EXPOSITION
The two brothers made no reply to the words of the officers. Perhaps their hearts were too full for speech; perhaps they knew not what to say. Whatever faith they had, it did no doubt seem a hard thing that their interference, Divinely ordered as it was, should have produced as yet nothing but an aggravation of their misery to the Israelite people. They could not understand the course of the Divine action. God had warned them not to expect success at once (Exodus 3:19; Exodus 4:21); but he had said nothing of evil consequences following upon their first efforts. Thus we can well understand that the two brothers (and especially Moses, the more impetuous of them) were bitterly grieved and disappointed. They felt their cup of sorrow to be full—the reproaches of the officers made it overflow. Hence the bitterness of the complaint with which this chapter terminates, and which introduces the long series of precious promise, contained in the opening section of Exodus 6:1-2.
Moses returned unto the Lord. We are not to understand that Moses had forsaken God and now "returned" to him but simply that in his trouble he had recourse to God, took his sorrow to the Throne of Grace, and poured it out before the Almighty A good example truly, and one which Christians in all their trials would do well to follow. Lord, wherefore, etc. The words, no doubt, are bold. They have been said to "approach to irreverence." But there are parallels to them, which have never been regarded as irreverent, in the Psalms: e.g. "O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? Why does thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?" (Psalms 74:1) "How long wilt thou hide thyself? Where are thy former lovingkindnesses? Wherefore hast thou made all men for nought?" (Psalms 89:46-19), and the like. Kalisch seems right in saying that "the desponding complaint of Moses was not the result of disbelief or doubt, but the effort of a pious soul struggling after a deeper penetration into the mysteries of the Almighty."
He hath done evil to this people. See above, Exodus 5:7-2, and Exodus 5:14. Pharaoh had increased the burdens of the whole nation, and in this way "done evil" to them. He had also brought the punishment of scourging on a number of the chiefs. Neither hast thou delivered thy people at all. The promised deliverance (Exodus 3:8, Exodus 3:20) had not come—there was no sign of it—the people was suffering under a more cruel bondage than ever.
HOMILETICS
The religious soul takes its griefs straight to God.
When our hopes are disappointed, when matters fall out otherwise than as we wish, when our enemies resist us, and our friends load us with reproach, how sweet to have a safe refuge whither we may betake ourselves, even the besom of our most loving God! "Truly God is loving unto Israel." His hand may be slack, "as men count slackness;" but it is not crippled or paralysed—it is always "mighty to save." Worldlings take their difficulties and their troubles to counsellors whom they deem wise, or to friends whom they regard as powerful, or to subordinates whom they think to be crafty, but never to God. The religious soul's first instinct in deep trouble is to seek solitude, to fly from man, and to pour out all its grief before the Lord. It will even venture, like Moses, to expostulate—to ask to be shown the reason why God has disappointed it and troubled it—to demand "Why is thy wrath so hot? ' and "When wilt thou comfort me?" It does not doubt but that in the end all will be right, that God will do as he has promised; but it wants to be sustained, upheld, comforted as to the intermediate time—to be assured that God "has not forgotten to be gracious" that he is still nigh at hand, that he "will not leave it nor forsake it."