Exodus 1

Section I: The Scene of Their Bondage

Section I—The Scene of Their BondageEgypt, the world’s first great empire, was the scene of Israel’s bondage and the first of those mighty world empires which became arrayed in succession against God and His people. Territorially it was one of the smallest of countries, comprising a narrow strip on each side of the Nile, a few miles wide and perhaps 500 miles long. It consisted of two provinces—upper and lower Egypt—with their respective capitals, Thebes and Memphis, whose colossal ruins still tell of their ancient magnificence. The people were not an African race, but emigrants from Asia, and highly advanced in culture and civilization. It was a powerful kingdom in the days of Abraham, and more than 15 dynasties of kings had already occupied its throne before the time of Joseph. Thirty dynasties altogether can be traced from the earliest times until the close of the Egyptian sovereignty. The first 14 of these were native sovereigns. The next three were the Hyksos or shepherd kings, an invading race who came in from Asia at the head of nomadic tribes, and for a time held the Egyptians under their sway. The last 12 dynasties were the restored native sovereigns. It was during the reign of the shepherd kings that Joseph and the Hebrews entered the land. They found favor with the king, but were told that shepherds, as they themselves were, were an abomination to the Egyptians who had been conquered by them. The other king, who afterward rose up and knew not Joseph, was undoubtedly the head of the 18th dynasty of native Egyptian sovereigns who superseded the Hyksos, and naturally were hostile to their Hebrew friends and allies, whom they perhaps regarded as another pastoral race, who in due time would threaten the subversion of their dynasty, as the shepherd kings had done before.

Section II: The Entrance of the Hebrews Into Egypt

Section II—The Entrance of the Hebrews Into EgyptExo_1:1-8; 1 Chronicles 4:21-23The residence of Israel in Egypt was a part of God’s providential plan revealed to Abraham in a vision centuries before. It occupied a period of about 215 years; the whole interval of 400 years, mentioned in Genesis 14 and Acts 7, included, no doubt, the previous patriarchal period beginning with the time of the vision. Their home, Goshen, was in the northern province and many of the places have been identified in connection with recent researches and excavations. For a time they were a prosperous and favored colony, and rapidly increased in population and probably also in wealth and influence. Several incidents of this part of their history are narrated in the opening chapters of the book of Chronicles (1 Chronicles 4:21 and 1 Chronicles 7:21). One of them was related by marriage to the king, and several of them occupied influential positions in the royal household. The region which they occupied was near the royal city of Zoan, and the two chief cities of Goshen were Rameses and Pithom. God’s Purpose The design of God in permitting them to enter Egypt was, no doubt, to prevent their intermingling with the tribes of Canaan, as they surely would have done in a little while, in the second or third generation, had they remained in the land. But this was rendered impossible in Egypt by the antipathy between the Egyptians and the Israelites, and by their separate colonial establishment. It was really the next stage in their separation as God’s peculiar people. It was also designed to prepare them by the discipline, which followed at a later period, for their national history. Another reason assuredly was to bring the power of God into direct contact with the proudest form of heathenism, and give an opportunity for the triumph of Jehovah over the world’s most ancient and mighty pretensions. A still further reason undoubtedly was to afford a type of our spiritual bondage and redemption. It was for the same reason that our Lord went down into Egypt in His infancy, that He might be our Forerunner in coming out of the world and becoming the separated people of God.

Section III: Israel’s Oppression

Section III—Israel’s OppressionExo_1:8-22There seems to be no doubt that the race of kings who changed the Egyptian policy towards the Hebrews into bitter hostility and cruel oppression was the dynasty that expelled the Shepherd kings, and that the chief figure in this oppression was the greatest of Egyptian sovereigns, known to us in the native records as Rameses II, and in Grecian history as Sesostris. A few years ago his sarcophagus was discovered, and his remains have been unveiled and placed on exhibition in the celebrated museum at Bulak. It is one of the transformations of history and an example of the vanity of human greatness, that the figure which was the terror of the world and the tyrant of the children of God is a helpless and impotent specimen today, in a glass case in an Egyptian museum. The reasons for the severe measures adopted by the Egyptian rulers were undoubtedly political, and designed to prevent the danger of a powerful rebellion or, at least, a party that might at any time become a threatening power in case of rebellion or foreign invasion. The new Hebrew community had become numerous enough to be a dangerous element, and would naturally take sides with one of their kindred races. The Egyptian government, therefore, determined to reduce their strength and numbers, and at the same time utilize their industrial resources, in great public improvements and enormous architectural works. Many of the previous kings had been great builders, but the greatest of Egyptian monuments belong to this period. The latest discoveries have confirmed in every particular the Bible account of the vast treasure cities which the Hebrew captives were employed to erect. And the hieroglyphic pictures of the taskmasters are true to the Bible narrative in every detail.

