EXPOSITION
Smarting under the sense of injustice, the Israelite officers "came and cried to Pharaoh" (Exodus 5:15), supposing that he could not have intended such manifest unfairness and cruelty. They were conscious to themselves of having done their utmost, and of having failed simply because the thing required was impossible. Surely the king would understand this, if they pointed it out, and would either allow straw as before, or diminish the number of the bricks. But the king had no desire for justice, and did not even pretend to it. He asked for no particulars, ordered no inquiry into the ground of complaint; but turned upon the complainants with the cuckoo cry—"Idle, idle yourselves—else ye had no time to come here; go, work—go, work." Then the officers felt that they were indeed "in evil case" (Exodus 5:19)—the king was determined not to do justice—no hope remained—they must be beaten again and again, until they died of the punishment (Exodus 5:21).
Came and cried. The shrill "cry" of Orientals when making complaint has often been noticed by travellers, and is probably here alluded to. To Pharaoh. See the "Introductory paragraph" at the beginning of the chapter, where it has been noticed that complainants had free access to the presence of Egyptian kings.
They say to us. Or, "they keep saying to us." The participle is used, which implies continuance or repetition. The fruit is in thine own people. Literally, "Thine own people is in fault," or "sins."
Ye are idle, etc. Compare Exodus 5:8. Pharaoh is evidently pleased with his "happy thought." It seems to him clever, witty, humorous, to tax overworked people with idleness; and equally clever to say to religious people—"Your religion is a mere pretence. You do not want to worship. You want a holiday." We may remark further that idleness and hypocrisy were two sins of the deepest dye, according to Egyptian notions.
Go therefore now and work—i.e. "Off with you to the brickfields at once, and get to your own special work of superintendence, which you are neglecting so long as you remain here. It is useless to remain. I reject both of your requests. Straw shall not be given; and the tale of bricks required shall be no less."
The officers … did see that they were in evil case. See the "Introductory paragraph" to this section, and comp. Exodus 5:21.
HOMILETICS
A wicked man's persistence in wrong-doing.
Pharaoh when he first gave the order to withhold straw (Exodus 5:7), may not have known the amount of misery he was causing. He may have meant no more than to give the people full occupation, and so prevent such gatherings as that from which Moses and Aaron had come (Exodus 4:29-2), when they appeared before him with their demands. He may not have realised to himself the idea that he was setting his bondsmen an impossible task. But now this fact was brought home to him, and he was asked, as a matter of simple justice, either to let straw be furnished as before, or to allow some diminution in the number of the bricks. It can scarcely be doubted that he knew and felt the demand made to be just. There were the officers before him with the wheals upon their backs. Would they have incurred the severe punishment, could they by any possibility have avoided it? Pharaoh must have known that they would not. But he would not relent. As he had begun, he would continue. He had been mere cruel than he meant; but he did not care—it was only Hebrews and bondsmen who had suffered; what mattered their agonies? So he dismisses the complainants with jeers and scoffs: "Ye are idle, ye are hypocrites; go, work." So bad men almost always go on from bad to worse by a "facile descent;" severity deepens into cruelty, unkindness into injustice, religious indifference into impiety. Stop, then, the beginnings of wrong-doing. Principiis obsta. Crush the nascent germs of vice in thy heart, O man! Master them, or they will master thee!
Sufferings, even at the hand of lawful authorities, not always deserved.
"Thy servants are beaten; but the fault is in thine own people." Punishment often visits the wrong back. Kings commit injuries or follies, and their subjects suffer. Employers are greedy of gain, and their "hands" must work overtime, go without sleep, trench on the Sunday rest. Wholesale tradesmen adulterate goods, and retail traders are blamed and lose custom. Justice itself is often at fault, and punishes the wrong person—sometimes by a mere mistake, as when the wrong man is hanged for a murder; but sometimes also through a defect in the law itself which judges have to administer; as when Christians were delivered to the wild beasts for not sacrificing to the divinity of the emperor, or Protestants were burnt at the stake for denying transubstantiation. It is not to be assumed that the law is always right. The law of any country at any time is only the expression of the will of those who are in authority at the time, and has no more divinity or sacredness about it than they have. Those who transgress the law will, of course, be punished for it; but that fact proves nothing as to their good- or ill-desert. The greatest benefactors of mankind have had to set human law at defiance, and to endure its penalties. Their answer to the authorities who persecute them might constantly be, "Thy servants are beaten, but the fault is in thine own people."
HOMILIES BY J. ORR
Unheeded expostulation.
Pharaoh's treatment of the officers of the children of Israel, when they appeared before him to expostulate with him on his cruelty, betrays his consciousness of the injustice of his cause.
