Exodus 2

Exodus 2:23-5

V

MOSES AT THE BURNING BUSH Exodus 2:23-5:14 Our chapter commences with Exodus 2:23 : “And it came to pass in the course of those many days, that the king of Egypt died [the king from whom Moses fled was Rameses II]; and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them.”

I quote these concluding verses to show that one of the obstacles in the way of Moses’ coming back to Egypt was removed, the death of the king that sought his life. Secondly, to show that God, seeing all the oppression perpetrated upon this race, hears their groanings; that he remembered every promise of every covenant that he ever made. How, when he saw their piteous condition and heard their prayers and groanings, he recalled the covenants that he had made with Abraham. The time was now passing rapidly and the very day was approaching that he promised to deliver them. So we have now to consider how God answers those prayers which they sent up to him. In the first place, he has to prepare an earthly deliverer, and that is Moses.

Then he has to prepare the people to receive Moses. He next has to prepare Pharaoh to receive Moses. These are the three great preparations.

Our chapter has to do, first, with Moses. In certain seasons of the year the best pasturage in the Sinaitic Peninsula is to be found on the slopes of the highest mountains. So we find Moses bringing the flocks of Jethro to Mount Horeb. Horeb is a range like the Blue Ridge, and Sinai is a peak of that range. Sometimes the word Horeb is used, and sometimes Sinai. You will notice that this mountain is already called “the Mount of God.” It had that reputation before the days of Moses. Right on the supposed spot where this burning bush appeared was afterward a convent, which is still standing, and in that convent is to be found the great Sinaitic manuscript. See how things connect with that mountain.

Now in that mountain God begins to prepare Moses by appealing to his sight and to his hearing and to his heart. The sight was an acacia bush on fire and yet not consumed. This was a symbol of the children of Israel in Egypt; though in the fiery furnace of affliction, they were not destroyed. This truth is set forth in Daniel, where the three Hebrew children were thrown into the fiery furnace, and God was with them and preserved them from destruction. The burning bush is one of the most comforting symbols in all the Bible to the people of God. The thought is expressed in a great hymn: “How firm a foundation, Ye saints of the Lord!” God is always with his people, in sickness, in flood, in fire.

He is with them to care for them. This sight attracted Moses, and he drew near to see why that bush did not burn up with such a large fire.

Then a voice came from the bush, telling him to take his sandals off; that he was standing on holy ground, and then to draw nigh, telling him who it was talking to him; that he was the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob; that he had seen the awful oppression of the Jewish people in Egypt; that he had heard all their prayers; and now he was come down to deliver them out of all those troubles, and to give them a good country, a land flowing with milk and honey. And thus winds up Exodus 3:10 : “Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.” He was to select a human deliverer: “I will send thee.”

It is an interesting study, whenever God calls people to do great things, to note the varied attitudes of these people to these calls. God appeared to Isaiah in a vision and Isaiah instantly responded: “Here am I; send me.” God appeared to Jeremiah, and he said, “O Lord God, I cannot go, I am but a little child.” He appears to Moses. Just look at the objection made by Moses: “Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” Moses takes a look at himself and sees nothing in himself competent to do that great work. We all do that way if we look at ourselves. What was God’s answer to that objection? “Certainly I will be with thee.” If God is with us then any objection based on our littleness of whatever kind is a poor objection. God then gives him a token which is this: that when he had brought those people out, he was to bring them right to that mountain where he was talking, where the bush was burning, right there, to worship him. God practically said, “There is a token that you can bring them out; if I am with you and you get back to this mountain with that great crowd of people assembled at the foot of it, then you will look back and say, Why did I say to God, Who am I that I should do this great deed?”

