I just finished the first fourteen chapters of Exodus, which covers the enslavement of Israel, the wonders performed by Moses in Egypt, and the eventual redemption of God’s chosen people. I wanted to pause at this moment to reflect on some of the themes and lessons from these stories. I will do this over the next few days, then I will briefly pause my scriptural analysis as I publish one or two spiritual studies that I have been wanting to do, after which I will resume my scripture study with Exodus 15.

Forgetting God)

At the beginning of Exodus we heard how a new Pharaoh arose “which knew not Joseph.” Looking back, I believe the phrase “which knew not” has been a theme throughout all this story of Egypt. The Egyptians forgot both the debt of gratitude that they owed to the Israelite prince who saved them during the famine, and also his God who had proven Himself to be Lord and Master over all.

By forgetting who the Israelites were and who their God was, the Egyptians felt emboldened to take extreme liberties on the chosen people, which in turn would bring terrible retribution on their own heads. Whenever a people forget God and His fundamental laws of good they inevitably come to dabble in matters that they don’t understand. They start digging out the foundation of a wall, completely ignorant of how it supports the great edifice that hangs overhead. When they are crushed, they will be completely surprised but also completely culpable.

An Unexpected Protection)

At certain points in their history, the Israelites were conquered because they had abandoned God and had to be chastened back into faithfulness. In the case of their subjugation to Egypt, though, we are not told that such was the case. We are given reasons for the conquering, and none of them are morally justified, so as far as we know the Israelites were still an innocent and faithful people, and Egypt wronged them without cause.

If that was the case, then it occurs to me that one reason why God may have permitted this travesty was that it actually served the purpose of protecting the Israelites during a vulnerable period. We know that while they were in Egypt the Israelites grew from 70 souls to approximately 2 million. We also know that there were various hostile tribes and kingdoms growing to power in Canaan while they were being held captive in Egypt. It may be that if the Israelites had stayed in Canaan and multiplied there, that one of the other kingdoms would have seen them as a growing threat and just wiped them out. Being enslaved meant that they would have been protected from all the other worldly powers, guarded by the mighty armies of Egypt, allowing them to develop to the point that they could face those other powers as equals.

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This concludes my retrospect on the enslavement of Israel in Egypt, tomorrow I will continue with a summary of Moses’s miracles and the liberation of Israel.