God gave cancelled out every effort Pharaoh made to hold them down.
The older translation he used reads "You have enlarged me when I was in distress" — which is why he ties the verse to a people God enlarged.
The same writer finds a second purpose in the bondage, on God's side.
God makes the children of Israel feel the weight of their burdens, and taste the bitterness of their slavery, to awaken in them a desire for deliverance before He begins to act for them. A sinner can be unaware of how low he has sunk, and contented, if not happy, in being far from God. But if he is to be saved, he must pass through the experience pictured by this account of the Israelites. Until then, he never knows his real state, or desires deliverance.
- Fear — Pharaoh's alarm at a growing people became a labour policy. It was meant to wear Israel down so they could neither organise nor resist.
- Chains — their own strength built Pharaoh's cities. Sin still works that way: every indulgence tightens the grip.
- Stones — Pithom has been dug out of the sand, and its own monuments name it; the ground speaks up for the record.
- Blindness — the king planned without God. His wisdom was folly against a promise sworn centuries before his birth.
- Increase — the harder the affliction pressed, the more the people multiplied. God used the yoke both to enlarge them and to make them long for rescue.
But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and spread; and they were distressed because of the children of Israel.
In Exodus 1 a king fears a growing people and sets taskmasters over them to break them. The pressure only made them grow, and their oppressors came to dread them.
Here one weak man sets himself against the eternal God.
What a sad mistake it is for a weak mortal to set himself up against the eternal God! Pharaoh might as well have tried to hold back the ocean's tide with his small hand. He could not stop the increase of a people who were the subjects of God's everlasting purpose. So although they "set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens," still "the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad." It must always be this way. "He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision" (Ps. 2:4).
What looks like an accident of history had been announced to Abraham centuries earlier, which changes how the reader should hear the word "afflicted".
God foretold the condition of the children of Israel in Exodus 1 many years before. He said to Abraham: "Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions" (Gen. 15:13-14)… God harnesses even the wrath of man to the wheels of His own decrees. He did the same when Christ was "delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God" to men who crucified and killed Him (Acts 2:23).
The verse describes a mechanism, not a coincidence: the squeezing itself is the space in which they expand.
This did not stop what God had purposed… Here was an illustration and confirmation of the word spoken by the Psalmist, "You have given me relief when I was in distress" (Ps. 4:1). The abundant increase that God gave completely cancelled out Pharaoh's efforts to suppress them.
An older translation of Psalm 4:1 reads "You have enlarged me when I was in distress." That word "enlarged" is what ties the verse to Israel's increase.
The affliction did more than raise the numbers.
In that furnace of affliction they were welded together as a nation. They entered Egypt a feeble and divided family; they left it a united and powerful nation.
The verse ends with the Egyptians in dread of Israel.
Meanwhile man's will had its way, as Israel built store-cities for Pharaoh, Pithom and Raamses. But God's providence acted also. The more the Egyptians afflicted the Israelites, the more these multiplied and spread. So fear and horror filled their masters, and they added hardship to their bondage… But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. He cuts off the memory of them from the earth, even in a day when right and wrong are turned upside down. His eyes are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry.
Commentators see more than politics behind Pharaoh's hatred.
Pharaoh is in fact the god of this world, and so he must stand against the Lord's people. We read at once of his cunning schemes and malicious plans. He means to destroy their prosperity and reduce them to helpless and hopeless bondage… Satan knows what we easily forget. The world must hate the children of God, and they, if faithful, must stand against the world.
The burden also worked on the people themselves.
The condition of the Israelites is a striking picture of the sinner — of the sinner who has been made to feel the iron yoke of his slavery to sin and Satan… God makes the children of Israel feel the weight of their burdens. He lets them taste the bitterness of their vile servitude. He does it to awaken in them a desire for deliverance, before He begins to act on their behalf.
What happened once by the Nile is treated as a standing principle for God's people.
Egypt was the place where Jacob suddenly grew into a nation… It is the rule in all the ages that have been, for all God's people… Jacob needed humbling, but he grew by it.
The same pattern runs through Israel's later history.
Here we may read the history of Israel among the nations… Their miraculous increase always comes when oppression and persecution fall on them. When oppression comes, God's time for deliverance draws near.
- Purpose — Israel multiplied because they were "the subjects of God's everlasting purpose." Pharaoh's policy was as useless as holding back the tide by hand.
- Promise — God told Abraham in Genesis 15 what would happen. Even man's wrath serves God's decrees.
- Pressure — God let them feel the yoke to awaken a desire for deliverance, and the increase He gave cancelled Pharaoh's plan out.
- Product — A feeble, divided family entered Egypt. A united, powerful nation came out of the furnace.
- Pattern — Commentators call this the rule for all God's people in every age. When oppression is heaviest, deliverance is nearest.