Moses raises this objection: “When I come to the children of Israel, and say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?” He is looking ahead at difficulties. “When I go back to those millions of slaves and say, The God of your fathers sent me to deliver you, they will say, What is his name? Who is the God of our fathers?” The Lord gives him an answer and takes that objection out of the way: “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, Jehovah, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you. This is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations.” Jehovah means a Covenant-God; & manifesting God; and he tells Moses what to say to them. You gather them together and tell them that Jehovah says, “I come to bring you out of Egypt and to give you a land flowing with milk and honey.” And he says, “They will hearken. Then you take the elders of Israel with you and go to the king of Egypt and make this demand of him: that you may go three days’ journey in the wilderness to make a sacrifice to Jehovah.” Now God forewarned him, saying, “I know that Pharaoh will not give his consent,” and gives him at least one explanation, viz.: “I will harden the heart of Pharaoh that he shall not let them go.” In the next chapter we take up that question of hardening. There are twenty places in this connection where the hardening is mentioned; in ten Pharaoh hardens his own heart; and in the other ten God hardens it.

To this you will find some references in Romans II. It is a subject we need to study: how we harden our hearts; and how God hardens them. The reason that God tells Moses that he is going to harden Pharaoh’s heart is to prevent him from being disappointed. He says: “Don’t be discouraged, I have a hand in it myself, and am letting you know about it beforehand. I will bring you forth, and you will say to him, that if he does not let Israel, my firstborn, go, I will take his firstborn.”

Now comes the next objection of Moses: “You tell me to go, but I am nothing. You say you will go with me. When I object that the people will ask for your name you will give me the name and I will tell them what you tell me. But they will not believe, nor hearken unto my voice. They will say Jehovah hath not appeared unto me.” Now Jehovah gives three signs in answer to that objection. (1) “What is this in your hand?” “A rod, a shepherd’s staff.” “Throw it on the ground.” It became a serpent and Moses fled from it. “Take it by the tail,” and it again became a rod in his hand. That is a sign.

Egypt is called Rahab; that is, a serpent. Now God is going to attack Egypt on the line of the serpent. Reference to this can be found in Job, and in several of the prophecies. The first sign, then, is the converting, at pleasure, of the rod into a serpent, and of the serpent back into a rod. (2) The second sign is for the benefit of the people: “Put your hand into your bosom.” It becomes white with leprosy. “Put it back into your bosom,” and it becomes whole again. That means that God will heal his people. (3) Now, the third sign was: “Take a little of the water of the Nile; throw it up and it will turn to blood.” That was a stroke at the gods of Egypt. These were the three signs to confirm the fact that Moses was accredited of God to the children of Israel.

Now, we will see the next objection: “Oh, Lord, I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant; for I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exodus 4:10). That meant neither that he was a stammerer, like Demosthenes, nor that he had no ready command of language, like Oliver Cromwell and John Knox, originally, and like Senator Coke when he first started out to be a public speaker. The reply to that objection is: “Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh a man dumb, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? is it not I, Jehovah? Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt speak.” In other words, he says, “Your being eloquent or not being eloquent has nothing to do with it. You have to deliver a message. If you had to write a composition that would charm Pharaoh so that he would let the children of Israel go, it would be a different matter.” Moses replied: “Oh, Lord, send, I pray thee, by the hand of him whom thou wilt send.” It is hard to understand what Moses meant by that.

It has generally been supposed to mean: “Send by anybody you please, so you let me alone.” But I question whether that is the meaning.’ It seems rather to have this meaning: “I have told you my incompetency, and now I will do it if you want me to, but if this business turns out badly, remember that I knew better than you did about it and I protested.” That made the Lord angry. So far as we know he never was angry at Moses but twice; the next time he gets angry it will cost Moses the right to enter the Promised Land in the flesh. But God meets that objection by telling him about Aaron, the older brother. “He is eloquent and he cometh forth to meet thee.” God had sent Aaron to meet him right there at that very mountain. “I will give you an eloquent man, but after a while your eloquent man may introduce a golden calf to your people.”

