They Cry Out Upon Moses And Aaron. Series

TITLE: They Cry Out Upon Moses And Aaron. Exodus 5:19-21

Scripture: Exodus 5:19-21 (KJV)

19And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were in evil case, after it was said, Ye shall not minish ought from your bricks of your daily task.

20And they met Moses and Aaron, who stood in the way, as they came forth from Pharaoh:

21And they said unto them, The LORD look upon you, and judge; because ye have made our savour to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to slay us.

19 And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were in evil case, after it was said, Ye shall not minish [diminish] ought from the [your] bricks of your daily task.

Egyptian officers believed the children of Israel did not meet their daily quota of bricks because they were (in evil case) "lazy." They scolded the Israelites when they said, "The LORD (Jehovah) look upon you, and judge" (21). Jehovah will not leave you unheeded and unpunished for the evil you have brought upon the people. "Ye have made our Savior abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh and the eyes of his servants. Ye have made our Savior stink."

Moreover, ye have simply allowed Pharaoh to ruin us by asking permission for the pilgrimage. The officers were too full of their wrongs to wait until questioned. They took the word and implied it without relating the result of their interview. They said, "consider your conduct, and judge it" not strictly, "condemn it and punish it, but "pass sentence on it," "judge whether it has been right or not." Nevertheless, ye have at any rate done us a great injury - Indeed, ye have done more - ye have put a sword in the hand of his servants to slay us. That is to say, "ye have armed them with a weapon we expect will take our lives." Either they will beat us to death - and death is a not the infrequent result of a repeated use of the bastinado (bastinado is a method of inflicting pain and humiliation by administering a beating on the soles of a person's bare feet) - or when they find that punishment futile they will execute us as traitors.

What perversity of the natural heart! They call upon God to judge, while they show that they have no confidence in God and His power to save by their very complaining. Moses (Exodus 5:22) turned to Jehovah with the question, "Why hast Thou done evil to this people," - increased their oppression by my mission to Pharaoh, and yet not delivered them? "These are not words of contumacy (stubborn resistance) to authority; or indignation, but of inquiry and prayer." The question and complaint proceeded from faith, which flies to God when it cannot understand the dealings of God, to point out to Him how incomprehensible are His ways, to appeal to Him to help in the time of need, and to remove what seems opposed to His nature and His will.

Ye are idle (in evil case)- The old Egyptian language abounds in epithets that show contempt for idleness. The charge was equally offensive and ingenious, which would be readily believed by Egyptians who knew how much festivals and other religious ceremonies impeded public and private labors. Among the great sins which, according to Egyptian belief, involved condemnation in the final judgment, idleness is mentioned twice

Moreover, the taskmasters punished them with beatings—As the nearest fields were bared and the people had to go farther for stubble, they could not meet the demand for the usual tale of bricks. "The beating of the officers is just what might have been expected from an Eastern tyrant, especially in the valley of the Nile, as it appears from the monuments that ancient Egypt, like modern China, was principally governed by the stick." "The beating mode was by the offender being laid flat on the ground and generally held by the hands and feet while the chastisement was administered" (Deuteronomy 25:2).

After Pharaoh said, "Ye shall not minish (diminish) ought from your daily total of bricks and confirmed it, they had no hope of things being better with them but looked upon their unhappy lot as irretrievable.

20And they met Moses and Aaron, who stood in the way, as they (the officers who went to pour out their complaints to Pharaoh) came forth from Pharaoh:

"Who stood in the way" means that Moses and Aaron were "standing"—i.e., waiting to meet them and know the result of their interview with the monarch.

The Egyptian taskmasters were very severe. The head-workmen justly complained to Pharaoh: but he taunted them. The Israelites should have humbled themselves before God and taken to themselves the shame of their sin, but instead, they quarreled with those who were to be their deliverers. The malice of Satan has often represented the service and worship of God, as fit employment only for those who have nothing else to do, and the business only of the idle; whereas, it is the duty of those who are most busy in the world. Those who are diligent in making sacrifices to the Lord will, before God, escape the doom of the slothful servant, though, with men, they do not.