Now these are the names of the sons of Israel, who came into Egypt (every man and his household came with Jacob): Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. All the souls who came out of Jacob’s body were seventy souls, and Joseph was in Egypt already. Joseph died, as did all his brothers, and all that generation. The children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.
Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who didn’t know Joseph. He said to his people, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come, let’s deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it happen that when any war breaks out, they also join themselves to our enemies and fight against us, and escape out of the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. They built storage cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out. They started to dread the children of Israel. The Egyptians ruthlessly made the children of Israel serve, and they made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and in brick, and in all kinds of service in the field, all their service, in which they ruthlessly made them serve.
The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah, and he said, “When you perform the duty of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birth stool, if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.” But the midwives feared God, and didn’t do what the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the baby boys alive. The king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said to them, “Why have you done this thing and saved the boys alive?”
The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women aren’t like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.”
God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied, and grew very mighty. Because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “You shall cast every son who is born into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive.”
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22 Moses describeth the wonderful order that God observeth in…
Moses describeth the wonderful order that God observeth in performing his promise to Abraham, Gen. 15:14.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 Exo 1:1 Now these [are] the names of the…
Exo 1:1 Now these [are] the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob.
Ver. 1. Now these are.] Heb., And these are, &c. For this book is a continuation of the former history, and this verse a repetition of what was before recorded in Gen 46:8, The whole law, say the Schoolmen, is but one copulative. The whole Scripture but Cor et anima Dei, saith a father, {a} the heart and soul of God, uttered "by the mouth of the holy prophets, which have been since the world began." {Luk 1:70}
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{a} Illyric. Clavit.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21 This list is here repeated, that by comparing this…
This list is here repeated, that by comparing this small root with so vast a company of branches as grew upon it, we may see the wonderful providence of God in the fulfilling of his promises. And his household, his children and grandchildren, as the word house is taken Rth 4:11; 2Sa 7:11; 1Ki 21:29.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv1, 8, 15 In these verses we have, 1. A recital of…
In these verses we have, 1. A recital of the names of the twelve patriarchs, as they are called, Act 7:8. Their names are often repeated in scripture, that they may not sound uncouth to us, as other hard names, but that, by their occurring so frequently, they may become familiar to us; and to show how precious God's spiritual Israel are to him, and how much he delights in them. The account which was kept of the number of Jacob's family, when they went down into Egypt; they were in all seventy souls (Exo 1:5). according to the computation we had, Gen 46:27. This was just the number of the nations by which the earth was peopled, according to the account given, Gen. 10. For when the Most High separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel, as Moses observes, Deu 32:8. Notice is here taken of this that their increase in Egypt might appear the more wonderful. Note, It is good for those whose latter end greatly increases often to remember how small their beginning was, Job 8:7. 3. The death of Joseph, Exo 1:6. All that generation by degrees wore off. Perhaps all Jacob's sons died much about the same time; for there was not more than seven years' difference in age between the eldest and the youngest of them, except Benjamin; and, when death comes into a family, sometimes it makes a full end in a little time. When Joseph, the stay of the family, died, the rest went off apace. Note, We must look upon ourselves and our brethren, and all we converse with, as dying and hastening out of the world. This generation passeth away, as that did which went before. 4. The strange increase of Israel in Egypt, Exo 1:7. Here are four words used to express it: They were fruitful, and increased abundantly, like fishes or insects, so that they multiplied; and, being generally healthful and strong, they waxed exceedingly mighty, so that they began almost to outnumber the natives, for the land was in all places filled with them, at least Goshen, their own allotment. Observe, (1.) Though, no doubt, they increased considerably before, yet, it should seem, it was not till after the death of Joseph that it began to be taken notice of as extraordinary. Thus, when they lost the benefit of his protection, God made their numbers their defence, and they became better able than they had been to shift for themselves. If God continue our friends and relations to us while we most need them, and remove them when they can be better spared, let us own that he is wise, and not complain that he is hard upon us. After the death of Christ, our Joseph, his gospel Israel began most remarkably to increase: and his death had an influence upon it; it was like the sowing of a corn of wheat, which, if it die, bringeth forth much fruit, Joh 12:24. (2.) This wonderful increase was the fulfillment of the promise long before made unto the fathers. From the call of Abraham, when God first told him he would make of him a great nation, to the deliverance of his seed out of Egypt, it was 430 years, during the first 215 of which they were increased but to seventy, but, in the latter half, those seventy multiplied to 600,000 fighting men. Note, [1.] Sometimes God's providences may seem for a great while to thwart his promises, and to go counter to them, that his people's faith may be tried, and his own power the more magnified. [2.] Though the performance of God's promises is sometimes slow, yet it is always sure; at the end it shall speak, and not lie, Hab 2:3.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 Now these are the names of the children of…
Now these are the names of the children of Israel which came down into Egypt,.... Of the twelve patriarchs, the sons of Jacob, who were heads of the twelve tribes, whose names are here given; since the historian is about to give an account of their coming out of Egypt, and that it might be observed how greatly they increased in it, and how exactly the promise to Abraham, of the multiplication of his seed, was fulfilled: or, "and these are the names" (b), &c. this book being connected with the former by the copulative "and"; and when this was wrote, it is highly probable there was no division of the books made, but the history proceeded in one continued account:
every man and his household came with Jacob; into Egypt, all excepting Joseph, and along with them their families, wives, children, and servants; though wives and servants are not reckoned into the number of the seventy, only such as came out of Jacob's loins: the Targum of Jonathan is,"a man with the men of his house,''as if only male children were meant, the sons of Jacob and his grandsons; and Aben Ezra observes, that women were never reckoned in Scripture as of the household or family; but certainly Dinah, and Serah, as they came into Egypt with Jacob, are reckoned among the seventy that came with him thither, Gen 46:15.
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(b) "et haec", Pagninus, Montanus, Drusius.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20 Every man of his household - That is, children…
Every man of his household - That is, children and grand- children.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22 -Year before the common Year of Christ, 1706.
THE SECOND BOOK OF MOSES CALLED EXODUS
-Year before the common Year of Christ, 1706.
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-Julian Period, 3008.
-Cycle of the Sun, 7.
-Dominical Letter, F.
-Cycle of the Moon, 2.
-Indiction, 15.
-Creation from Tisri or September, 2298.
CHAPTER I
The names and number of the children of Israel that went down
into Egypt, 1-5.
Joseph and all his brethren of that generation die, 6.
The great increase of their posterity, 7.
The cruel policy of the king of Egypt to destroy them, 8-11.
They increase greatly, notwithstanding their affliction, 12.
Account of their hard bondage, 13, 14.
Pharaoh's command to the Hebrew midwives to kill all the male
children, 15,16.
The midwives disobey the king's command, and, on being questioned,
vindicate themselves, 17-19.
God is pleased with their conduct, blesses them, and increases
the people, 20, 21.
Pharaoh gives a general command to the Egyptians to drown all the
male children of the Hebrews, 22.
NOTES ON CHAP. I
Verse 1. These are the names] Though this book is a continuation or the book of Genesis, with which probably it was in former times conjoined, Moses thought it necessary to introduce it with an account of the names and number of the family of Jacob when they came to Egypt, to show that though they were then very few, yet in a short time, under the especial blessing of God, they had multiplied exceedingly; and thus the promise to Abraham had been literally fulfilled. See the notes on Gen. xlvi.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 20 Exo 1:1. These are the names — This list…
Exo 1:1. These are the names — This list of names is here repeated, that by comparing this small root with the multitude of branches which arose from it, we may see and acknowledge the wonderful providence of God in the fulfilment of his promises. Every man and his household — That is, his children and grand-children.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22 Now - Literally, “And,” indicating a close connection with…
Now - Literally, “And,” indicating a close connection with the preceding narrative. In fact this chapter contains a fulfillment of the predictions recorded in Gen 46:3 and in Gen 15:13.
Every man and his household - It may be inferred from various notices that the total number of dependents was considerable, a point of importance in its bearings upon the history of the Exodus (compare Gen 13:6; Gen 14:14).
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv3, 5, 6, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21, 22 And Benjamin. He is mentioned here because he was…
And Benjamin. He is mentioned here because he was the son of Rachel, as the preceding were the children of Lia. The offspring of the handmaids follow. (Haydock)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v1
EXODUS
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THE SECOND BOOK OF MOSES
(וְאֵלֶּה שְׁמוֹת; Ἐξοδος: Exodus)
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THE PROPHETICO-MESSIANIC THEOCRACY—OR THE GENESIS, REDEMPTION AND SANCTIFICATION OF THE COVENANT PEOPLE
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FIRST DIVISION: MOSES AND PHARAOH
The typically significant redemption of israel out of his servitude in egypt as preliminary condition of and preparation for the establishment of the typical kingdom of god (the theocracy) by means of the mosaic legislation—or the theocratic foundation for the legislation of all the three books.
