Go and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, Jehovah the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, hath appeared to me, saying, I have indeed visited you, and [seen] that which is done unto you in Egypt;
God speaks to Moses at the burning bush and gives him a message. It goes first to the elders of Israel, not to Pharaoh. The words He chooses are old: the names of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and a promise Joseph spoke as he lay dying.
God could have introduced Himself by sheer power. Instead He ties His name — Jehovah, which the ESV prints as "the LORD" — to three men long dead, and to the people who came from them.
God takes care to say another word: "Jehovah the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you… This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations." How infinitely gracious of God! The name He takes forever in connection with Israel is not the one that reduces every other creature to its own nothingness. It is not the name that makes everything merely the result of His word and His will. He loves and cherishes the name in which He has bound up the objects of His choice with Himself.
This title also has something to say about death itself.
God had sent Moses out from "the bush" to be their deliverer. He sent him under one title: "the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob," the "I am" who had looked on His people and cared for them. A living God in covenant with men meant life, not death; and if death were there, then a life supreme above it. So resurrection had to fill out such a declaration. The hand God held out to man was not going to clasp the limp fingers of a corpse.
Where the ESV reads "I have observed you," older translations have "I have surely visited you." Joseph used that same phrase as he lay dying in Egypt.
On his deathbed Joseph "took an oath of the sons of Israel, saying, 'God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here'" (Gen. 50:25)… To the natural eye there was little likelihood, when Joseph was dying, of his people leaving Egypt. But this dying saint rested on the sure word and promise of God… Nearly four hundred years passed away. Then God did visit His people, the oath still held, and Joseph's bones went with them when they left Egypt.
The message is not only that God will act. It is that He has watched, and knows the details.
He began to show more than His grace in giving His promises to the Seed, which faith could lay hold of. He showed His own thoughtful love, caring for the need and sorrows of His people… He took notice of every circumstance of their trouble and sorrow.
The promise does not stop at leaving Egypt. It runs on to a good land.
Salvation by such a One must be a complete salvation. It is not complete until the land of promise is their own… The land is good and large, flowing with milk and honey. It is not a land of narrowness, as Egypt is… There is all "fatness," which is the literal meaning of the word for milk. There is all sweetness, as the honey implies. Salvation for us must end in satisfaction, or it is not salvation.
God sends Moses to a small group, yet the message is for a whole nation. The elders stood in for everyone.
In Ex. 4:29, Moses and Aaron gathered the elders of the people. In verses 30 and 31 these same men are called "the people." So "the children of Israel" are seen here in the persons of their representatives, and get credit for what they do. Yet in fact they may have, and must have, been a small number compared with the whole nation. They were the heads of the people, and represented the people then and always.
The message reached the people, and their answer was worship.
Moses had said, "They will not believe me or listen to my voice." But the people did believe, just as the Lord had said. They heard how He had visited them and looked on their affliction. Touched by His grace, they bowed their heads and worshipped.
- Surely seen. God's first word about His people in Egypt is that He noticed. He already knew every detail of their trouble and sorrow.
- Surely visited. The phrase answers Joseph's dying oath, spoken four centuries before. Delay never cancelled the promise.
- Surely named. He comes as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob — That name binds Him to His people forever, and it means life, not death.
- Surely gathered. The message goes to the elders, who stand in for the whole nation; what they receive, Israel receives.
- Surely brought in. Rescue is not the goal — a land of fatness and sweetness is. Salvation that stops short of satisfaction is not yet complete.
and I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt, unto the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, unto a land flowing with milk and honey.
God tells Moses what He plans to do for a nation still in slavery: take them out of Egypt's affliction and into a land where six peoples already live. So is rescue the whole of salvation, or only its first half?
The verse joins two acts, and they belong together. One writer warns against a message that stops halfway.
But those evangelists preach a very defective gospel who would only bring the sinner to the cross and leave him there. This is not deliverance. All this — the scarlet line, the true token, the gathering them to the house of Rahab — all this was only preparation for two things. The purpose of God was to bring them out, and to bring them in.
For Israel to settle for the first half would have been a slight on the God who promised both.
The Lord tells Moses what He intends, and speaks tenderly of having seen His people's affliction, heard their cry, and known their sorrow. So the purpose of grace included not only deliverance from slavery, but bringing them into the blessings of Canaan. For Israel to be content with the one and fall short of the other would dishonour that blessed purpose of God's grace, if not be presumptuous self-will.
The announcement leaves out the forty years that followed. One writer notes the silence.
He now announces His purpose to Moses... Not a word is said of the wilderness, and its forty years of endurance and toil. His plan was to test them there, which He did; but His purpose was to bring them to the place where He could dwell... He would bring us into a place where His own heart can be satisfied, and where He may dwell with and enjoy His people.
The desert was real, but it belonged to a different category — God's ways with His people rather than His purpose for them.
What was the purpose of God? To bring them out, and bring them in. The wilderness was no part of God's purpose, but it was part of the ways of God. They had to learn themselves.
The phrase is not decoration. Each word describes the land, and both set it against Egypt.
Six nations are named here to be overthrown — the full power of evil — and the land is good and large, flowing with milk and honey. It is not a cramped land, as Egypt is... There is all "fatness," which is what the word for milk means, and all sweetness, as the honey implies. Salvation for us must lead to satisfaction, or it is not salvation. Our Canaan is to be entered now by faith.
Another writer marks where the abundance came from:
The blessings of that land were earthly, but they came from the hand of God. They were not won by irrigation and hard work, as they were in Egypt.
God names the peoples already living in the land. One writer explains why they could not stay.
Ham's descendants were settled in the land when the children of Israel entered it. But God had set it apart for Israel, and the Canaanites had to be driven out of the land of promise.
Another writer reads their names as a picture of what still blocks our enjoyment of what God has given.
They suggest those powers of evil which preoccupy and would prevent our enjoyment of our God-given inheritance in Christ. The Hittite, "child of terror" — how spiritual dread makes cowards of us all!... The Amorite, "the talker," not the doer of the Word. The Canaanite, "the trafficker"... while the Jebusite, "the treader down," never rests until all divine things are trampled under foot. All of them must be cast out.
The instructions given with this promise already include Pharaoh's refusal and how God would break it.
These instructions are important for all time; for they place beyond doubt the exact foreknowledge of God. He knew whom He had to deal with, what resistance He would meet, and how it would be overcome. He saw all things from beginning to end. No difficulty or trial can come to us which our God has not foreseen, and for which His grace has not already made provision.
The people who first heard this promise never entered the land. One writer sets that beside what they missed:
Some must enter there, even though the people who first heard the good news of Canaan did not enter in because of unbelief. Those who did enter would be blessed in that exceedingly good land. There they would eat bread without shortage, and lack nothing in it.
- Out. God's first word is rescue from affliction — but rescue is the opening move, not the destination.
- In. He brought them out to bring them in. A rescue that stops at the border leaves God's purpose unfinished.
- Not through. The wilderness never appears in this promise. God tested His people there, but His purpose was the land where He could dwell with them.
- Full. Milk means fatness, honey means sweetness. The blessing came from God's hand, not from irrigation and toil as in Egypt.
- Held. Six nations hold the ground, and God will drive them out. One writer reads them as the powers that still crowd out our enjoyment of what God has given. Unbelief kept the first hearers outside.