I. AN UNJUST CAUSE BETRAYS ITSELF.—
1. By refusal to listen to reason. The Hebrews had reason on their side, and Pharaoh had not. And because he had not, and knew it, he would not hear them, would not enter into any argument with them. This is the sure mark of a weak cause. People are usually willing enough to defend any of their doings which they think defensible. But when causes are indefensible, and they know this, they do not care to have the light let in upon them. "Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved" (John 3:20).
2. By clutching at flimsy and trumped-up pretexts. "Ye are idle; ye are idle; therefore ye say," etc. (Exodus 5:17). Pharaoh knew as well as any that they were not idle, but it served his purpose to put forward this pretence.
3. By falling back in the end on the right of the strong hand (Exodus 5:16). This is the tyrant's unfailing resort. If he cannot argue, he can compel. If he cannot justify his courses, he can fall back upon his power to enforce submission. His might is his right. Pharaoh had the power, and he meant to use it, so the Israelites might save themselves the trouble of expostulating. This sort of authority, resting on force, without support in righteousness or reason, is necessarily precarious. It can, in the nature of things, only last so long as the power to compel remains with it. No throne is so insecure as that propped up on bayonets.
II. AN UNJUST CAUSE ADHERED TO AND DEFENDED—
1. Reacts injuriously upon the moral nature. The refusal to listen to expostulation was a new stage in Pharaoh's hardening. Besides fortifying his determination to brook no interference in his courses, and strengthening the cruelty of his disposition—anew called into action by the increased oppression of the Hebrews—it necessarily reacted to deprive him of a fresh portion of his moral susceptibility. This is the Nemesis of sin; it leaves the sinner less susceptible with each new appeal that is resisted; it darkens while it indurates; not only strengthens him m evil courses, but increasingly disqualifies him for perceiving the truth and reasonableness of the dissuasives that are addressed to him. Pharaoh's hardening still moves in the region of ordinary morals (see on Exodus 5:1-2). The first step in it was the recoil of his pride and wilfulness against what he knew to be the righteous demand of Moses and Aaron. Another step is the rejection of this righteous appeal.
2. Exposes the tyrant to the just judgment of God. The Hebrews were helpless to resist Pharaoh, but there was Another, whose question, "Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants?" he would not be able so easily to set aside. God was keeping the account, and for all these things would yet call him to judgment (Ecclesiastes 11:9; Ecclesiastes 12:14); while the king's temporary success in his ways, building him up in a presumptuous selfconfidence, and confirming him in his boast of superiority to Jehovah, was a further step in his hardening—a ripening for destruction.
3. Is a fresh call for God to interfere on behalf of the oppressed. This new wrong, instead of leading the Israelites to despair, should only have lent fresh vehemence to their prayers, for it gave them a new plea with which to urge their cause. "For shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry to him day and night, though he bear long with them" (Luke 18:7).—J.O.
HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG
Pharaoh's first response: his answer in deed.
Pharaoh has given a proud verbal refusal to the request of Moses: but he is not contented to stop with words. The first result, discouraging and discrediting of Moses' application, is still further to increase burdens and hardships already scarcely tolerable.
I. CONSIDER HOW THIS ADDITIONAL SEVERITY TO ISRAEL ORIGINATED—that is, how it originated as far as Pharaoh's part in it was concerned. It came through his utterly mistaken notions as to Moses and Israel. Pharaoh, as an alert politician, was bound to inquire how it was that Moses had been led to prefer this request; and he came to the conclusion that the people had too much leisure time—did their work far too easily—and thus left an opportunity for the success of any designing demagogue, such as he judged Moses to be. And, indeed, Pharaoh's conjecture showed a very plausible appearance of shrewd insight into human nature. All such readers of this narrative as utterly disbelieve the reality of Divine intervention and supremacy in human affairs, will say that Pharaoh was not far wrong; whereas he was utterly wrong. Moses went into the presence of Pharaoh because the power of God constrained him. He would have gone anywhere to escape the task, if only he could have done it with safety and self-respect. Pharaoh little knew what a profound sense of unworthiness dwelt in the breast of Moses. Other feelings might come and go, mount to flow and sink to ebb; that remained, more penetrating and subduing the more he had to do with God, and the more he had to do with Israel Pharaoh was also utterly mistaken as to the people. The request for liberty had not come from them. They of their own accord and carnal judgment would never have thought of such a request. As soon might the helpless victim of a raging beast of prey turn to it with a real expectation of mercy. The prisoner may devise many plans of escape: but he would reckon it a mere provocative of more painful and stringent captivity, if he addressed to his gaoler a formal request for liberty. Pharaoh then, in his ignorance of God, proved ignorant and mistaken in the whole of his policy. Every view is mistaken, egregiously mistaken, that leaves out the thought of God as a living, intimate, ever-watchful Power.