Exodus 1-18
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FIRST SECTION
The Genesis of the Covenant People of Israel, of their Servitude, and of the Foretokens of their Redemption as one people. An analogue of the Development of Mankind as a unit, of their Corruption and the Preparation for their Salvation. The calling of Moses and his twofold Mission to his people and to Pharaoh
Chaps. 1–7:7
A.—growth and servitude of the israelites in egypt—and pharaoh’s purpose to destroy them
Chap. Exo_1:1-22
1Now these are the names of the children of Israel which [who] came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob: 2Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; 3Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; 4Dan, and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls; for [and] Joseph was in Egypt already. 6And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. 7And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty, and the land was filled 8with them. Now [And] there arose a new king over Egypt which [who] knew not Joseph. 9And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel 10 are more and mightier than we. Come on [Come], let us deal wisely [prudently2] with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass that, when there falleth out any war [when a war occurreth], they join also [they also join themselves] unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up [and go up] out of the land. 11Therefore they did set [And they appointed] over them taskmasters, to afflict them with their burdens; and they built treasure-cities [store-cities] for Pharaoh, Pithom and Raemses. 12But the more [lit., And as] they afflicted them the more [lit., so] they multiplied and grew [spread]. And they were grieved because of [horrified in view of] the children of Israel. 13And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor. 14And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage [service] in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field; all3 their service wherein they made them serve was [which they laid on them] with rigor. 15And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives (of which [whom] the name of one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah), 16And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to [When ye deliver] the Hebrew women, and see them [then look] upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him; but, if it be a daughter, then she shall live. 17But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded, but [and] saved the men-children alive. 18And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men-children alive? 19And the midwives said unto Pharaoh,4 Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian, for they are lively [vigorous], and are delivered ere the midwives come in 20unto them [before the midwife cometh in unto them, they are delivered]. Therefore [And] God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied, and waxed 21[grew] very mighty. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses [households]. 22And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.
TEXTUAL AND GRAMMATICAL
[Exo_1:10. נִתְחַכְּמָה. Lange, Gesenius, Arnheim, and Philippson, translate this überlisten, “outwit.” But the Hithp. form occurs, besides here, only in Ecc_7:16, and there has the signification proper to the Hithpel, viz., to deem one’s-self wise, to act the part of a wise man. Here, therefore, it is better to render it in nearly the same way.—תִּקְרֶאנָה, a plural verb with a singular subject. Knobel, following the Samaritan version (תקראנו), translates wird uns treffen, “shall befall us.” But there is no need of this assumption of a corrupt text. See Ewald, Ausf. Gram., § 191 c.—Tr.].
[Exo_1:14. Lange, with many others, takes אֵת here as a preposition, meaning “together with,” “besides.” and supplies “other” before “service.” Grammatically this is perhaps easier than to take it (as we have done as the sign of the Acc. But it requires us to supply the word on which the whole force of the clause depends.—Tr.].
[Exo_1:19. Lange translates, unaccountably, אֶל־פַּרעֹה as being equivalent to a genitive: die Hebammen des Pharaoh, “Pharaoh’s midwives.”—Tr.].
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
Exo_1:1-7. Fulfillment of the promise, Gen_46:3. Also fulfillment of the prediction of suffering for the descendants of Abraham, Gen_15:13.
Exo_1:2-4. The names of the children are given according to the rank of the mothers. So Gen_35:23-26.
Exo_1:5. The small number of seventy souls (vid. Gen_46:27) who entered Egypt, illustrates the wonderful increase. At the exodus 600,000 men, besides children, etc. Vid. Exo_12:37. On the terms denoting increase, יִרְבּוּ פָּרוּ יִשְׁרְצוּ see Gen_1:28; Gen_8:17.
Exo_1:8. A new king.—וַיָּקָם has a special significance. He rose up, as a man opposed to the previous policy. The LXX. translate חָדָשׁ by ἔτερος. Josephus and others inferred the rise of a new dynasty.—Who knew not Joseph, i.e., cared nothing for his services and the results of them, the high regard in which his people had been held.
Exo_1:9-10. “They are greater and stronger than we,” says despotic fear. “Come, let us be more prudent (more cunning) than they,” is the language of despotic craftiness and malice. Despotic policy adds, that in case of a war the people might join the enemy. A danger to the country might indeed grow out of the fact that the Israelites did not become Egyptianized. The power of Israelitish traditions is shown especially in the circumstance that even the descendants of Joseph, though they had an Egyptian mother, certainly became Jews. Perhaps it was dislike of Egyptian manners which led the sons of Ephraim early to migrate towards Palestine, 1Ch_7:22. An honorable policy would, however, have provided means to help the Jews to secure a foreign dwelling-place.
Exo_1:11. Taskmasters.—The organs of oppression and enslavement. “That foreigners were employed in these labors, is illustrated by a sepulchral monument, discovered in the ruins of Thebes, and copied in the Egyptological works of Rosellini and Wilkinson, which represents laborers, who are not Egyptians, as employed in making brick, and by them two Egyptians with rods, as overseers; even though these laborers may not be designed to represent Israelites, as their Jewish features would indicate” (Keil). See also Keil’s reference to Aristotle and Livy, (p. 422)5 on the despotic method of enfeebling a people physically and mentally by enforced labor. Store-cities.—For the harvests. See Keil (p. 422) on Pithom (Gr. Πάτουμος, Egypt. Thou, Thoum), situated on the canal which connects the Nile with the Arabian gulf. Raemses, the same as Heroopolis.
Exo_1:12. Horror is the appropriate designation of the feeling with which bad men see the opposite of their plans wonderfully brought about. Hengstenberg: Sie hatten Elcel vor ihnen. “They were disgusted at them.” But this was the case before. On קוּץ see the lexicons.
Exo_1:13-14. Aggravation of the servitude. Two principal forms of service. Brickmaking for other buildings, and field labor. The bricks were hardened in the hot Egyptian sun; the field labor consisted especially in the hard work of irrigating the soil.
Exo_1:15-18. Second measure. Resort to brutal violence, but still concealed under demoniacal artifice. Probably there was an organized order of midwives, and the two midwives mentioned were at their head.—He said unto them.—And again: he said. He tried to persuade them, and at last the devilish command came out—probably secret instructions like those of Herod, to kill the children in Bethlehem.—Over the bathing-tub. [So Lange.—Tr.]. Knobel and Keil assume a figurative designation of the vagina in the phrase הָאָבְנַים, referring to Jer_18:3. Since the child is generally born head first, there is only a moment from the time when the sex can be recognized to the use of the bathing-tub. On the various interpretations, comp. the lexicons and the Studien und Kritiken, 1834, S. 81ff.,6etc. A heathenish way, all over the world, of killing the males and forcing the women and girls to accommodate themselves to the mode of life of the murderers.
Exo_1:19. “With this answer they could deceive the king, since the Arab women bear children with extraordinary ease and rapidity. See Burckhardt, Notes on the Bedouins and Wahabis, I., p. 96; Tischendorf, Reise I., p. 108.” (Keil).
Exo_1:20-21. God built them houses—He blessed them with abundant prosperity. According to Keil, the expression is figurative: because they labored for the upbuilding of the families of Israel, their families also were built up by God. Their lie, which Augustine excuses on the ground that their fear of God outweighed the sinfulness of the falsehood, seems, like similar things in the life of Abraham, to be the wild utterance of a state of extreme moral exigency, and is here palliated by a real fact, the ease of parturition.
Exo_1:22. Now at last open brutality follows the failure of the scheme intervening between artifice and violence. On similar occurrences in profane history, see Keil.7 Probably also this command was paralyzed, and the deliverance of Moses by the daughter of Pharaoh might well have had the effect of nullifying the king’s command; for even the worst of the heathen were often terrified by unexpected divine manifestations.
Footnotes:
[1][The Authorized Version is followed in the translation from the Hebrew, except that “Jehovah” is everywhere substituted for “the Lord.” In other cases, where a change in the translation is thought to be desirable, the proposed emendation is inserted in brackets.—Tr]
[2][Exo_1:10. נִתְחַכְּמָה. Lange, Gesenius, Arnheim, and Philippson, translate this überlisten, “outwit.” But the Hithp. form occurs, besides here, only in Ecc_7:16, and there has the signification proper to the Hithpel, viz., to deem one’s-self wise, to act the part of a wise man. Here, therefore, it is better to render it in nearly the same way.—תִּקְרֶאנָה, a plural verb with a singular subject. Knobel, following the Samaritan version (תקראנו), translates wird uns treffen, “shall befall us.” But there is no need of this assumption of a corrupt text. See Ewald, Ausf. Gram., § 191 c.—Tr.].
