Exodus 5
THE
FIRST APPEAL OF MOSES TO PHARAOH
vs. 1-5 – “And afterward Moses and Aaron went
in, and told Pharaoh, Thus
saith the LORD God of
me in the wilderness”. The rationale of the
demand is given in ch. 8:26. The
Israelites
could not offer their proper sacrificial animals in the presence of the
Egyptians
without the risk of provoking a burst of religious animosity, since among
the animals would necessarily be some which
all, or many, of the Egyptians regarded
as sacred, and under no circumstances to be
killed. The fanaticism of the Egyptians
on such occasions led to wars, tumults, and
massacres. (See Plutarch, ‘De Isid.
et
Osir.,’ §
44.) To avoid this danger the “feast” must
be held beyond the bounds of
that I should obey his voice to let
I let
former is possible, since Jehovah was a name but
little employed, until the return
of Moses to
voice. Why am I to obey his voice? What is your Jehovah to me?
What authority has
he over me? He is, at best, your god, not mine. I
know not Jehovah. I
acknowledge
him not. He is not within the range of my
Pantheon. Neither will I let
“nor even, if he
were, would I consent to such a request as this from him.” The
Pharaohs
assumed to be themselves gods, on a par with the national gods, and not
bound to obey them. “And
they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us:
let us go, we
pray thee, three days’ journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the
LORD our God; lest He fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword”. Moses
and Aaron are not abashed by a single refusal.
They expostulate, and urge fresh
reasons why Pharaoh should accede to their
request. Their God, they say, has met
with them — made, that is. a
special revelation of Himself to them — an idea quite familiar
to the king, and which he could not pretend
to misunderstand and He has laid
on them an express command. They are to go a three days’
journey into the desert —
to be quite clear of interruption from the
Egyptians. Will not Pharaoh allow them to
obey the order? If they do not obey it, their
God will be angry, and will punish them, either
by sending a pestilence among
them, or causing an invader to fall upon them with the
sword. “And the king of
and Aaron, let the people from their works? get you
unto your burdens. And
Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the
land now are many, and ye make them
rest from their burdens”. With these words the first interview
between the
Israelite
leaders and the Egyptian monarch ends. Having secured the adhesion of the
Israelitish people, Moses and Aaron sought an
interview with the Egyptian monarch
who was now in possession of the throne.
According to the bulk of modern authorities,
and according to our own views of Egyptian
history, this was Menephthah, the son and
successor of Rameses II. Menephthah was a weak prince, whom events had favored,
and who had been thus led to have an exalted
opinion of himself.
A great invasion of
repulsed, not by his own skill or valor, but by the
skill and valor of his generals. Menephthah
himself had pointedly avoided incurring any danger.
He claimed to be in direct communication
with the Egyptian gods, who revealed themselves
to him in visions, and pleaded a distinct
command of Phthah as
preventing him from putting himself at the head of his army. Still, he
counted as his own all the successes gained by his
generals, and was as vainglorious and
arrogant as if he had himself performed prodigies
of valour Such was the temper of the
king before whom we believe that Moses and
Aaron appeared. There would be no
difficulty in any Egyptian subject, who had a prayer
to make or a petition to present,
obtaining an audience of the monarch, for it was an accepted
principle of the administration
that the kings were to hear all complaints, and
admit to their presence all classes of the
community.
HIS
SERVANTS REBUFFED. Encouraged
by their success with the elders
and with the people (ch. 4:29-31), Moses and Aaron would step boldly into
the presence of
Pharaoh. It was, no doubt, known that they represented the
feelings of
an entire nation, a nation moreover of whom the Egyptians had
begun to be
afraid (ch. 1:9-10). The courtiers would treat them,
at any rate,
with
outward politeness and respect. They knew also that God was on their
side, and
would ultimately, if not at the first, give them success. Under these
circumstances
they made their request boldly and with much plainness (vs. 1
and 3). But
they were met with the most complete antagonism. Pharaoh was in
his own
eves not only the greatest king upon the face of the earth, but an actual
god. If we
are right in supposing him to be Menephthah, he was
the son of a
king who
had set up his own image to be worshipped side by side with those of
Ammon, Phthah,
and Horus, three of the greatest Egyptian deities.