II. CONSIDER THAT ALL THIS CRUEL TREATMENT DID NOTHING AT ALL FOR PHARAOH. If it had done anything, however little, to delay the final disaster, it would have been something to say: but it did nothing at all He treated Moses as a mere politician, and Israel as being only in a state of incipient insurrection. If such had been the reality of things, then his policy, however damnable for its cruelty, would have merited at least this admission, that there was a real adaptation of means to ends. But Pharaoh was as yet utterly unconscious of his real enemy. His mind was in a state of darkness, deep as that outward darkness which later overspread his land. All his efforts, summed up and stated in the largest way, simply came to this—that he was making very bitter the temporal life of a fleeting generation. But he himself had not arrested by a single step the advance of a righteous and omnipotent God. Struggling against the visible Moses and the visible Israel, he knew nothing of how to resist the invisible God. A man may rage about, putting out all candles and lamps, leaving us for awhile in darkness, but he has not retarded the sunrise by even the minutest fragment of time. This is our glory and our comfort, if we have the spirit of Christ dwelling in us, that we are contending against one who has only carnal weapons. We are not allowed to take carnal weapons; they are of no use to us; and never should we forget that they are of no use to those who are against us. Pharaoh did not delay God's liberating work; that work went on in all the majestic ease of its divinity, amid the smitings of the oppressor and the wailings of the oppressed. Making bricks without straw was mere child's-play compared with the enterprise on which Pharaoh was now embarked. He might as well have gone out with the sword and spear against the pestilence and the famine, as against Israel with a mere increase of oppression and cruelty.
III. THIS ADDITIONAL CRUELTY SHOWED THE IMPERATIVE NEED OF DIVINE INTERVENTION. If Pharaoh was powerless to delay the advance of God, he was very powerful to shut out interference from any other quarter. Help in God, sure and sufficient help, but help only in God, was one of the great lessons which all these painful years were meant to teach Israel. Pharaoh had unmistakable power of the human, despotic, might-makes-right sort over Israel. As the inquisitor by an easy nod signifies to give the thumbscrew another turn, so Pharaoh had only to send out his royal wish, and all the taskmasters had Israel at once in fresh agony. And just so we have to be taught by a bitter experience that as Christ is a Saviour from sin, with all its fatal fruits, so he is the only Saviour. The first attempt at a real protest and resistance against sin brings out all its power. Though the sinner's miseries do not begin when Christ the accredited deliverer makes his first approach in deliver, there is nevertheless a distinct accession to them. Christ cannot challenge the power of sin in any of us without rousing up into intense activity the evil already working in our breasts. Pharaoh was not really a more powerful ruler after the visit of Moses than he was before; but the disposition and power then became manifest. The hearts of the generation in the midst of which Christ lived and died were not of exceptional malignity or obduracy. The generation immediately before and the generation immediately after, would have treated him in exactly the same way. But it was necessary for him to draw out sin into a full revelation of its hideous potency, in order that it might be made perfectly clear that none but himself could deal with it. True, Pharaoh was glorying in what was only a fabric of delusions and a refuge of lies; but, frail though it was, no breath of man had strength enough to blow it down. None but God could make the effectual and dissipating storm to descend upon it.—Y.
HOMILIES BY J. URQUHART
Verse 15-6:1
The troubled find consolation in God only. The three cries.
I. ISRAEL'S EXPOSTULATION WITH PHARAOH (15-19). They complain to him of the wrongs they suffer; but he who does not hear God will not listen to man.
1. It was reasonable to expect that their remonstrance might lead to redress. Pharaoh's decree might have. been issued under momentary irritation.
2. They came with humility and modesty. They brought no railing accusation. They used no threats. They did not even make. a silent show of their strength. And yet the only outcome of their appeal is deeper grief, more utter hopelessness (19). They who have no hope but in man will find little to sustain them.
II. THEIR UPBRAIDING OF MOSES AND AARON (20, 21).
1. They spoke truth. The demand, for liberty of worship had been seized by Pharaoh as a pretext for more oppressive measures.
2. They did not speak the whole truth. God and his purpose were kept out of sight. They were counted as nothing. How often is this done in our despondency and murmuring!
3. Their reproaches, though met by silence and grief equal to their own, brought no help to them. There is as little help in upbraiding friends for failure as in spreading their injustice before foes.
III. MOSES' CRY TO GOD.
1. He "returned to the Lord." He did not seek in unburden his soul even to Aaron. The first step to help is to seek God's presence.
2. The holy boldness of his prayer. The grieved spirit is poured out. There is nothing kept back. God does not complain of our boldness, but of our restraining prayer before him.
3. God's answer (Exodus 6:1).
(1) This very failure shows God's truth (Exodus 4:21).
(2) God shall fight for them: "Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh."
(3) Pharaoh's wrath and power will serve only to make their deliverance perfect. He will "drive them out of his land." Israel found no consolation; Moses does.—U.