[3][Exo_1:14. Lange, with many others, takes אֵת here as a preposition, meaning “together with,” “besides.” and supplies “other” before “service.” Grammatically this is perhaps easier than to take it (as we have done as the sign of the Acc. But it requires us to supply the word on which the whole force of the clause depends.—Tr.].
[4][Exo_1:19. Lange translates, unaccountably, אֶל־פַּרעֹה as being equivalent to a genitive: die Hebammen des Pharaoh, “Pharaoh’s midwives.”—Tr.].
[5][Aristotle, Polit. v. 9; Livy, Hist. i. 56, 59. The references to Keil conform to the translation published by the Clarks. Edinburgh. But the translations, when given here, are made directly from the original, and from a later edition than that from which the Edinburgh translation was made.—Tr.].
[6][An article by Prof. Rettig. There is, however, still another article on the same subject in the same volume of this periodical, p. 641 sqq., by Redslob. The principal views on this vexed phrase are these: (1) That אָבְנַיִם being the same word as is ued (and elsewhere only used) in Jer_18:3, of a potter’s wheel, must denote the same thing; or, rather, the seat on which the potter sits, this being adapted to the use of a parturient woman. (2) That it means bathing-tub, the dual form being accounted for by the supposition that a cover belonged to it. (3) That it is derived from אָפַן in the sense of turn, and refers to the pudenda of the parturient, from which the child is, as it were, turned forth, like the vessel from the potter’s wheel. (4) That the word, being radically the same as אֶבֶן, and being in the dual, may be used for the testiculi of the male child. (5) That אָבְנַיִם, from אָפַן, may mean Kinds, sexes. (6) That being derived from אָבַן in the sense of to separate (and so a stone is that which is separated from a rock), it means the two distinctions (so Meier, Studien und Krttiken, 1842, p. 1050). It is obvious to remark that, in order to determine the sex of the child, the thing to be looked at is not the bathing-tub, or the stool, or any part of the mother. This consideration is almost, if not quite, conclusive against the first three interpretations. But it is perhaps useless to hope for a complete solution of the meaning of the phrase.—Tr.].
[7][Probably a slip of the pen for Knobel. See his commentary on Exodus, p. 9, in the Kurzgefasstes exegetisches Handbuch zum alten Testament.—Tr.].
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 20 children of Israel were fruitful--They were living in a…
children of Israel were fruitful--They were living in a land where, according to the testimony of an ancient author, mothers produced three and four sometimes at a birth; and a modern writer declares "the females in Egypt, as well among the human race as among animals, surpass all others in fruitfulness." To this natural circumstance must be added the fulfilment of the promise made to Abraham.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv1, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17, 20, 21, 22 DESCENDANTS OF ISRAEL, Exo_1:1-6.
DESCENDANTS OF ISRAEL, Exo_1:1-6.
1-5. These are the names — The heads of the tribes are recounted, and the statement of Gen_46:27 is repeated, that seventy souls went down into Egypt; the writer, from the covenant associations of the number, loving to consider Israel as a seventy-fold people, though at the same time himself furnishing data by which we see that he did not intend to give an exact census. See notes on Luk_10:1-16, and Act_1:15.
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All… that came out of the loins of Jacob — The idiom which represents Jacob himself as one of the “souls that came out of the loins of Jacob” gave the original readers no difficulty, and we are not to expect Occidental rhetoric in Oriental documents. See notes on Genesis 46.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22 1. Now (Heb. And) these are the names of…
1. Now (Heb. And) these are the names of …] As Gen_25:13; Gen_36:40; Gen_46:8; Exo_6:16, &c. (all P).
1–5. Recapitulation, as the introduction to a new section, of what had been stated before respecting the sons of Jacob (Gen_35:23-26), and the numbers of his descendants who had gone down into Egypt (Gen_46:8; Gen_46:26 f.).
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1–7. Growth of the descendants of Jacob in Egypt, after Joseph’s death, into a great people.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22 (1) Now these are the names.—The divisions between the…
THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE ISRAELITES IN EGYPT, AND THEIR OPPRESSION BY A NEW KING.
(1) Now these are the names.—The divisions between the “books “of the Pentateuch are not arbitrary. Genesis ends naturally and Exodus begins at the point where the history of the individuals who founded the Israelite nation ceases and that of the nation itself is entered on. That history commences properly with Exo_1:7. Exo_1:1-6 form the connecting link between the two books, and would not have been needed unless Exodus had been introduced as a distinct work, since they are little more than a recapitulation of what had been already stated and stated more fully in Genesis. Compare Exo_1:1-5 with Gen_46:8-27, and Exo_1:6 with Gen_1:26.
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Every man and his household.—“A household,” in the language of the East, includes not only children and grand-children, but retainers also—“servants born in the house”—like those of Abraham (Gen_14:14). The number of each “household” may thus have been very considerable.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. H. Mackintosh 1880 · Public Domain On v1 Exodus 1
Exodus 1
We now approach, by the mercy of God, the study of the Book of Exodus, of which the great prominent theme is redemption. The first five verses recall to the mind the closing scenes of the preceding book. The favoured objects of God’s electing love are brought before us; and we find ourselves, very speedily, conducted, by the inspired penman, into the section of the book.
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In our meditations on the Book of Genesis, we were led to see that the conduct of Joseph’s brethren toward him was that which led to their being brought down into Egypt. This fact is to be looked at in two ways. In the first place, we can read therein a deeply solemn lesson as taught in Israel’s actings toward God; and, secondly, we have, therein unfolded, an encouraging lesson, as taught in God’s actings toward Israel.
And, first, as to Israel’s actings toward God, what can be more deeply solemn than to follow out the results of their treatment of him who stands before the spiritual mind as the marked type of the Lord Jesus Christ? They, utterly regardless of the anguish of his soul, consigned Joseph into the hands of the uncircumcised. And what was the issue, as regards them They were carried down into Egypt, there to experience those deep and painful exercises of heart which are so graphically and touchingly presented in the closing chapters of Genesis. Nor was this all. A long and dreary season awaited their offspring in that very land in which Joseph had found a dungeon.
But then God was in all this, as well as man; and it is His prerogative to bring good out of evil. Joseph’s brethren might sell him to the Ishmaelites, and the Ishmaelites might sell him to Potiphar, and Potiphar might cast him into prison; but Jehovah was above all, and He was accomplishing His own mighty ends. "The wrath of man shall praise him." The time had not arrived in which the heirs were ready for the inheritance, and the inheritance for the heirs. The brickkilns of Egypt were to furnish a rigid school for the seed of Abraham, while, as yet, "the iniquity of the Amorites" was rising to a head, amid the "hills and valleys" of the promised land.
All this is deeply interesting and instructive. There are "wheels within wheels" in the government of God. He makes use of an endless variety of agencies, in the accomplishment of His unsearchable designs. Potiphar’s wife, Pharaoh’s butler, Pharaoh’s dreams, Pharaoh himself, the dungeon, the throne, the fetters, the royal signet, the famine - all are at His sovereign disposal, and all be made instrumental in the development of His stupendous counsels. The spiritual mind delights to dwell upon this. It delights to range through the wide domain of creation and providence, And to recognise, in all, the machinery which an All-wise and an Almighty God is using for the purpose of unfolding His counsels of redeeming love. True, we may see many traces of the serpent; many deep and well-defined footprints of the enemy of God and man; many things which we cannot explain nor even comprehend; suffering innocence and successful wickedness may furnish an apparent basis for the infidel-reasoning of the sceptic mind; but the true believer can piously repose in the assurance that "the Judge of all the earth shall do right." He knows right well that,
Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan His ways in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
and He will make it plain."
Blessed be God for the consolation and encouragement flowing out of such reflections as these. We need them, every hour, while passing through an evil world, in which the enemy has wrought such appalling mischief, in which the lusts and passions of men produce such bitter fruits, and in which the path of the true disciple presents roughnesses which mere nature could never endure. Faith knows, of a surety, that there is One behind the scenes whom the world sees not nor regards; and, in the consciousness of this, it can calmly say, "it is well," and, "it shall be well."
The above train of thought is distinctly suggested by the opening lines of our book. "God’s counsel shall stand, and he will do all his pleasure." The enemy may oppose; but God will ever prove Himself to be above him; and all we need is a spirit of simple, child-like confidence and repose in the divine purpose. Unbelief will rather look at the enemy’s efforts to countervail, than at God’s power to accomplish. It is on the latter that faith fixes its eye. Thus it obtains victory, and It has to do with God and His infallible faithfulness. It rests not upon the ever shifting sands of human affairs and earthly influences, but upon the immovable rock of God’s eternal Word. That is faith’s holy and solid resting-place. Come what may, it abides in that sanctuary of strength. "Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation." What then? Could death affect the counsels of the living God? Surely not. He only waited for the appointed moment, the due time, and then the most hostile influences were made instrumental in the development of His purposes.
"Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: come on, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass that when there falleth out any war they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land." (Vv. 8-10) All this is the reasoning of a heart that had never learnt to take God into its calculations. The unrenewed heart never can do so; and hence, the moment you introduce God, all its reasonings fall to the ground. Apart from, or independent of Him, they may seem very wise; but only bring Him in, and they are proved to be perfect folly.
But why should we allow our minds to be, in any wise, influenced by reasonings and calculations which depend, for their apparent truth, upon the total exclusion of God? To do so is, in principle, and according to its measure, practical atheism. In Pharaoh’s case, we see that he could accurately recount the various contingencies of human affairs, the multiplying of the people, the falling out of war, their joining with the enemy, their escape out of the land. All these circumstances he could, with uncommon sagacity, put into the scale; but it never once occurred to him that God could have anything whatever to do in the matter. Had he only thought of this, it would have upset his entire reasoning, and have written folly upon all his schemes.
Now it is well to see that it is ever thus with the reasonings of man’s sceptic mind. God is entirely shut out; yea, the truth and consistency thereof depend upon His being kept out. The death-blow to all scepticism and infidelity is the introduction of God into the scene. Till He is seen, they may strut up and down upon the stage, with an amazing show of wisdom and cleverness; but the moment the eye catches even the faintest glimpse of that Blessed One, they are stripped of their cloak, and disclosed in all their nakedness and deformity.
In reference to the king of Egypt, it may, assuredly, be said, he did "greatly err," not knowing God, or His changeless counsels. He knew not that, hundreds of years back, before ever he had breathed the breath of mortal life, God’s word and oath - "two immutable things" - had infallibly secured the full and glorious deliverance of that very people whom he was going, in his wisdom, to crush. All this was unknown to him; and, therefore, all his thoughts and plans were founded upon ignorance of that grand foundation-truth of all truths, namely, that GOD IS. He vainly imagined that he, by his management, could prevent the increase of those concerning whom God had said, "they shall be as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore." His wise dealing, therefore, was simply madness and folly.
The wildest mistake which a man can possibly fall into is to act without taking God into his account. Sooner or later, the thought of God will force itself upon him, and then comes the awful crash of all his schemes and calculations. At best, everything that is undertaken, independently of God, can last but for the present time. It cannot, by any possibility, stretch itself into eternity. All that is merely human, however solid, however brilliant, or however attractive, must fall into the cold grasp of death, and moulder in the dark, silent tomb. The clod of the valley must cover man’s highest excellencies and brightest glories; mortality is engraved upon his brow, and all his schemes are evanescent. On the contrary, that which is connected with, and based upon, God, shall endure for ever. "His name shall endure for ever, and his memorial to all generations."
What a sad mistake, therefore, for a feeble mortal to set himself up against the eternal God, to "rush upon the thick bosses of the shield of the Almighty!" As well might the monarch of Egypt have sought to stem, with his puny hand, the ocean’s tide, as to prevent the increase of those who were the subjects of Jehovah’s everlasting purpose. Hence, although "they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens," yet, "the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew." Thus it must ever be. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision." (Ps. 2: 4) Eternal confusion shall be inscribed upon all the opposition of men and devils. This gives sweet rest to the heart, in the midst of a scene where all is, apparently, so contrary to God and so contrary to faith. Were it not for the settled assurance that "the wrath of man shall praise" the Lord, the spirit would often be cast down, while contemplating the circumstances and influences which surround one in the world. Thank God, "we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal." (2 Cor. 4: 18) In the power of this, we may well say, "rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his may, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass." (Ps. 37: 7) How fully might the truth of this be seen in the case of both the oppressed and the oppressor, as set before us in our chapter! Had Israel "looked at the things that are seen," what were they? Pharaoh’s wrath, stern taskmasters, afflictive burdens, rigorous service, hard bondage, mortar and brick. But, then, "the things which are not seen," what were they? God’s eternal purpose, His unfailing promise, the approaching dawn of a day of salvation, the "burning lamp" of Jehovah’s deliverance. Wondrous contrast Faith alone could enter into it. Nought save that precious principle could enable any poor, oppressed Israelite to look from out the smoking furnace of Egypt, to the green fields and vine-clad mountains of the land of Canaan. Who could possibly recognise in those oppressed slaves, toiling in the brick-kilns of Egypt, the heirs of salvation, and the objects of Heaven’s peculiar interest and favour.
Thus it was then, and thus it is now. "We walk by faith, not by sight." (2 Cor. 5: 7) "It doth not yet appear what we shall be." (l John 3: 2) We are "here in the body pent," "absent from the Lord." As to fact, we are in Egypt, yet, in spirit, we are in the heavenly Canaan. Faith brings the heart into the power of divine and unseen things, and thus enables it to mount above everything down here, in this place "where death and darkness reign. Oh! for that simple child-like faith that sits beside the pure and eternal fountain of truth, there to drink those deep and refreshing draughts, which lift up the fainting spirit, and impart energy to the new man, in its upward and onward course.
The closing verses of this section of our book present an edifying lesson in the conduct of those God-fearing women, Shiphrah and Puah. They would not carry out the king’s cruel scheme, but braved his wrath, and hence, God made them houses. "Them that honour me I will honour, and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed." (1 Sam. 2: 30) May we ever remember this, and act for God, under all circumstances!
C. H. Mackintosh, Notes on the Pentateuch — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22 Vers. 1-6. The Book of Exodus, being written in…
THE OPPRESSION OF ISRAEL IN EGYPT, WITH THE BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE OF MOSES.
Vers. 1-6. The Book of Exodus, being written in continuation of the history recorded in Genesis, is carefully connected with it by a recapitulation. The recapitulation involves three points:
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1. The names of Jacob"s children;
2. The number of Jacob"s descendants who went down into Egypt; and
3. The death of Joseph.
Verses 1-4 are a recapitulation of Gen_35:22-26; verse 5, of Gen_46:27; and verse 6, of Gen_1:26. In no case, however, is the recapitulation exact, or (so to speak) mechanical. The "households" of verse 1 had not been mentioned previously; Joseph had not in Genesis been separated off from his brethren, as he is in verse 5; nor had the deaths of "his brethren" been recorded, much less of "all that generation." Thus there is here no vain repetition." New facts come out in the course of the recapitulation; and the narrative advances while aiming especially at maintaining its continuity.
Now these are the names. Literally, "And these are the names." Compare Gen_46:8, where the phrase used is the same. We have here the first example of that almost universal practice of fife writers of the Historical Scriptures to connect book with book in the closest possible way by the simple copulative "and." (Compare Jos_1:1, Jud_1:1, Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther.) This practice, so unlike that of secular writers, can only be explained by the instinctive feeling of all, that they were contributors to a single book, each later writer a continuator of the narrative placed on record by his predecessor. In the Pentateuch, if we admit a single author, the initial vau will be less remarkable, since it will merely serve to join together the different sections of a single treatise. Which came into Egypt. The next two words of the original, "with Jacob," belong properly to this clause. The whole verse is best translated, "Now these are the names of the children of Israel which came into Egypt with Jacob: they came every man with his household." So the LXX, Pagnini, Kalisch, Geddes, Boothroyd, etc. Every man and his household. This is important in connection with the vexed question of the possible increase of the original band of so-called "Israelites" within the space of 430 years to such a number as is said to have quitted Egypt with Moses. (Exo_12:37) The "household" of Abraham comprised 318 adult males. (Gen_14:14) The "households" of Jacob, his eleven sons, and his numerous grown-up grandsons, have been with reason estimated at "several thousands." (Kurtz, "History of the Old Covenant," vol. 2 p. 149, E. T.)
Vers. 1-5. The patriarchal names.