He viewed
the demand
made of him as preposterous, and had probably not the slightest
belief in
the power of Jehovah to do him harm. Who was Jehovah? and
what had he
to fear from him? A god — if he was a god — who had not
been able
to prevent his people from becoming a nation of slaves. He
therefore
treated the petition of Moses with absolute contempt. And so it
has ever
been, and will ever be, with the great of the earth. They are so
exalted
above their fellows, that they think “no harm can happen unto
them.” They do not
set themselves to inquire what is really God’s will, but
determinately
carry out their own will in their own way. Even when they
do not
openly blaspheme, like this Pharaoh, and Sennacherib (II Kings
18:29-35), and Herod Antipas (Luke 23:11), they ignore God, reject
the just
demands of His ministers, refuse to be guided by their advice. Thus
His servants are ever being
rebuffed. They ask that slavery should
everywhere
cease, and are told that in some places it is a necessity. They
plead
against the licensing of vice, and are bidden not to interfere with
sanitary
arrangements. They ask for laws to restrain intoxication, and are
denounced
as seeking to lessen the national revenue. They cry for the
abolition
of vivisection, and are held up to ridicule as sickly sentimentalists.
All this is to be expected, and
should not discourage them. Let them, like
Moses and Aaron,
continually repeat their demands; urge them, in season
and out of
season. They may be sure that they will triumph at last. “The
Lord
is on their side; they need not fear what flesh can do against them”.
(Psalm
118:6)
PHARAOH UPS THE ANTE BY INCREASING THE
ISRAELITES OPPRESSION
vs. 6-9 – “And Pharaoh commanded the same day
(Pharaoh lost not time) the
taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying,
Ye shall no more give the
people straw to make brick, as heretofore: let
them go and gather straw for
themselves. And
the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall
lay upon them; ye shall not diminish ought
thereof: for they be idle” - There was
so much ground for the charge as this — that hitherto, their
forced labors had not
occupied the whole of their time. They had been able,
apparently, to cultivate their
own plots of ground (Deuteronomy 11:10), to raise crops of
cucumbers, melons,
leeks, onions, and garlic (Numbers 11:5), to catch
fish (ibid.), and attend public
meetings (ch. 4:30-31). They had, in fact, had time which they could
call their own.
Now this
was to be so no more. The Pharaoh, however, misrepresents and
exaggerates, speaking as if their forced labors had been a
mere nothing, and mere
want of occupation had led them to raise the cry — “Let us go and sacrifice.” It
would have been far nearer the truth to say, that the
severity and continuousness of
their labors had made the notion of festival time,
during which they would cease
from their toils, generally popular – “therefore they cry, saying, Let us go
and sacrifice to our God. Let there more work be laid upon the men” - Rather,
as in the margin, “Let the work be heavy
upon the men.” Let the tasks set
them be
such as to occupy all their time, and not leave
them any spare moments in which
they may be tempted to listen to mischievous
talkers, (like Moses and Aaron) who
flatter them with vain (literally, lying,
words. Pharaoh, no doubt, imagined that the
hopes raised by the two brothers were vain and
illusive. He
was utterly blind as to
the course which events were
about to take – “that they may labor therein; and
let them not regard vain words”. Rulers are not always content simply to
refuse
inconvenient demands. Sometimes they set to work with
much ingenuity and worldly
wisdom to prevent their repetition. This is
especially the case where they entertain a
fear of their petitioners. The Pharaoh now is
not content to let things take their course,
but devises a plan by which he hopes to crush
altogether the aspirations of the Hebrew
people, and secure himself against the recurrence
of any such appeal as that which had
been made to him by Moses and Aaron.
The Israelites had recently been employed
chiefly in brick-making. They had had to dig the clay and temper it,
to mix it with
straw, and mould it into the form of bricks; but
the straw had been supplied to them.
