Read with Me
Exodus 1:1-14 (HCSB)
These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob; each came with his family:
2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah;
Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin;
Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher.
The total number of Jacob’s descendants was 70; Joseph was already in Egypt.
Then Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died. But the Israelites were fruitful, increased rapidly, multiplied, and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with them.
A new king, who had not known Joseph, came to power in Egypt. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we are. Let us deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further, and if war breaks out, they may join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.” So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. They built Pithom and Rameses as supply cities for Pharaoh. But the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. They worked the Israelites ruthlessly and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.
Listen with Me
As Moses continued the history he had begun in Genesis on this new scroll, he backed up a bit to recap the emigration of the Israelites from Canaan to Egypt. He did not recap the famine or the whole story of Joseph and his brothers. Those were available on the first scroll of the law. Instead, his focus was on the fact that the Israelites who came into Egypt were very few in number – only 70 men plus their wives, daughters and slaves.
Things went well for Israel through the end of the 12th dynasty, and even through the 150-year reign of the Hyksos, who were also of Semitic origin. It was shortly after the native Egyptians regained control of the country in the 1570s BC that the new Pharaoh rose up who didn’t know anything about Joseph.
What this new Pharaoh did know was that they had finally succeeded in ousting their Semitic overlords, but that there was still this large and growing group of Semites still living in Goshen. If the Hyksos tried to reconquer the land, there was great potential for the Israelites to join with them, and with that large a force, they could easily succeed. From that standpoint, the potential for disaster was serious.
Pharaoh’s solution was to enslave the Israelites, to subjugate them to the point that they would have neither the mindset nor the power to rebel, and to exhaust them so thoroughly that they would be too tired to multiply. But as Moses points out, that plan didn’t work. The Israelites were demoralized and exhausted, that is true. But by God’s power, they multiplied even more rapidly under the yoke of slavery.
It had always been God’s intention, indeed, His promise, to grow the Israelites into a great nation in the foreign land in which they would live for 400 years. And even in the midst of being enslaved, God was fulfilling that promise.
Pray with Me
Father even when the odds seem to be stacked against You, even when things seem impossible, You still keep every one of Your promises to the letter. And You still keep every one of Your promises today for all those who love You and who keep Your commandments. Thank You, Lord, for Your faithful and everlasting love. Amen.