There was another objection in the mind of Moses, though he did not state it: “I am employed by my father-in-law, having charge of his sheep, and I must close up this business before I can go into Egypt.” So he goes to Jethro and states the case: that he wants to go to Egypt and look into the condition of his people to see if they are alive. But he does not tell what God said. Jethro consents. Every year of my life I strike somebody who is not ready to do the Lord’s will on account of some business he can’t turn loose.

There is still another objection revealed in Exodus 4:19 : “All the men are dead that sought thy life.” Moses has waited until God spoke to him again and reveals another objection in his mind. There is still another trouble; he starts with his wife and two children, and he has not complied with the covenant of God. He has not circumcised that last child, and God meets him by the way to slay him, and Moses knows why. His wife knows why. God puts the case before the woman this way: “You have objected to the circumcision of this child, and now if you persist in your objection you will lose your husband. He cannot go to deliver this people and be a covenant-breaker himself.” So she circumcised the child.

Moses then sent back Zipporah and the two children to Jethro. When he gets back to Sinai with the children of Israel, Jethro brings them back to him.

You see how in preparing that man to do a work the difficulties, had to be gotten out of the way. When he was in Egypt he knew he was to deliver the people, and in his own way rushed out to bring it about, and met with a repulse which threw him farther off than before. He comes now prepared, and Aaron meets him at Mount Sinai. These two brothers, separated for forty years, start out across that desert to Egypt to deliver millions of people from bondage. I will read what a poet, Dr. W. G. Wilkinson, in his Epic of Moses, says about that.The Epic of Moses, Part 1, page 43, reads thus:

Those two wayfarers through the wilderness Unconsciously upon their shoulders bore The trembling weight of boundless destinies; Not only did the future of their race . Hang on them, but the future of the world. From east to west, from north to south, nowhere Within the round earth’s wide horizon lived Any least hope for rescue of mankind Entangled sliding down a fatal slope That ended in the open-jawed abyss Of utter ultimate despair and death –

Nowhere, save with those Hebrew brethren twain. That on those two Jewish brethren rested the destinies of the world is a fine thought admirably expressed. Don’t forget this book and its value in interpretation.

Moses and Aaron get to the place and they assemble the elders of the people. That doubtless took some little time, as they were scattered. Word was sent rapidly to the heads of the different tribes. In Exodus 6:14, the sons of Simeon and then the sons of Levi are taken up. Then from the heads of the Levites it traces down to Moses and Aaron, showing that Moses and Aaron were not the heads of the tribe of Levi. They were the descendants of one of the heads of the tribe of Levi.

So they have no tribal authority over those people, but have a God-given authority. When the heads of all the tribes were assembled, they fairly state the message and naturally, questionings come up: “How do we know that God sent you? What is his name? What signs do you use?” In the presence of all the elders they give all the signs; the elders accept them and report to the people; and the people believe them.

They are now prepared to go to Pharaoh. God has prepared Moses to accept the work; he has prepared the people to accept Moses in the leadership of the work; now he must send Moses and Aaron and the elders of the people to prepare Pharoah to hear them. We will take up their interview. “And afterward Moses and Aaron came, and said unto Pharaoh, Thus saith Jehovah, the God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is Jehovah that I should hearken unto his voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, and moreover I will not let Israel go. And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days’ journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice unto Jehovah our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword.

And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, loose the people from their works? get you unto your burdens. And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land are now many, and ye make them rest from their burdens.”

And he commanded their taskmasters that the people should do an equal amount of work and gather the straws for themselves, and if they did not succeed their Hebrew officers were to be beaten publicly. They were beaten and they appealed unto Pharaoh, and he referred them to Moses and Aaron. They charged Moses and Aaron with having brought this extra oppression upon them. You see these people are not ready. These head men, just as soon as a little trouble came, were ready to repudiate Moses and Aaron whom they have just accepted as leaders. Moses takes the case to God in prayer; and Jehovah replies to him by telling him that he knew that Pharaoh would not let them go. Now they must go before Pharaoh and demonstrate to him that Jehovah is God, and in the next chapter we will take up this whole transaction between Moses and Pharaoh, or as Paul says, “Jannes and Jambres, the priests that withstood Moses.”