The
king determined that this should be no longer done; the Israelites should find
the
straw for themselves. It has been estimated that
by this change their labor was “more
than doubled.” (Canon Cook.)
It was a not unreasonable expectation that
under this
system popular meetings would cease
(v. 9); and that Moses and Aaron, not being
backed up by the voice of the people, would
discontinue their agitation.
UNSPARING. Scripture contains abundant portraitures, not
only of good,
but also of bad men, the Holy Spirit seeming to be as desirous of
arousing our
indignation against vice as our sympathy with virtue. Portraits
are given us, as
more effectual than precepts or general descriptions,
appealing as they do to
our feelings and imagination rather than to our
intellect. The dramatic
exhibition
of a Pharaoh, an Ahab, a Sennacherib, a Judas Iscariot, is
calculated
at once to strike the soul and to remain indelibly impressed upon
it. Here we
have the portrait of a tyrant, characterized especially by three
qualities —
ü Craft or
cleverness - Pharaoh’s craft is shown, first in the skilful way
in which he “turns the tables” upon Moses and Aaron, stopping
their
mouths with the charge that they are “letting the people
from their
labours,” and “endamaging
the king.” (See Ezra 4:13.) Secondly, it is
shown in the rapidity and ingenuity of his thought — “More
work must
be laid upon the Israelites — let them be given no straw.”
Thirdly, it is
shown further on in his attempts to secure the return of the
Israelites by
the detention of their children (ch.
10:10) or of their cattle (ibid. 24).
ü Energy - Pharaoh’s
energy appears in the immediate steps that he took
to carry his plan out by giving orders for the withholding of
the straw
without any diminution in the tale of bricks, “the same day” (v. 6).
ü Mercilessness.
His
mercilessness is seen, first, in his refusing a very
moderate request (v. 1-2); secondly, in his meeting the demand
for a
relaxation of labor by an addition to it; thirdly and especially, in
his
making such an addition as was
impossible of performance, and
involved a continued series of punishments
(vs. 14-21). Pharaoh did
not perhaps know the exact amount of
misery which he was inflicting;
but he was reckless in respect to it — he did
not care what it might
cost; the sighs and the groans of a whole nation were
as nothing to him;
and he adds insult to injury by the reproach (vs. 8 and
17) — “Ye are
idle, ye are
idle.”
straw” is not always made by a tyrannical
king. All employers of labor who
expect certain
results without allowing sufficient time for them, and then complain
that the work is scamped, are
guilty of it. So is the father who
expects his son to turn out a great
scholar, without giving him the necessary
books and the necessary instruction to make him one. So is the mistress
who
scolds her cook for not sending up a first-rate dinner, yet grudges
every penny
for the kitchen expenses. There are congregations which demand
perpetual
sermons of a high quality, yet do not either provide their
pastors with sufficient
money to buy books, or allow them sufficient leisure
time for reading them.
There are
incumbents who act similarly by their curates, mercantile men who,
mutatis mutandis, act so by
their clerks, officials of all kinds who so treat
their
subordinates. The demand for bricks without straw is, unfortunately,
far too
common a demand. Let this note be set
against it, that it is
Pharaonic and
tyrannical.
unworthy of attention, deserve contempt, are foolish,
unjustifiable. But what
are “vain words’? What is the test whereby we are to know
whether words
are vain or not? Simply, the issue of them. Pharaoh thought that the promises
of deliverance wherewith Moses and Aaron had excited the
people were “vain
words.” Sennacherib described similarly the words of
trust and confidence
in God
uttered by Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:20). The Athenians thought the same
of Paul’s
words concerning the resurrection (Acts 17:32).
But we know that,
in none of
these cases, were the words uttered “vain.” The event
justified or
will
justify them. When words then are uttered by any grave authority,
especially
if they are uttered in the name of God, we should hesitate to call
them “vain.” We should await the end. Full
often, what the scoffer has called
“vain words” turn out “words of truth and soberness” – (Acts 26:25) –
words which tell
with terrible force against those who have
despised and
rejected
them — words which to have heard and despised is condemnation in
the sight
of the Almighty!
PHARAOH’S
OFFICERS CARRY OUT HIS EDICT
vs. 10-14 – “And the taskmasters of the
people went out, and their officers, and
they spake to the
people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give
you straw.
Go ye, get you straw where ye can find it”
- Straw was not valued in
Reaping
was effected either by gathering the ears, or by cutting the stalks of the corn
at a short distance below the heads; and the
straw was then left almost entirely upon
the ground. Grass was so plentiful that it was
not required for fodder, and there was
no employment of it as litter in farmyards.
Thus abundance of straw could be gathered
in the cornfields after harvest; and as there
were many harvests, some sort of straw
was probably obtainable in the Delta at almost
all seasons of the year. To collect it,
however, and chop it small, as required in
brick-making, consumed much time, and
left too little for the actual making of the
bricks. “yet not ought of
your work shall
be diminished. So the people were scattered abroad
throughout all the land of
The
Egyptian overseers, armed with rods, went about among the toiling Israelites
continually, and “hasted them” by dealing out blows freely on all who
made any pause
in their work. The unceasing toil lasted from
morning to night; yet still the required
“tale” could
not be produced; and consequently the native officers, whose business it
was to produce the “tale,” were
punished by the bastinado at the close of the day not
giving in the proper amount – “saying, Fulfil
your works, your daily tasks, as when
there was straw.
And the officers of the children of
taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and
demanded, Wherefore have ye
not fulfilled your task in making brick both yesterday
and to day, as heretofore?”
The
command of Pharaoh gone forth — no straw was to be provided for the Israelites,
they were themselves to gather straw. The
taskmasters could not soften the edict; they
could only promulgate it (vs.10-11). And the Israelites could only choose between
rebelling and endeavoring to obey. To
rebel seemed hopeless; Moses and Aaron
did not advise rebellion, and so the attempt was
made to carry out Pharaoh’s
behest (v. 12). But experience proved that
obedience to it was impossible. Though
the people did their best, and the native
officers set over them did their best, and
the Egyptian taskmasters hurried them on as
much as possible (v. 13), the result
was that the tale of bricks fell short. Then, according to a barbarous practice said
to be even now not unknown in
delivered in the appointed “tale of bricks” were
bastinadoed, (whipped) suffering
agonies for no fault of their own (v. 16), but because
the people Had been set an
impossible task.
PRAISEWORTHY. The
Egyptian taskmasters seem to have carried out
their monarch’s orders to the
full, if not with inward satisfaction, at any rate
without visible repugnance. They published abroad the orders
given without
in any way softening them (vs. 10-11), harassed the Israeli
people all day long
by “hasting
them” (v.13), and bastinadoed the Israelite officers at night
(v.14). How
different their conduct from that of the midwives, when another
Pharaoh sought to make them the
instruments of his cruelty! Weak women
defied the
tyrant and disobeyed his commands. Strong sturdy men were
content to
be his slavish tools and accomplices. But so it is often. “Out of
weakness God perfects strength.” (Hebrews
11:34) - He “makes the weak
things of the world to confound the strong” (I
Corinthians 1:27) - And the
consequence
is, that the weak, who show
themselves strong, obtain His
approval
and the enduring praise of men, like
the midwives; while the strong,
who show
themselves weak, are condemned by
him, and covered with
everlasting
obloquy, like these taskmasters.
