And afterwards Moses and Aaron went in, and said to Pharaoh, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let my people go that they may celebrate a feast to me in the wilderness.
Israel is still in the brick-kilns when Moses and Aaron walk into the palace with a message that claims rather than asks. It raises two questions: by what right does God demand these slaves, and why does He want them out?
The demand opens by naming whose the people are. That settles the contest before it starts.
The word to him was, "Let My people go …" So the Lord at once claimed the people as His, while for a century or two the Pharaohs of Egypt had regarded the people as theirs, enslaved to them. From the outset the issue was joined. Jehovah claimed the people that Pharaoh regarded as his own. Which claimant would prevail? The issue could not be in doubt for one moment.
God makes this claim over slaves who are still in the enemy's hands.
He came down and stood among the brick-kilns of Egypt. There He saw a people groaning under the whip of the taskmasters, and He spoke those memorable words, "Let My people go". Having said it, He went on to count them up, as if to say, "These are Mine; let Me see how many I have, that not one may be left behind."
Notice who gets the message. Moses does not bring Israel an escape plan. God argues with their captor Himself, and He gives His own reason for wanting them out.
The question, remember, is that of the redemption of Israel; and so it is one in which the people could have no part. God must act for them; and He therefore is the One who enters into controversy with Pharaoh. Pharaoh, as the god of this world, Satan, holds the people in bondage. God's purpose is to deliver them, so the message given to Moses is for the ear of the Egyptian king. And what is God's object in setting Israel free? "That they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness." It is for His own joy, His own joy in the joy of His redeemed. It is for the satisfaction of His own heart. How marvellous that the joy of God is bound up with our salvation!
The verse does not stop at release. The word "go" carries a purpose with it, and that purpose changes what the exodus is about.
And notice, it is "that they may hold a feast to Me." If they were to be done with Pharaoh, it was so that they might begin with God. This was a great change. Instead of toiling under Pharaoh's taskmasters, they were to feast in company with Jehovah. Although they were to pass from Egypt into the wilderness, the divine presence was still to go with them. And if the wilderness was rough and dreary, it was the way to the land of Canaan.
Because the goal is a feast with God, half-measures will not do. The demand reaches past the labour camps to everything Egypt was.
In plain and forceful language it sets out the blessed purpose of the Lord God of Israel. He would have His people delivered from Egypt altogether and separated to Himself, so that they might feast with Him in the wilderness. Nothing could satisfy His heart about them but their entire release from the land of death and darkness. He would free them not only from Egypt's brick-kilns and taskmasters, but from its temples and its altars. He would free them from all its habits and associations, from its principles, its maxims, and its fashions.
There was another reason they had to leave. It had to do with the worship itself.
I was struck by this feature of the scene. Israel was to go out of Egypt to serve the Lord, or hold a feast to Him. They could not serve Him or offer sacrifice to Him in the land of their bondage, in front of that people. Their religious service was of such a character that Egypt would not tolerate it. It cut right across all the thoughts of that people. They would persecute and destroy them if they saw it. They must therefore go out.
Leaving Egypt looks like giving up everything for nothing. The purpose named in the verse says otherwise.
We not only turn our back on Egypt, but we go far enough away from it never to return. And for what? To do nothing? To have nothing? To be gloomy, morose, sour, or cynical? No; but to "hold a feast to the Lord." True, it is "in the wilderness"; but then the wilderness is heaven begun, when we have Christ there with us.
- Claim. God calls slaves "My people" while they are still in Pharaoh's hands. He owns them before He rescues them.
- Contest. Two owners claim the same people. God settles it with Pharaoh Himself, because the people can have no part in their own redemption.
- Cause. The stated reason for the exodus is God's own joy in the joy of those He redeems.
- Cost. Israel could not feast with God in Egypt. The break had to reach past the brick-kilns to Egypt's temples, habits and maxims.
- Consequence. Done with Pharaoh, begun with God. The wilderness becomes a feast, because His presence goes with them.
And Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah, to whose voice I am to hearken to let Israel go? I do not know Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go.