Our next chapter will consider that double hardening. Let each reader look out the twenty passages that refer to the hardening – ten in which God hardens Pharoah’ s heart, and ten where Pharaoh hardens his own heart. Then we will take up the ten plagues one after another.

1. Give circumstances and object of Jehovah’s meeting Moses.

2. What of the symbolism of the burning bush?

3. State in order the several objections of Moses to becoming the deliverer of Israel, and Jehovah’s reply thereto.

4. Meaning of the name: “I am that I am”?

5. Cite from the New Testament the words of Jesus claiming this name.

6. What token did Jehovah give Moses to assure him of success in delivering Israel?

7. What three attesting signs and their significance?

8. What two preachers have great sermons on “What is in thy hand?” and “Take it by the tail,” and what book has the substance of both sermons? Answer: The book is Pentecost’s Deliverance from Egypt, or Bible Readings on the First Twelve Chapters of Exodus.

9. Give and illustrate the heart of the meaning of “What is in thy hand?”

10. What part has eloquence in the salvation of men and distinguish between true and rhetorical eloquence of what says Paul of the latter? Answer: 1 Corinthians 2:1-5.

11. What troubles later came through the “eloquent” brother of Moses?

12. Why did God meet Moses on his way to deliver Israel to kill him, and explain, applying the whole incident in Exodus 4:24-26.

13. Where is the scripture showing that after this incident Moses sent back his wife and children to the father-in-law?

14. What three scriptures seem to indicate the marriage of Moses with Zipporah was unfortunate? Answer: (1) Exodus 4:24-26, shows that his wife had no sympathy for his faith; (2) Numbers 12:1-2, shows that she had no sympathy for his sister and brother, and was the occasion of their revolt; (3) Judges 18:30, according to the Hebrew text, has Moses, not Manasseh, as the grandfather of the Levite Jonathan, who served as priest for the Danite idolaters.

15. Numbers 12:1-2, refers to Zipporah; how do you explain her being called an “Ethiopian”? Answer: The Hebrew word rendered “Ethiopian” in the Common Version is “Cushite,” and the descendants of Cush were not confined to Ethiopia in Africa. Many of them were on the Euphrates and in Arabia. Doubtless Zipporah’s mother was an Arabian Cushite certainly not a Negress.

16. In Exodus 3:18, we have God’s first message to Pharaoh, given at the bush, but give the form of the message repeated to Moses as when later he set out from Jethro’s home

17. How does a prophet, long afterward, and the New Testament still later, use this message to prove that Israel, as a nation, was a type of our Lord? Answer: See Hosea 11:1. and Matthew 2:15.

18. What infidel criticisms have been offered on the morality of “spoiling the Egyptians” as commanded by Jehovah in Exodus 3:21-22 repeated in Exodus 11:1-3, and obeyed in Exodus 12:33-36? Answer: The criticisms were based on the rendering “borrow” in the Common Version of Exo 3:21, but ASV rendering clears the difficulty. The jewels are given freely because God had given his people favor with the Egyptians that dreadful night when the firstborn were slain. In this way Israel received compensation for years of uncompensated slave labor.

19. What much later story has Josephus about this matter? Answer: He tells that when Alexander the Great was master of Jerusalem the Egyptians presented a claim against the Jews for these borrowed jewels, and the Jews agreed to pay the claim if the Egyptians would settle their claim in offset for the years of enforced and unpaid slave labor.

20. Give an account of the meeting of Moses and Aaron, and why should Aaron come to seek Moses?

21. What great epic of Moses commended to the class and what excellency pointed out as compared with other poems on Biblical themes?

22. Cite the passage in this epic on Moses and Aaron setting forth from Sinai to deliver Israel.

23. Tell of the meeting of Moses and Aaron with the elders of Israel and the result.

24. Tell of the meeting of Moses and Aaron with Pharaoh and the result.