I THE NAMES IN THEMSELVES. Nothing seems to the ordinary reader of Holy Scripture so dry and uninteresting as a bare catalogue of names. Objections are even made to reading them as parts of Sunday or week-day "lessons." But "ALL Scripture," rightly viewed, "is profitable". (2Ti_3:16) Each Hebrew name has a meaning, and was given with a purpose. What a wealth of joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, surmises, triumphs, jealousies, is hid up in the list before us! Jacob, the supplanter; (Gen_27:36) Reuben, the son of God"s gracious regard; (Gen_29:32) Simeon, the proof that God hears prayers and answers them (ib. ver. 33); Levi, the bond of association between wife and husband; Judah, he for whom God is praised; Issachar, the son given as a reward; Zebulon, he who will make the husband and wife dwell together; Benjamin "son of my strength," otherwise Benoni, "son of my sorrow"; (Gen_35:16) Dan, the sign that there is a God who judges us; Naphtali, "one wrestled for"; Gad, "good fortune cometh"; Asher, "the happy one"! How the private life of Jacob, how the rivalries and heats and contentions of that polygamist household, come before us, as we read the names! How again, amid all these heats and contentions, is revealed on all sides a faithful trust in God, a conviction of his overruling providence, and an acceptance of that aspect of his character which the Apostle holds up to view, when he calls him "a rewarder of them that diligently seek him". (Heb_11:6) Again, how strong the feeling, that, whatever cares and troubles they bring with them, children are a blessing! What a desire is shown to have children! What a pride in the possession of many children! Already "the Desire of all nations" was looked for, and each Hebrew mother hoped that in the line of descent from her might be born that Mighty One, who would "bruise the serpent"s head", (Gen_3:15) and in whom "all the nations of the earth would be blessed". (Gen_12:3 Gen_18:18) Thus this list of names, if we will consider the meaning of them and the occasion of their being given, may teach us many a lesson, and prove "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.
II THE ORDER OF THE NAMES. The order in which the names are given assigns a just advantage to legitimate and true marriage over even the most strictly legal union which falls short of true marriage. Let men beware lest they forfeit God"s blessing upon their domestic life, by contracting marriage in any but the most solemn way that is open to them. There is a sanctity in the relation of husband and wife, that should lead us to surround the initial contract with every sacred association and every holy form that the piety of bygone ages has provided for us.
Again, the order followed assigns a just and rightful advantage to priority of birth. Primogeniture is in a certain sense, a law of nature. The elder brother, superior in strength, in knowledge, and experience, rightfully claims respect, submission, reverence from those younger than himself. In a properly regulated family this principle will be laid down and maintained. Age, unless by misconduct it forfeits its privilege, will be assigned the superior position; younger children will be required to submit themselves to elder ones; elder children will be upheld and encouraged to exercise a certain amount of authority over their juniors. There will be a training within the domestic circle in the habits both of direction and submission, which will prepare the way for the after discipline of life in the world.
III THE NUMBER OF THE NAMES. Whatever minor lessons he may have intended to teach in this opening paragraph, the main purpose of the writer was undoubtedly to show from what small beginnings God produces the greatest, most remarkable, nay, the most astounding results. From the stock of one man and his twelve sons, with their households, God raised up, within the space of 430 years, a nation. Similarly, when "in the fulness of time" the New Dispensation succeeded the Old, from "the Twelve" and from "the Seventy", (Luk_10:1) the original "little flock" (Luk_12:32) was derived that "general assembly and church of the firstborn" (Heb_12:23) which is a "great multitude that no man can number". (Rev_7:9) And the growth was even more rapid. "We are but of yesterday," says Tertullian, in the third century after our Lord"s birth, "and yet we fill all places your cities, islands, forts, towns, villages; nay, your camps, tribes, decuries your palace, your senate, your forum." How wonderful is such increase in either case! How clearly the consequence of Divine favour and blessing!
HOMILIES BY J. ORR Ver. 1. Removal to Egypt.
This early instance of emigration shows
I How the CALL to leave the land of one"s fathers may sometimes be
1. Unexpected Jacob little expected to end his days in Egypt.
2. Trying. Canaan, the land of promise, where were the graves of hisancestors, etc.
3. Mysterious. An apparent reversal of the lines on which Providence hadhitherto been moving. Yet
4. Distinct. Jacob had no doubt that God"s call had come to him. It camefirst in providence, and was ratified by direct Divine permission. (Gen_46:2-5) Many have the indirect call, who can scarcely doubt that it is also a direct one. Causes of emigration Want and distress at home, with reasonable prospect of comfort and plenty abroad; opening of a better field for talents and energies; state of health, necessitating change of climate; persecution, as in case of Huguenots, Pilgrim Fathers, etc.
II What CONSOLATIONS the emigrant may carry with him.
1. God accompanies him. (Gen_46:4)
2. He can serve God yonder as well as here.
3. He is furthering wise and beneficent purposes. Little doubt of that, if heis leaving at God"s bidding. Israel"s residence in Egypt secured for the tribes
1. A home.
2. Provision.
3. Room to grow.
4. Education in arts and letters.
5. Valuable discipline
all preparatory to settlement in Canaan, and the fulfilment of theirspiritual mission to the world.
4. The terminus is not Egypt, but Canaan. Jacob never saw again theCanaan he had left, but, dying in faith, he and his sons became heirs of the better Canaan. Whatever his earthly destination, let the emigrant keep in view a "better country, that is, a heavenly". (Heb_11:16)
III The ADVANTAGES of emigration.
1. It is not always advantageous.
(1) Not always advantageous to the country left. A country that by misgovernment, bad laws, excessive taxation, or persecution, drives its best subjects from its soil, may be compared to a man who humours an insane bent by occasionally opening a vein.
(2) Not always advantageous to the country settled in. Emigrants may carry with them too often do low and immoral habits, and prove a curse, rather than a blessing, to the populations in whose midst they settle.
(3) Not always to the emigrant himself. His step may prove to have been hasty. He may have taken it On impulse, or on insufficient information, or in a spirit of adventure. He finds when too late that a sanguine disposition has deceived him. This is to go forth without a clear call. But
2. Emigration, wisely and judiciously conducted, is of great benefit tosociety.
(1) It thins an overstocked country, and so relieves pressure on the means of subsistence.
(2) It occupies territory needing population to develop its resources.
(3) It affords room and scope for the vigorous expansion of a young race.
(4) It benefits native populations. The Egyptians would profit by the residence of the Hebrews in their midst.
(5) It may be made subservient to the diffusion of the knowledge of the true religion. How seldom is this thought of, yet what a responsibility rests on those who leave Christian shores, carrying with them, to lands sunk in the night of heathenism, the blessed truths of Christianity! The conclusion of the matter is: Let emigration be an act of faith. Do not, in so important a step in life, lean to your own understanding. Ask guidance and clear direction from on High. But if the way is open and the call plain, then, like Jacob, go forth, and go boldly, and in faith. Trust God to be with you. He goes before you to seek you out a place to dwell in, and will surely bless you in all you put your hand to. J.O. (Deu_1:33 Deu_15:10)
Vers. 1-6. The twelve foundations.
The heads of the covenant race had hitherto been single individuals. Abraham Isaac Jacob. The one now expands into the twelve. Glance briefly at this list of the patriarchs.
I THE MEN. Here we are struck
1. With the original unfitness of most of these men for the position of dignity they were afterwards called to occupy. How shall we describe them! Recall Reuben"s incest; Simeon and Levi"s cruelty; Judah"s lewdness; the "evil report" which Joseph brought to his father of the sons of the handmaids. The picture in the later chapters of Genesis is crowded with shadows, and it is chiefly the sins of these men which are the causes of them. Joseph is the one bright exception. The rest appear to have been men of a violent, truculent disposition, capable of selling their younger brother into Egypt, and afterwards, to screen their fault, of imposing by wilful falsehood on their aged father. Even in Benjamin, traits of character were discernible which gave ground for the tribal prediction: "Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf". (Gen_49:17) How unlikely that men of so ungodly a stamp, who began so ill, should end by being exalted to be patriarch-heads of a covenant nation! And neither in truth were they, till, by God"s grace, a great change had passed upon them. Their crime in selling Joseph was, in a sense, their salvation. It was an act for which they never forgave themselves. Compunction wrought in them a better disposition, and laid the basis for "a train of humiliating and soul-stirring providences, tending to force on them the conviction that they were in the hands of an angry God, and to bring them to repentance of sin and amendment of life." See
(1) The natural unfitness of man for God"s service; "that which is born of the flesh is flesh". (Joh_3:6)
(2) What the grace of God can make even of very bad men. "By grace ye are saved". (Eph_2:5)
(3) How those whom God designs for honour in his kingdom, he first prepares for that honour. Whatever disciplines are needful for that purpose and they may not be few he will not withhold.
2. With the variety of gifts and dispositions found amongst them. This variety is taken note of in the blessings of Jacob and of Moses, and is reflected in the history. Judah is from the first a leader. He and Joseph were heads of what subsequently became the royal tribes. Reuben"s impulsiveness reminds us of Peter, but he lacked Peter"s underlying constancy. Levi"s zeal wrought at first for evil, but afterwards for good. The other brethren were less distinguished, but, as shown by the blessings, all were gifted, and gifted diversely. Does this not teach us?
(1) That God can use, and
(2) that God requires, every variety of gift in his service. Hence,
(3) that there is both room and need in his kingdom for all types and varieties of character for every species of gift. A type of religion is self-condemned which cannot find room in it for the play and development of every legitimate capability of human nature. This is but to say that the goal of God"s kingdom is the perfecting of humanity, not in part, but in the totality of its powers and functions. Grace does not suppress individuality; it develops and sanctifies it. It does not trample on gifts, but lays hold upon, transforms, and utilises them.