Moses and Aaron have brought God's demand into the palace. Pharaoh does not bargain; he challenges the God who sent them. His two claims — that he does not know the LORD, and that he will not obey Him — set the terms for the rest of Exodus.
Pharaoh's reply showed the man he really was, and he never moved from it.
The delivery of the message brings out Pharaoh's true character. In his answer he sets himself in direct and complete opposition to God. A solemn position! And this opposition was never softened. It went on until it ended in the overthrow and destruction of Pharaoh and his armies. That is a warning for everyone who is not reconciled to God. It also shows the terrible corruption of human nature, which can face the power of God with contempt and boldly defy Him.
The two halves of the verse belong together. One writer reads the refusal to obey as the direct result of not knowing God.
In these words Pharaoh expressed his real condition exactly. His condition was one of ignorance, and disobedience followed from it. The two go together. If a man does not know God, he cannot obey Him, for obedience always rests on knowledge. When the soul is blessed with the knowledge of God, it finds that this knowledge is life (John 17:3), and life is power; and when I get power I can act. Clearly no one can act without life. So it makes no sense to set people to doing things in order to gain the one thing that alone enables them to do anything.
Pharaoh was not short of religion. Only one God stood outside his knowledge — Jehovah, the LORD — and Israel's slavery looked to him like proof that this God had no power.
Pharaoh knew the gods of his own land, and also the gods of the nations around him that he had conquered. He had seen their images. But Jehovah, the invisible, the eternal, he did not know, and he laughed at the idea of His power. Were not Jehovah's own people Pharaoh's slaves? If Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, really was a god, why had He let His worshippers fall under the power of a nation that gave its loyalty to gods standing for Creator, Supreme Ruler, Life Giver, Deliverer and Judge — glories that belong to Jehovah alone?
There was a second thing this king did not know: what he was himself, and why he sat on the throne at all.
But Pharaoh was as ignorant of himself as he was of the Lord. He did not know that he was a poor, vile worm of the earth, and that God had raised him up for the express purpose of making known the glory of the very One he said he did not know. (Ex. 9:16; Rom. 9:17)
The claim of ignorance would not last. Pharaoh would come to know the LORD; the only question was how.
Pharaoh said he did not know the Lord, but Pharaoh had to know Him (Ex. 5:2; Ex. 9:14). If Pharaoh refused to know Him in His goodness, he must know Him in His righteousness, for His judgments were now to be shown openly, and "The LORD has made himself known; he has executed judgment."
This answer is not only ancient history. One writer hears it from people who listen to the message of grace today, and follows it through to the Lord's return.
What was Pharaoh's reply? And what is the reply of many who hear the testimony of grace, day after day? "Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice?" What a terrible answer from a soul that has never stood before Him in anything but unbelief and defiance. "I do not know the LORD." This is how the pride of man speaks, hardening his neck against the blessed God — "I do not know Him." God will take vengeance for these two things when Christ returns. He will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, taking vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Beyond the man, commentators see a picture. Pharaoh is read as a figure of a greater oppressor.
Pharaoh held the power of death over the children of Israel, and thereby kept them in bondage. He is thus a type of Satan as he is presented in Hebrews 2:14-15. Egypt with all its magnificence is clearly a type of the world, enslaving the people of God under the direction of the devil, and, ironically enough, using them to increase the power and glory of the system that oppressed them. God was now setting in motion the power that was to deliver them.
- Not knowing. "I do not know the LORD" is the root. The refusal to obey grows out of it, because obedience rests on knowing God.
- Knowing wrongly. Pharaoh knew the gods of Egypt and of the nations he had conquered. The invisible, eternal God he mocked, because Israel's slavery looked to him like proof of weakness.
- Not knowing himself. He was just as blind about himself. God had raised him up to display the glory of the very One he claimed not to know.
- Made to know. Pharaoh would know the LORD after all. Refused in His goodness, God makes Himself known in His righteousness, by the judgments He carries out.
- Still spoken. Pride still answers the message of grace this way. Vengeance falls on those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel.