Off to a Poor Start

 Exodus 5-6

          Moses was reluctant to be the Lord’s agent, and his first encounter with Pharaoh didn’t ease his worries! Pharaoh’s statement, “I don’t know this god,” is telling. In the ancient world, gods were considered to be bound to specific places. If a nation had military victory and expanded their territory, part of the mythology was that their god had defeated another local deity and taken over that god’s territory. As you can imagine, they thought that the gods had had the real war and that the gods were the ones who had at the same time brought them victory. So, when Pharaoh is dismissing Yahweh as a god he’s never even heard of, he’s dismissing Him as a god of little territory and less consequence and he’s dismissing Moses the same way.

          Yet it wasn’t the insult to his god that hurt; it was the fact he made Israel’s lot worse. Now they not only had to make bricks for the Egyptians but also they had to scrounge for the resources to make those bricks—all while maintaining a merciless quota. Moses doesn’t seem like a man brimming with confidence (he will grow into his role), and the people aren’t buying his reassurances; they just knew that his appearance had caused them more trouble.

          I think Israel’s relationship with the Lord, especially at this moment, was probably shaky. The Lord Himself says that he hasn’t fully revealed Himself (6:3), and they’ve spent a long time in Egypt, so their difficulty is in some way understandable. Two things to think about, though: first, each of us is called to trust the Lord. We know more about Him and His plans and purposes than Israel did, but He still hasn’t fully revealed Himself to us. We are called to trust Him as children trust their parents—without understanding everything their parent do. Second, the experience of Moses reminds us that sometimes we do exactly the right thing and it doesn’t work out anywhere close to how we thought it would. This is similar to my first point: Moses (and we) have to learn to trust the Lord in those moments, especially when it seems that doing the right thing has exactly the opposite effect we thought it would.