3. With the existence of a law of heredity in spiritual as in natural descent. The characteristics of the patriarchs were stamped with remarkable distinctness on the tribes which bore their names. Reuben"s instability, Judah"s capacity of rule, Levi"s zeal, Dan"s agility, Benjamin"s fierceness, etc. This reappearance of ancestral characteristics in the descendants is a fact with which we are familiar, and is only explained in part by inherited, organisation. Inheritance of ideas, customs, family traditions, etc., plays quite as important a part in producing the result. A law this, capable of being the vehicle of much good, but also of much evil. as potent to punish as to bless.
II THEIR NUMBER. The number twelve not to be regarded as fortuitous. Twelve (3 4), the symbol of the indwelling of God in the human family, of the interpenetration of the world by the Divinity. Three, the number of the Divine; four, the number of the world. Hence, twelve tribes, twelve cakes of shewbread, twelve apostles, twelve foundations and twelve gates of the New Jerusalem. The number twelve is kept up in spite of actual departures from it in fact. The" twelve tribes" are spoken of in the days of the apostles (Act_26:17; Jam_1:1) though, counting Levi; there were really thirteen tribes, and after the Captivity only two. It was doubtless with reference to the twelve tribes of Israel, and therefore to the number of these patriarchs, that Christ chose the twelve apostles. View the patriarchs, accordingly, as representing the covenant race, not only
1. In its natural heads, but symbolically
2. In its spiritual privilege as a people of God, and
3. In its world-wide destiny. J.O.
HOMILIES BY D. YOUNG Vers. 1-22. The prosperity of Israel.
This prosperity was not a mere appearance, nor a passing spurt of fortune. It was a deep, abiding, and significant reality. Nor was it something exaggerated in order to make an excuse for the cruelties of a suspicious tyrant. There was indeed only too much to make Pharaoh uneasy; but altogether apart from his alarms there is a plain and emphatic statement of the prosperity of Israel in ver. 7. It is a very emphatic statement indeed, summoning us m the most imperative way to a special notice of this remarkable prosperity. Let us therefore take a general view of Israel"s prosperity as it is set before us in all the extent of this first chapter. Note
I THE INDICATIONS OF THIS PROSPERITY. The prosperity is not only plainly stated, but the chapter abounds in indications of Jehovah"s favour towards Israel, and his peculiar watchfulness over it.
1. The wonderful way in which God had brought a whole family into Egypt, and provided for their comfortable settlement in the land. Families usually get scattered; but here are the children of Israel and children"s children all kept together. The very means which they had employed in order to get rid of one of their number who was an offence to them, had ended in their being brought together more closely than ever. Joseph went before, and all unconsciously made a solid foundation for the building of their prosperity. Through all domestic jealousies, in the perils of famine, and in their journeyings between Canaan and Egypt, the Lord had preserved these twelve men so that not one of them was lacking in his contribution to the future excellency of Israel.
2. The name by which they were described the children of Israel. God had said to Jacob, (Gen_32:28) "Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel," and yet down to the end of his life he is sometimes called Jacob and sometimes Israel, as if to keep before our minds both his natural character and also his new position and privileges gained in the memorable wrestling at Peniel. These twelve men, the fathers of the tribes, were children of Israel as well as sons of Jacob. Jacob himself had done many things to show the meanness and corruption of fallen human nature, and his sons had been not one whir better than himself (consider the revengeful action of Simeon and Levi in Gen_34:25; the conduct of Reuben in Gen_35:22; and especially the conduct of the brethren towards Joseph and the father who so doted upon him). But these sons of Jacob, with all their personal demerits, were also the children of him who by his sublime, persistent, courageous, and successful struggle had gained the name of Israel. It was a name to be transmitted from them to their children, full of significance, recalling a glorious experience in the past and promising a still more glorious experience in the future. It was a name not to be forfeited even in the greatest apostasies, and perhaps its chief splendour lay in this, that it pointed forward to a still more glorious fatherhood enjoyed by those who through the gracious work of him who taught Nicodemus concerning regeneration, are permitted to say, "Now are we the children and heirs of God.
3. The apprehensive attitude of Pharaoh. He is a witness to the greatness of Israel"s prosperity, and to the Divine and miraculous origin of it, all the more valuable because he gives his evidence unconsciously. The more we consider his unaffected alarm and his continuous and energetic efforts to crush Israel, the more we feel what a real and Divine thing Israel"s prosperity was, how it was nourished by the secret and unassailable strength of God. It should be a matter of great rejoicing to God"s people when the world, in its hatred, suspicion, and instinctive sense of danger, takes to the instruments of persecution, for then there is unmistakable indication of prosperity within.
II WHEREIN THE PROSPERITY CONSISTED. It did not consist in the accumulation of external possessions. The Israelites might have remained comparatively few or have increased in a way such as to excite no attention. Their increase might have been in external wealth, and this would have been reckoned, by many, true prosperity. But it would not have been prosperity after a godly sort. It was the purpose of God to show in Israel how our true resources come, not from things outside of us, but from the quality of the life which he puts within. Hence the prosperity of Israel was not the result of industry, personal ability, and fortunate circumstances. It was shown by the manifestation of a miraculous fulness of life. The husbandman does not reckon it anything wonderful that there should be among the trees of his vineyard a certain increase of fruitfulness, corresponding to the carefulness of his cultivation. But if all at once certain trees begin to put forth a fulness of fruit altogether beyond expectation, the husbandman would not claim that such a result came from him. There is the greatest possible difference between the prosperity lying in mere external possessions and that which comes from the energy of a Divine life working in us. It needs no special help from God to make a man a millionaire. There are but few who can be such; but place them in favourable circumstances, and the immense results of their industry and attention are quite intelligible. But to produce such a result as appears in the peculiar prosperity of Israel in Egypt required a special influx of Divine energy. We have not only unmistakable indications of the prosperity of Israel; it is an equally important thing to notice that this prosperity in its peculiar character is an indication of the presence of God. He was doing what none but himself could do. Learn then that our spiritual prosperity must be something produced by God manifesting his power in Our hearts. There is no chance of attributing it to our unaided industry, attention, and prudence. It is a growth more than anything else, and must show itself in the abundant and beautiful fruits of a Divine life within us.
III A PAINFUL ACCOMPANIMENT OF THE PROSPERITY. Such prosperity as is indicated in ver. 7 could not but produce apprehension and opposition on the part of Pharaoh inevitably assuming, as it did, the appearance of a menace to his kingdom. But it was better for Israel to go on increasing with the increase of God, even in the midst of persecutions, than to be without the persecutions on condition of being without the increase. Spiritual prosperity not only may be, but must be, accompanied with afflictions of the natural life. That is a very doubtful spirituality which manages to keep clear of all temporal troubles. They that will live godly must suffer persecution. Let us pray for spiritual prosperity, and hail its coming, and secure its stay, whatever pains be suffered and whatever lesser comforts be lost. The more the life of God is in us, the more we must expect the powers of evil to be stirred against us. Y.
HOMILIES BY G.A. GOODHART
Vers. 1-7Tarry thou the Lord"s leisure.
Introduction to the Book of Exodus. How much summed up in so few words. When men live history, every month seems important; when God records history a few sentences suffice for generations. Man"s standpoint in the midst of the tumult is so different from God"s: he "sitteth above the waterflood" and seeth "the end from the beginning". (Psa_29:10; Isa_46:10) From God"s standpoint we have here as of main consequence
I A LIST OF NAMES, vers. 1-5. Names of certain emigrants. More in them than seems at first sight. If I say, "William, Arthur etc., came to England at such and such a time," not much. If I say, "William, a great warrior; Arthur, a great inventor; we feel at once that with them elements are introduced which may prove important. In these early times names are connected with the characters of the men who bear them. All these names are significant. Illustrate from their meaning as given in Genesis 29., etc., and expanded in Jacob"s blessing, Genesis 49. We are supposed, too, to know something of the men from the previous history. The whole, taken together, shows us, as it were, a nation in embryo a nation of which the characteristics were wholly different from those of the Egyptians. "Seventy souls," but
1. Seed souls; bound to develop through their offspring the characteristics they exhibited.
2. United, not isolated; a nation in embryo, not a collocation of units.
II WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BEARERS OF THE NAMES, ver. 6. All died-Joseph and all that generation. The common lot, but, from God"s standpoint, the ordained method of development. (Joh_12:24) What wailing, as each patriarch, in his own time, passed away! Yet with each death the harvest of the future was being ever more securely sown. Death, as it were, rounds off the life; pedestals it; sets it where it can become exemplary. So set it becomes fruitful; the old husk drops away, and the true life-grain is enfranchised, Gad, Asher, and the rest, very ordinary men, or, if not ordinary, not very high-class men; and yet, once dead, they are rightly reverenced as the fathers of their tribes. Which is better, the day of death or the day of birth? The day which makes life possible for us, or the day which, by sanctifying our memory, makes that life an ennobling influence for others?