Section IV: Spiritual Lessons

Section IV—Spiritual LessonsWe pass, however, to the deeper spiritual import of these facts and incidents. The Devil

1. Pharaoh is a type of the devil, our adversary. He is represented throughout the Scriptures as the prince of the kingdom of darkness and the god of this world, holding under his oppressive sway the entire human race, and imposing upon them the cruel bondage of sin and its miserable slavery. The spirit of Pharaoh, through his entire career, is the very spirit of Satan. And the judgments which came upon him and his people were manifestly designed to emphasize this fact, and foreshadow and unfold the ultimate destruction of the principalities and powers of spiritual darkness. The gods of Egypt were but impersonations of devilish principalities and powers. The magicians of Egypt were evidently the subjects of Satanic possession and, to a certain extent, of supernatural Satanic power. The judgments inflicted through Moses were aimed directly at the deified forms of natural life and the things which the Egyptians worshiped. It was against the gods of Egypt that God said He would be avenged. “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord” (Exodus 12:12). The final infatuation and destruction of Pharaoh is a vivid type of the doom which is ultimately to come upon the prince of the power of the air in his eternal overthrow. And so the whole series of transactions is a spiritual panorama of the powers of evil in conflict with the kingdom of God, and the victory which at last is to come, through the Seed of the woman, over the serpent and his brood. The World
2. Egypt is a type of the world, as our place of bondage. It is called by the apostle, “the present evil age” (Galatians 1:4). We are warned against its spirit and power just as strongly as we are against Satan and sin. Our Master teaches us that we are not of the world, even as He is not of the world, and that the love of the world is incompatible with the love of the Father. The very design of our redemption by the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ was “to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father” (Exodus 1:4). All through the later prophets, Egypt is the type of the world. And the warnings of Hosea and others, against going down to Egypt, have the same simple spiritual meaning as the New Testament exhortation: “Do not love the world” (1 John 2:15); or “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength” (Jeremiah 17:5). “You cannot serve both God and Money” (Matthew 6:24). The Bondage of Sin
3. Their bondage in Egypt was the type of the slavery of sin from which the Lord Jesus Christ delivers His people. Our Lord taught this to the proud Hebrews of His own day when they ignorantly and falsely boasted: “We… have never been slaves of anyone” (John 8:33). They seemed to have strangely forgotten the story of Egypt and the captivity of Babylon. Our Lord might easily have reminded them of this, but He rather seeks to show them the deeper slavery and heavier bondage under which their souls were held. “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). So again, the Apostle Paul uses the same figure: “Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted” (Romans 6:16-17). “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:22-23). Began in Blessing
4. The bondage of Egypt began with them in apparent blessing, but it soon became an iron chain and a furnace of suffering. So man’s life on earth began in the innocence and happiness of Eden. But soon another king arose, and the god of this world became the antitype of Egypt’s cruel oppressor. It is not that the world in itself is essentially wrong, but the spirit of the world has become evil, and that which might have been in innocency a home of perfect happiness, has now become, through sin and Satan, a place of bondage and a snare of evil. Slaves
5. Our spiritual bondage, like that of Egypt, has its heavy tasks and its hopeless servitude. Satan imposes upon his dupes far heavier toils than the brick fields of Zoan required. And like those monsters of cruelty, he, too, refuses to give his toiling victims even the straw for their bricks. He demands of men what they cannot do, and then lashes them with his cruel scourge when they do not do it. One of his chief torments is an accusing conscience, which holds the poor guilty heart to the full standard of duty, but gives it no power to perform it, and no palliation or mercy for its fault, but goads it on by the terrors of remorse and despair. Looking upon these poor victims, the Master said with tender compassion, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Sin is a heavy task and a weary slavery, and truly the way of transgressors is hard. Tasks