THE
ISRAELITE OFFICERS APPEAL TO PHARAOH BUT TO NO AVAIL
vs. 15-19 – “Then the officers of the
children of
Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore
dealest thou thus with thy servants? There is no
straw given unto thy servants, and they say to
us, Make brick: and, behold, thy
servants are beaten; but the fault is in thine own people. But he said, Ye are idle,
ye are idle: therefore ye say, Let us go and do sacrifice to the LORD. Go
therefore now, and work; for there shall no straw be
given you, yet shall ye
deliver the tale of bricks. And the officers of the children of
they were in evil case, after it was said, Ye
shall not minish ought from your
bricks of your daily task.” Smarting under the sense of injustice, the
Israelite
officers “came and cried to Pharaoh” (v. 15), supposing that
he could not have
intended such manifest unfairness and cruelty. They
were conscious to themselves
of having done their utmost, and of having
failed simply because the thing required
was impossible. Surely the king would
understand this, if they pointed it out, and
would either allow straw as before, or diminish
the number of the bricks. But the
king had no desire for justice, and did not
even pretend to it. He asked for no
particulars, ordered no inquiry into the ground of
complaint; but turned upon the
complainants with the cuckoo cry — “Idle, idle
yourselves — else ye had no
time
to come here; go, work — go, work.” Then
the officers felt that they were indeed
“in evil case”
(v.19) — the king was determined not to do justice — no hope
remained — they must be beaten again and again,
until they died
of the punishment
(v.21).
Pharaoh when he first gave the order
to withhold straw (v. 7), may not
have known
the amount of misery he was causing. He may have meant no
more than
to give the people full occupation, and so prevent such
gatherings
as that from which Moses and Aaron had come (ch.
4:29-31),
when they
appeared before him with their demands. He may not have realized
to himself
the idea that he was setting his bondsmen an impossible task. But
now this
fact was brought home to him, and he was asked, as a matter of
simple
justice, either to let straw be furnished as before, or to allow some
diminution
in the number of the bricks. It can scarcely be doubted that he
knew and
felt the demand made to be just. There were the officers
before him
with the wheals upon their
backs. Would they have
incurred the severe
punishment,
could they by any possibility have avoided it? Pharaoh must have
known that
they would not. But he would not relent.
As he had begun, he
would
continue. He had been more cruel than he meant; but he
did not care —
it was only
Hebrews and bondsmen who had suffered; what mattered their
agonies? So
he dismisses the complainants with jeers and scoffs: “Ye are idle,
ye
are hypocrites; go, work.” So bad men almost always go on from bad to
worse by a “facile descent;” severity deepens into cruelty, unkindness
into
injustice, religious indifference into impiety. Stop, then, the beginnings of
wrong-doing. Principiis obsta. Crush the
nascent germs of vice in thy heart, O man!
Master them, or they will master thee!
NOT
ALWAYS DESERVED. (v. 16) - “Thy servants are beaten; but the
fault is in thine own
people.” Punishment often
visits the wrong back. Kings
commit injuries
or follies, and their subjects
suffer. Employers are greedy of
gain, and their “hands” must work overtime,
go without sleep, trench on the
Sunday rest. Wholesale tradesmen
adulterate goods, and retail traders are
blamed and lose custom. Justice itself is often at fault, and punishes
the
wrong person — sometimes by a mere
mistake, as when the wrong man is
hanged for a murder; but sometimes
also through a defect in the law itself
which judges have to administer;
as when Christians were delivered to the
wild beasts for not sacrificing
to the divinity of the emperor, or Protestants
were burnt at the stake for
denying transubstantiation. It is not to be assumed
that the law is always
right. The law of any country at any time is only the
expression of the will of
those who are in authority at the time, and has no
more divinity or
sacredness about it than they have. Those who transgress the
law will, of course,
be punished for it; but that fact proves nothing as to their
good or ill-desert.