III HOW THE DESCENDANTS PROSPERED, ver. 7. So through the vicissitudes of life; the varieties of character; the monotony of death God works on, slowly but certainly, to his destined end. New generations, each more numerous, succeed the old. Power and prosperity, for a time, go hand-in-hand with increased numbers the people "waxed exceeding mighty." The shepherd life, even in Egypt, ensured some knowledge of warfare. Goshen, the border land cf. "the borders" in the wars with Scotland. Perhaps Joseph had purposely placed his brethren as a defence to Egypt against raids from the desert. Families grew into tribes, and the tribes learnt their first lessons in discipline and war. Egypt, God"s Aldershot the training-ground for his armies. Canaan had to be conquered and cleared, but God could take his own time about it. When at length the hour should come, it would find his preparations perfected.
Application: Would that man God"s child would be content to copy his Father"s methods slow; thorough; a definite end in view; quiet, persistent preparation. No haste, no hurry, no delay. G. (Isa_28:16)
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 7 The children of Israel which came into Egypt.
Exo_1:1-5
The children of Israel which came into Egypt.
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Israel in Egypt
I. A retrospective view.
1. These verses lead us back to the time when Jacob came with his family to Egypt.
(1)
. It was a time of great distress from famine in Canaan.
(2) It was a crisis-time in the history of the chosen family (Gen_45:17-28; Gen_46:1-4).
(3) It was a time of great encouragement from what had been disclosed in Josephs history.
2. These verses summarize the history of the children of Israel from the time of Jacobs emigration to Egypt till the bondage of the Israelites--about 115 years.
(1) This was a time of great happiness and prosperity for the Israelites.
(a) The entire period, from the call of Abraham to the Exodus, was 430 years.
(b) Up to the descent into Egypt, a period of 215 years, the family had increased to only seventy souls.
(c) From the going down to Egypt to the Exodus--215 years--the 70 had multiplied to 600,000 males, giving a population of nearly 2,000,000.
II. The change of administration (Exo_1:8). Not merely another, but a new king, implying a change of dynasty. Now, probably, commenced the rule of the shepherd kings.
2. The phrase, who knew not Joseph, suggests the prestige of Josephs name to the former Pharaohs. A good mans influence dies not with the death of his body.
III. The change of government policy (Exo_1:9-14).
1. The nature of this change. From being a fostering government to being cruel and repressive. Unwise policy, because suicidal.
2. The reason for this change (Exo_1:10).
3. The result of this change (Exo_1:12).
(1) Such a result is according to Gods law of nations. Working classes always more fruitful than others.
(2) Such a result was according to Gods covenant law.
Lessons:
1. Gods children in Egypt a type of Gods children in the world.
2. The policy of the new king a type of the godlessness, selfishness, and inhumanity of those who work from a worldly standpoint.
3. The frustration of this policy a type of Gods overruling power. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.)
Gods knowledge of mans domestic life
I. He knows the children of the family. Reuben, Simeon, etc.
1. He knows the character of each.
2. He knows the friendly relations, or otherwise, existing between them, and the intentions of each.
II. He watches the journeying of the family--which came, etc. Do not journey into Egypt without an indication of the Divine will. All family changes should be under the instruction of heaven. This insures safety, protection, development--though sometimes discipline.
III. He marks the death of the family (Exo_1:6). (J. S. Exell, M. A.)
Israel in Egypt
With Israel in Egypt begins a new era in the worlds progress. Biography becomes history Instead of individuals or a tribe, God has now a natron with which to work. He has undertaken a vast purpose. This people--united by common parentage, common faith, and common hope--He is to weld still more compactly by fellowship in disaster and deliverance into a nation which shall be the miracle of history, as intensely and persistently individual as its founder. With this nation He enters into covenant and, through its faith and experience, reveals to the world the one holy God, and brings in its Redeemer. Such a mission costs; its apostles must suffer. Yet this relief intervenes: personal blessing is not lost in national pains. The strong word covering this process is discipline: the development of character and efficiency under rigorous conditions. The first element is--
I. Faith: taking as real what cannot be seen, accepting as sure what has not come to pass. Seemingly, this fruit of heaven cannot grow on earthly soil unless it be wet with tears.
II. The second word of blessing is disentanglement. The hope of the ages lay in freeing Israel, not from Egypt, but from what Egypt represents. Heathenism is a bitter and bloody thing. But heathenism filled the world outside the chosen nation. Only stern guidance could lead away from it, for over its deformities were spread distortions of natural needs and blandishments of sanctioned lust. God can accomplish vast things with a soul wholly consecrated to Him; but how rarely He finds such a soul, except as He leads it through affliction to make it loose its hold on all but Him!
III. With this even partially gained, comes that strong word efficiency. The nation which was Jacob the Supplanter passes its Peniel and becomes Israel the Prince of God, having power with God and men. Into its hands are put the direction of earths history and the hope of its redemption. The distresses of those early generations are as the straining and rending of the crust or the grinding march of glaciers, unsparing but beneficent, preparing a fertile soil on which at last men shall dwell safely, lifting thankful hands to heaven. (C. M. Southgate.)
Egypt a type of the world
Sodom is associated in our minds with wickedness only, though no doubt it was a great place in its day; but Egypt stands out before us as a fuller and more adequate type of the world, with her glory as well as her shame. And from Israels relation to Egypt we may learn two great lessons: one of counsel how to use the world, the other of warning against abusing it. From Gods purpose in regard to Israel let us learn that just as Egypt was necessary as a school for His chosen people, so the world ought to be a school for us. We are not to despise its greatness. No word of contempt for Egypts greatness is found in the sacred records. The nation was intended to learn, and did acquire, many useful arts which were of much service to them afterwards in the Land of Promise. Moses, the chosen of God, was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was thereby qualified for the great work for which he was called. In these examples we may see how to use this world, making it a school to prepare us for our inheritance and the work the Lord may have for us there to do. On the other hand, let us beware of so yielding to the seductions of this evil world as to lose our hold of God, and His covenant, and so incur the certainty of forfeiting our eternal birthright and becoming the worlds slaves, helping perhaps to rear its mighty monuments, with the prospect possibly of having our names engraved in stone among the ruins of some buried city, but without the prospect of having them written among the living in Jerusalem, the eternal city of God. Earths great ones belong to the dead past; but heavens great ones have their portion in a glorious future. (J. M. Gibson, D. D.)
Making history
We are making history when we least think of it. That which seems a little matter to us may be a link in a chain that binds the ages. What we do to-day or to-morrow is done for all time. It cannot be undone. It and all its countless results must stand entailed to the latest generations; and we are to have honour or shame according as our part is now performed. The poor boy who drives the horse along a canal tow.path may think it makes little difference whether he does that work well or poorly. But forty years after, when he is in nomination for the presidency of a great nation, he will find that men go back to his boyhood story to learn whether he was faithful in that which was least, as proof that he would be faithful also in that which is much. There is no keeping out of history. We have got to be there. The only safe way of standing well in history is by doing well in all things. You are just now going to Boston, or to New York, or to Chicago, or to Savannah, or to London--will the record of your spirit and conduct as you go there read well ten years hence, or a hundred? That depends on what your spirit and conduct are at the present time. And if you stay at home your place in history--in Gods record of history--is just as sure as if you went to Egypt or to the Holy Land. That record is making up to-day: Now, these are the names of the children of--, which came into--, or, which stayed at-- If you want a record which shall redound to your honour, and of which your childrens children shall be proud, you have no time to lose in getting things straight for it. (H. C. Trumbull.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v1
CHAPTER I.
THE PROLOGUE.
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Exo_1:1-6.
"And these are the names of the children of Israel which came into Egypt."
Many books of the Old Testament begin with the conjunction And. This fact, it has been often pointed out, is a silent indication of truth, that each author was not recording certain isolated incidents, but parts of one great drama, events which joined hands with the past and future, looking before and after.
Thus the Book of the Kings took up the tale from Samuel, Samuel from Judges, and Judges from Joshua, and all carried the sacred movement forward towards a goal as yet unreached. Indeed, it was impossible, remembering the first promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent, and the later assurance that in the seed of Abraham should be the universal blessing, for a faithful Jew to forget that all the history of his race was the evolution of some grand hope, a pilgrimage towards some goal unseen. Bearing in mind that there is now revealed to us a world-wide tendency toward the supreme consummation, the bringing all things under the headship of Christ, it is not to be denied that this hope of the ancient Jew is given to all mankind. Each new stage in universal history may be said to open with this same conjunction. It links the history of England with that of Julius C¾sar and of the Red Indian; nor is the chain composed of accidents: it is forged by the hand of the God of providence. Thus, in the conjunction which binds these Old Testament narratives together, is found the germ of that instinctive and elevating phrase, the Philosophy of History. But there is nowhere in Scripture the notion which too often degrades and stiffens that Philosophy--the notion that history is urged forward by blind forces, amid which the individual man is too puny to assert himself. Without a Moses the Exodus is inconceivable, and God always achieves His purpose through the providential man.
