Moose Dislodged Series

But it gets even better. Verse 25 goes on to say that God saw the children (lit. “sons”) of Israel and God knew. It wasn’t enough for God to hear the emotional pain of His people. It wasn’t enough for God to acknowledge that there was a relationship, a partnership, a deal between Israel and the divine. Rather, God observed all there was to observe about their characters and their circumstances and God understood all they were going through. The verb “to know” in the Old Testament is a very powerful word. This is the same verb where Adam “knew” his wife sexually—they were physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually one—and as a result, she conceived and gave birth to a child.

To say that God knew here is an emphatic way of stating that God went through the physical suffering with Israel, that God understood the helplessness and hurt the children of Israel were feeling, that God experienced the hurt with them, and that God was with them in a way that cannot be fully explained. In the Hebrew text, the verb “knew” has no direct object. It doesn’t say that He merely knew their suffering and their circumstances. It says that He “knew” and without that direct object, it reminds us that He knew all He needed to know about all aspects of their being and their plight.

And, of course, this is a tremendous assurance to us. God isn’t “up there” and isolated from what we feel and what we’re going through. God isn’t some stoic judge in the heavens who is waiting for us to come up with the right password to get His attention or to offer the right deal to get Him to act. God knows when we feel betrayed. God knows the pain we’re experiencing. God knows when we feel our efforts are futile and when we are sinking into a seeming hopeless depression. God knows when we’re wronged. God knows when we’re cheated.

And that’s where I want to zero in, this week. You see, Moses “saw” injustice earlier in the chapter. Moses went out to his brother Hebrew and he tried to do something about it. In verse 11, we see this verb for “he saw” used twice. First, he “saw” the general burdens of the Hebrews and second, he “saw” an Egyptian strike one of his Hebrew brothers. Upon “seeing” the problem, Moses “solves” the problem by killing the Hebrew—taking vengeance, liberation, or justice into his own hands.

But he doesn’t solve the problem. He not only creates a problem for himself when he realizes that his action was observed and that his Hebrew brothers aren’t on the same page with him, but the subsequent reaction from His so-called “brother” is one of ingratitude and resentment. The Hebrew asks Moses who he thinks he is to judge between two Hebrews and indicates that he knows Moses killed the Egyptian and implies that everything can’t be solved with violent solutions. As a result, the Pharaoh seeks out Moses with the intent to kill him (using the same verb “to kill” as used when Moses “kills” the Egyptian) and Moses flees to Midian to save his own skin rather than having the face-to-face confrontation with Pharaoh we might expect (at least, we might expect it if the story wasn’t so familiar to us) to lead to Israel’s liberation.