The greatest benefactors of mankind have had to set human
law at
defiance, and to endure its penalties. Their answer to the authorities
who
persecute them might constantly be, “Thy
servants are beaten, but the
fault is in thine own people.” (Thanks be unto God, that in the Judgment
there will
be no such nonsense, but that each will be judged righteously –
CY – 2010)
THE ISRAELITE OFFICERS THEN WANT TO BLAME MOSES
AND AARON
vs. 20-21 – “And they met Moses and Aaron,
who stood in the way, as they came
forth from Pharaoh: And they said unto them, The LORD look upon
you, and judge;
because ye have made our savor 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.” That
is
to say, “ye have armed them with a weapon wherewith we expect that
they will take
our lives.” Either they will beat us
to death — and death is a not infrequent result of
a repeated employment of the bastinado — or
when they find that punishment
unavailing they will execute us as traitors. On the
use of the bastinado
as a punishment
in
(Bastinadoing
is like a “modern caning” – beaten with a stick – CY – 2010) On
quitting the presence of Pharaoh, the officers of the
Israelites, burning with the
sense of the injustice done them, and deeply
apprehensive with respect to their own future,
found Moses and Aaron waiting in the precincts of the
court to know the
result of their application. It need cause no surprise that they poured
out their pent-up
indignation upon them. Were not Moses and Aaron the sole
cause of the existing
state of things? Did not the extreme affliction of
the people, did not their own
sufferings in the past, did not their apprehended
sufferings in the future, originate
wholly in the seductive words which the two brothers
had addressed to them at the
assembly of the people? (ch.
4:29-31). Accordingly, they denounced,
yea, almost
cursed their officious
would-be deliverers (v. 21). “The Lord look upon you, and judge”
between you and us, whether the blame of this whole
matter does not lie
upon you, its initiators — you have made us to be
abhorred in the sight of Pharaoh,
and of the Egyptians generally you have brought us into danger
of our lives — the
Lord judge
you!”
LESS THAN ENEMIES. (v. 21) - Moses and Aaron had borne the
reproaches
and scoffs
of Pharaoh (vs. 4-8) without flinching. It was natural that an enemy
should
revile them. Pharaoh
might tax them with idleness and insincerity in
religion,
if he pleased. The stab did not penetrate very deep,
nor cause a very
grievous smart. But when their
brethren turned upon them and uttered
reproaches,
it was different. Then the wound went to the heart; the pain was
bitter, scarce
endurable. It made them misdoubt themselves. Had they really
not acted for
the best? Had they been self-seeking, or vainglorious, or reckless,
or even
injudicious? Such thoughts will always occur even to the best men,
if on their
plans seeming to have miscarried their friends reproach them.
The best men best know their own
frailty, and how easy it is for man to
mar God’s
work by his own imperfections. It requires a very brave soul to
bear up
against the reproaches of friends, especially when there seems to
be a ground
for them. The more careful therefore should friends be not to
reproach
God’s servants causelessly, or unless they can point out where
they have
been wrong. Actions are not to be always judged by their results,
or, at any
rate, not by their immediate results. Moses and Aaron had done
quite
right; they had obeyed God; they were bound to act as they had
acted. It
had not pleased God to give success to their efforts as yet. The
officers
should have had patience, should have prayed to God for relief, but
should have
forborne from reproaching the innocent.
MOSES DID NOT REMONSTRATE
BUT TOOK HIS PROBLEM TO THE LORD
vs. 22-23 – “And 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. (Trust in Him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart
before Him: God is a refuge for us. Selah” - Psalm 62:8) and said, LORD,
wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? why is it that thou hast sent me?
For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy
name, he hath done evil to this people;
neither hast thou delivered thy people at all.” The promised deliverance (ch. 3:8,20)
had not yet come, there was no sign of it –
the people were suffereing under a more
cruel bondage than ever. 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?” (Psalm
74:1) “How long wilt thou hide thyself? Where are
thy former lovingkindnesses?
Wherefore hast thou made all men for nought?” (Psalm 89:46-9), 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.” 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 (chps. 3:19; 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 ch.
6.
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
bosom of our most loving God! “Truly
God is good to
73:1) His hand may be slack, “as men count slackness;” (II Peter
3:9) but
it is not crippled or paralysed
— it is always “mighty to save.” (Isaiah
63:1)
Worldlings take their difficulties and their troubles
to counselors 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?”
(Psalm 119:82) 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” (Psalm 77:9) - that He
is still nigh at hand, that
He “will not leave it nor forsake it.” (Hebrews 13:5)
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