Exodus 5:1-9: a reflection

1Afterward Moses and Aaron came, and said to Pharaoh, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’” 2Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should listen to his voice to let Israel go? I don’t know the LORD, and moreover I will not let Israel go.” 3They said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go three days’ journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice to the LORD, our God, lest he fall on us with pestilence, or with the sword.” 4The king of Egypt said to them, “Why do you, Moses and Aaron, take the people from their work? Get back to your burdens!” 5Pharaoh said, “Behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens.” 6The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, 7“You shall no longer give the people straw to make brick, as before. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. 8You shall require from them the number of the bricks which they made before. You shall not diminish anything of it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, saying, ‘Let’s go and sacrifice to our God.’ 9Let heavier work be laid on the men, that they may labor in it. Don’t let them pay any attention to lying words.”

Moses and Aaron, obeying God, go to Pharaoh with God's demand: Let my people go. And the immediate result is not deliverance but disaster. Pharaoh not only refuses, contemptuously, Who is the LORD, that I should obey him?, but retaliates by making the Israelites' slavery harder, ordering them to gather their own straw while making the same quota of bricks. The first fruit of Moses' obedience is heavier bondage for the very people he came to free.

Notice the discouraging turn. Moses did exactly what God told him, and things got worse, not better. The people's burden increased; their suffering deepened; and they turned on Moses, blaming him for their new misery. It must have been bewildering: obedience to God led, at first, not to deliverance but to harder oppression. The path to freedom ran, at the start, through things getting worse.

That is worth remembering, because it is often how things go. When we first step out in obedience to God, when we confront what is wrong or begin to do what is right, the immediate result is sometimes not improvement but opposition, difficulty, things seeming to get worse before they get better. That does not mean we have misheard God or done wrong; it was true of Moses at the very start of the exodus. Do not lose heart if obedience to God seems, at first, to make things harder. The deliverance was still coming; the worse was not the end. Keep obeying, and trust that God's deliverance, though it may come after things get harder, will come.

Lord, when Moses first obeyed you and confronted Pharaoh, the result was not deliverance but heavier bondage, and the people turned on him. When my own obedience to you seems, at first, to make things harder rather than better, keep me from losing heart or concluding I have done wrong. Remind me that Moses faced the same, and that your deliverance still came. Help me keep obeying, trusting that the worse is not the end, and that your deliverance will come in your time.