Covenant Essays. T. Hoogsteen
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it and pay no regard to lying words.’” Hence, in addition to already burdensome and life-robbing toil, the men also had to gather necessary straw for brick making. With bottomless contempt for the Hebrews, the cantankerous man on the throne burdened Israel’s tyrannical yoke more, its pace and pattern unmanageable.
Whatever hopes of liberation Israel undervalued before Moses and Aaron’s arrival, the leaders of the people of Israel, resisting, resented Pharaoh’s increasing oppression, and responded to Moses and Aaron. Exod 5:21, “The LORD look upon you and judge, because you have made us offensive in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have set a sword in their hands to kill us.” Rather than marveling trust in the Savior of Israel to accomplish his ineffable promises of life, food, and space to Abraham, these woefully unfocused elders of the covenant community rebelled, intent on saving their own lives. Better slavery in the world with ignominious death than freedom and life in the LORD.
At this point, neither the Pharaoh with his people nor the Hebrews listened to the LORD’s commissioned men. This may reasonably be expected of an Egyptian king. But of the Church? Exod 6:9, “Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel; but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and their cruel bondage.” Despite the general negativity generated by acute suffering, the LORD God held Moses fast to his commission; he persevered to reveal that his own were not of the world.
Contrary to collective manifestations of negativity in Egypt and in Israel, the LORD nevertheless commanded Moses to proceed, “Go in, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the people of Israel go out of his land.” The God of Israel had, Exod 6:5, heard the tortured groaning of his people and remembered his covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Exod 6:6–8, “. . . I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob; I will give it to you for a possession. I am the LORD.” This royal affirmation shaped unfolding events with untrammeled authority, an anxious thing, for all on the wrong side of the old divide.
The intemperate king of Egypt, however, challenged the LORD God to combat, whereas the Lord of all creation omnipotently intended to renew his covenant promises of life, food, and space:
• By way of the Exodus, the LORD promised to remove his people from death within the house of bondage to life first in the wilderness, then in the abundance of the Land of Promise.
• By way of the Exodus, the LORD promised in comparison to the fleshpots in the land of Egypt the remarkable sustenance in the land of milk and honey.
• By way of the Exodus, the God of Israel promised to settle his people in Canaan, precisely the inheritance long before allotted to Abraham.
However much irreconcilable Pharaoh lashed out to govern events, the Savior disclosed to Moses, Exod 6:1, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, yea, with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.” To that end, in effect, and gloriously, the LORD accomplished his purpose. Exod 3:7–9, ”I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.” The LORD God, almighty, alone planned and accomplished the events and movements of the Exodus history.
In the process of succumbing to repetitious commands, Egypt changed. The LORD God convulsed the squalid world order, which calamitously collapsed. In the worst of that dreadful punishment, the unbecoming deities of Egypt found out that before the Almighty they were no gods at all, only imposters of a prodigious kind. Throughout, this convulsing world the LORD revealed that Israel was not of the world. Did in the process Israel change, reform? Faced in the wilderness with the fear of the unknown, they of the covenant proved remarkably un-covenantal—a people of inconsiderate zeal, at its core often motivated corruptively.
REPETITIONS OF DISOBEDIENCE
That a pagan nation refused to listen and hold the LORD’s command in derision, however inexcusable, comes out of a reason, one demonstrated many times and at length throughout Old Testament history, idolatry. Israel had no such pretext, Deut 4:15–24, which Apostle Paul readily recognized for all times of the Church. Rom 1:20–23,
Ever since the creation of the world [God’s] invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man or birds or animals or reptiles.
Egypt over many generations proved the point too. The pantheon of these pagans resembled every known animal, whereby they dismissed the reality of the LORD God. Rather than face the truth of the existence of Israel’s God, the only LORD of heaven and earth, they took to an offensive, underscored by deceit and artifice. At eradicating the covenant people, they planned also to rid themselves once and for all of the God of heaven and earth. Therefore, throughout the Exodus history, the Pharaoh lied, broke his word, and finally attacked with genocidal potential by force of arms. Repetitious refusal to listen marked then the end of that Pharaonic regime, disconnected into a fringe state.
International Disobedience
By means of the covetousness of self-righteousness, i.e., pollution by the deep-grounded sin of the beginning, the whole of Mizraim moved as one to grapple with the God of the Hebrews, the LORD of heaven and earth, for which he held that entire nation meticulously accountable. Exodus-moved, he assured the destruction of Pharaoh’s dominion, therewith mocking and embarrassing its heavily populated pantheon, none of which or together could halt the Savior’s perseverance in liberating his own. Exod 15:11, 18:11. After the discredited Egyptians, subversive Amalekites refused to heed the fact that Israel was not of this world, but holy to the LORD, Exod 17:8–13. Venturing to oppose the LORD headlong, then Sihon, king of the Amorites, and Og, king of Bashan sought to tear Israel to pieces, Num 21:21–35. Balak tried, with the assistance of a Balaam, to stop Israel short, Num 22:1—24:25. As prophesied, in Canaan, Exod 3:8, the incorrigible Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites strove to waste the people of the covenant.
Israelite Disobedience
Israel’s heart-breaking refusal to hear and obey the LORD, Exod 6:9, by far less inexcusable, God managed in a different manner, only out of faithfulness to now age-old covenant promises. The Almighty heard and saw the oppression of his people, Exod 2:23–25, 3:7–12, in fact, “. . . God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Out of this harmonious remembering only he moved heaven and earth to execute the Exodus.
After the first confrontation with the Pharaoh, also Israel refused to listen, less than eager to leave slavery behind, less than eager to stop serving Egyptian idols. Abraham’s descendants, the covenant people, displayed also thereafter a history of rebellion, which aggrieved Moses voiced before the LORD, Exod 6:12, “Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me; how then shall Pharaoh listen to me, who am a man of uncircumcised lips?” Here the LORD’s point man expressed two perceived problems, one broad-based, one narrowly defined. 1) Israel’s refusal spoke of indiscrete fearfulness, which Pharaoh had cause to exploit. Moreover, Israel’s backwardness at hearing the LORD’s command to come out uncovered layers of unbelief, none of which complimentary to the covenant people. 2) Moses then admitted to an uncircumcision,20 not of the foreskin, but in relation to a speech defect. With this analogical usage of uncircumcision, Moses claimed that he spoke with difficulty, literally, with heaviness of lips. Exod 6:30. For decades, he had worked the silent life of shepherding, labor far removed from confronting kings and leading belligerent people. Specifically, Exod 4:10, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either heretofore or since thou hast spoken to thy servant; but I am slow of speech and of tongue.”