6. Satan employs his captives like old Rameses, in building his treasure cities. It is true he makes them think that they are laying up treasures for themselves, and building their own houses. But when with weary toil their work is accomplished, he executes upon them the cruel decree of death, and their treasures remain for others to enjoy. The materials of these ancient cities were striking types of the transitoriness and perishableness of the world’s riches and glories. Sand and straw are God’s own images of the instability of earthly things. The houses of sand, and the wood, hay and stubble tell us of the destruction which is surely coming in the testing fires of the great day. And so all the weary work of the worldling is doomed to transitoriness and dissolution, and shall disappear like ashes in the whirlwind in the flames of a dissolving world. “Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro:… he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it” (Psalms 39:6). “Each man’s life is but a breath” (Psalms 39:5). Their tombs will remain their houses forever, their dwellings for endless generations, though they had named lands after themselves. But man, despite his riches, does not endure; he is like the beasts that perish. Like sheep they are destined for the grave, and death will feed on them. The upright will rule over them in the morning; their forms will decay in the grave, far from their princely mansions. (Psalms 49:11-12, Psalms 49:14) The foolish and the senseless alike perish and leave their wealth to others. (Psalms 49:10) For he will take nothing with him when he dies, his splendor will not descend with him. (Psalms 49:17) Refuses to Release Us7. Like the ancient oppressor, our spiritual tyrant refuses to relax his hold upon his captives. Pharaoh held on to his victims with a death grip. It is interesting to notice the stages of that conflict in which the grasp of his cruel fingers is unlocked by the wrenching hand of God, as it were, inch by inch. “Let my people go,” was the divine command, “so that they may hold a festival to me in the desert” (Exodus 5:1). His defiant answer was: “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I know not the Lord and I will not let Israel go” (Exodus 5:2). A Little Way After the first judgments fall he relaxes a little, and concedes this much: “Go, sacrifice to your God here in the land” (Exodus 8:25). How like the spirit of the world. At first it absolutely refuses to yield its claims in the slightest degree at the command of God. But compelled by His power, at last it consents to let men have a little religion, but it must not involve any real separation from the world. Serve God “in the land” (Exodus 8:25). Moses refuses this; and then Pharaoh makes a further concession: “I will let you go to offer sacrifices to the Lord your God in the desert, but you must not go very far” (Exodus 8:28). The world may even consent to let us go a little distance from it, but it wants to keep us in sight. The fast of Lent is all right if we will not forget to come back again to our old master with the Easter carnival. Our Children Must Stay In the next stage of the conflict he consents to let them go, but they must leave their little ones as hostages (Exodus 10:10-11). So Satan holds multitudes of people through their children, either by foolish parental indulgences in things which they themselves would not do, or through the idolatry of their affections, by which multitudes are held in his power. Our Property The final consent is, “Go, worship the Lord. Even your women and children may go with you; only leave your flocks and herds behind” (Exodus 10:24). The world is willing to let us have our creeds and churches, if it can only hold our possessions. And multitudes of God’s children are just in this position, serving the Lord after a fashion with their intellects and emotions, but wholly immersed in the riches and pleasures of earth, and really holding all they claim to own in the spirit of worldliness and selfishness. Thus our master holds us with persistent grasp, pursuing us even unto death, as Pharaoh pursued the Hebrews to the very waters of the Red Sea, and only relaxing his grasp at last, in the throes of dissolution. Our Life
7. Like Pharaoh, the world, our tyrant, demands at last our very life. The Egyptians did not merely compel the unrequited labor of the Hebrews, but the climax of the oppression was the decree of death upon every male Hebrew child. Nothing less than their destruction could satiate their masters. And so, “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and the ultimate purpose of our adversary is our destruction, both soul and body forever. The story is related of a vindictive man who desired to wreak a terrible revenge upon his enemy. He waited until he could combine every extreme of devilish cruelty in his horrible revenge. He heard that his enemy had become a Christian. Fearing that this would rob him of his sweetest triumph, namely, the ruin of his soul, he resolved, if possible, to compel him to abjure his faith. And so one day in a favorable opportunity, he sprang upon his victim and threatened him with instant death unless he denied his Lord. In his sudden terror the poor man promised to do so if he would spare him. No sooner had he said this than his enemy, with a scornful and satanic laugh exclaimed: “Now I have my revenge complete. I have both your soul and your body.” And with one cruel blow he struck him to the earth, with the diabolical consciousness that he had ruined him utterly and irretrievably both for time and eternity. So our relentless enemy seeks our complete destruction. And often, when he has his victim bound in the snares of sin, with his cruel hand he hurls him swiftly into eternity, lest he might lose, at last, the prize of his immortal soul. Oh that men would realize that sin is the huntress that seeks the precious life, and that Satan’s only happiness is the task of making other souls as wretched as himself. May it be true of all who read these lines, “But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin,… you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life” (Romans 6:17, Romans 6:22).