* * * * *
The Books of the Pentateuch are held together in a yet stronger unity than the rest, being sections of one and the same narrative, and having been accredited with a common authorship from the earliest mention of them. Accordingly, the Book of Exodus not only begins with this conjunction (which assumes the previous narrative), but also rehearses the descent into Egypt. "And these are the names of the sons of Israel which came into Egypt,"--names blotted with many a crime, rarely suggesting any lovable or great association, yet the names of men with a marvellous heritage, as being "the sons of Israel," the Prince who prevailed with God. Moreover they are consecrated: their father's dying words had conveyed to every one of them some expectation, some mysterious import which the future should disclose. In the issue would be revealed the awful influence of the past upon the future, of the fathers upon the children even beyond the third and fourth generation--an influence which is nearer to destiny, in its stern, subtle and far-reaching strength, than any other recognised by religion. Destiny, however, it is not, or how should the name of Dan have faded out from the final list of "every tribe of the children of Israel" in the Apocalypse (Rev_7:5-8), where Manasseh is reckoned separately from Joseph to complete the twelve?
We read that with the twelve came their posterity, seventy souls in direct descent from Jacob; but in this number he is himself included, according to that well-known Orientalism which Milton strove to force upon our language in the phrase--
"The fairest of her daughters Eve."
Joseph is also reckoned, although he "was in Egypt already." Now, it must be observed that of these seventy, sixty-eight were males, and therefore the people of the Exodus must not be reckoned to have sprung in the interval from seventy, but (remembering polygamy) from more than twice that number, even if we refuse to make any account of the household which is mentioned as coming with every man. These households were probably smaller in each case than that of Abraham, and the famine in its early stages may have reduced the number of retainers; yet they account for much of what is pronounced incredible in the rapid expansion of the clan into a nation.[1] But when all allowance has been made, the increase continues to be, such as the narrator clearly regards it, abnormal, well-nigh preternatural, a fitting type of the expansion, amid fiercer persecutions, of the later Church of God, the true circumcision, who also sprang from the spiritual parentage of another Seventy and another Twelve.
"And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation." Thus the connection with Canaan became a mere tradition, and the powerful courtier who had nursed their interests disappeared. When they remembered him, in the bitter time which lay before them, it was only to reflect that all mortal help must perish. It is thus in the spiritual world also. Paul reminds the Philippians that they can obey in his absence and not in his presence only, working out their own salvation, as no apostle can work it out on their behalf. And the reason is that the one real support is ever present. Work out your own salvation, for it is God (not any teacher) Who worketh in you. The Hebrew race was to learn its need of Him, and in Him to recover its freedom. Moreover, the influences which mould all men's characters, their surroundings and mental atmosphere, were completely changed. These wanderers for pasture were now in the presence of a compact and impressive social system, vast cities, gorgeous temples, an imposing ritual. They were infected as well as educated there, and we find the men of the Exodus not only murmuring for Egyptian comforts, but demanding visible gods to go before them.
Yet, with all its drawbacks, the change was a necessary part of their development. They should return from Egypt relying upon no courtly patron, no mortal might or wisdom, aware of a name of God more profound than was spoken in the covenant of their fathers, with their narrow family interests and rivalries and their family traditions expanded into national hopes, national aspirations, a national religion.
Perhaps there is another reason why Scripture has reminded us of the vigorous and healthy stock whence came the race that multiplied exceedingly. For no book attaches more weight to the truth, so miserably perverted that it is discredited by multitudes, but amply vindicated by modern science, that good breeding, in the strictest sense of the word, is a powerful factor in the lives of men and nations. To be well born does not of necessity require aristocratic parentage, nor does such parentage involve it: but it implies a virtuous, temperate and pious stock. In extreme cases the doctrine of race is palpable; for who can doubt that the sins of dissolute parents are visited upon their puny and short-lived children, and that the posterity of the just inherit not only honour and a welcome in the world, "an open door," but also immunity from many a physical blemish and many a perilous craving? If the Hebrew race, after eighteen centuries of calamity, retains an unrivalled vigour and tenacity, be it remembered how its iron sinew has been twisted, from what a sire it sprang, through what ages of more than "natural selection" the dross was throughly purged out, and (as Isaiah loves to reiterate) a chosen remnant left. Already, in Egypt, in the vigorous multiplication of the race, was visible the germ of that amazing vitality which makes it, even in its overthrow, so powerful an element in the best modern thought and action.
It is a well-known saying of Goethe that the quality for which God chose Israel was probably toughness. Perhaps the saying would better be inverted: it was among the most remarkable endowments, unto which Israel was called, and called by virtue of qualities in which Goethe himself was remarkably deficient.
Now, this principle is in full operation still, and ought to be solemnly pondered by the young. Self-indulgence, the sowing of wild oats, the seeing of life while one is young, the taking one's fling before one settles down, the having one's day (like "every dog," for it is to be observed that no person says, "every Christian"), these things seem natural enough. And their unsuspected issues in the next generation, dire and subtle and far-reaching, these also are more natural still, being the operation of the laws of God.
On the other hand, there is no youth living in obedience alike to the higher and humbler laws of our complex nature, in purity and gentleness and healthful occupation, who may not contribute to the stock of happiness in other lives beyond his own, to the future well-being of his native land, and to the day when the sadly polluted stream of human existence shall again flow clear and glad, a pure river of water of life.
GOD IN HISTORY.
Exo_1:7.
With the seventh verse, the new narrative, the course of events treated in the main body of this book, begins.
And we are at once conscious of this vital difference between Exodus and Genesis,--that we have passed from the story of men and families to the history of a nation. In the first book the Canaanites and Egyptians concern us only as they affect Abraham or Joseph. In the second book, even Moses himself concerns us only for the sake of Israel. He is in some respects a more imposing and august character than any who preceded him; but what we are told is no longer the story of a soul, nor are we pointed so much to the development of his spiritual life as to the work he did, the tyrant overthrown, the nation moulded, the law and the ritual imposed on it.
For Jacob it was a discovery that God was in Bethel as well as in his father's house. But now the Hebrew nation was to learn that He could plague the gods of Egypt in their stronghold, that His way was in the sea, that Horeb in Arabia was the Mount of God, that He could lead them like a horse through the wilderness.
When Jacob in Peniel wrestles with God and prevails, he wins for himself a new name, expressive of the higher moral elevation which he has attained. But when Moses meets God in the bush, it is to receive a commission for the public benefit; and there is no new name for Moses, but a fresh revelation of God for the nation to learn. And in all their later history we feel that the national life which it unfolds was nourished and sustained by these glorious early experiences, the most unique as well as the most inspiriting on record.
Here, then, a question of great moment is suggested. Beyond the fact that Abraham was the father of the Jewish race, can we discover any closer connection between the lives of the patriarchs and the history of Israel? Is there a truly spiritual coherence between them, or merely a genealogical sequence? For if the Bible can make good its claim to be vitalised throughout by the eternal Spirit of God, and leading forward steadily to His final revelation in Christ, then its parts will be symmetrical, proportionate and well designed. If it be a universal book, there must be a better reason for the space devoted to preliminary and half secular stories, which is a greater bulk than the whole of the New Testament, than that these histories chance to belong to the nation whence Christ came. If no such reason can be found, the failure may not perhaps outweigh the great evidences of the faith, but it will score for something on the side of infidelity. But if upon examination it becomes plain that all has its part in one great movement, and that none can be omitted without marring the design, and if moreover this design has become visible only since the fulness of the time is come, the discovery will go far to establish the claim of Scripture to reveal throughout a purpose truly divine, dealing with man for ages, and consummated in the gift of Christ.
Now, it is to St. Paul that we turn for light upon the connection between the Old Testament and the New. And he distinctly lays down two great principles. The first is that the Old Testament is meant to educate men for the New; and especially that the sense of failure, impressed upon men's consciences by the stern demands of the Law, was necessary to make them accept the Gospel.
The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ: it entered that sin might abound. And it is worth notice that this effect was actually wrought, not only upon the gross transgressor by the menace of its broken precepts, but even more perhaps upon the high-minded and pure, by the creation in their breasts of an ideal, inaccessible in its loftiness. He who says, All these things have I kept from my youth up, is the same who feels the torturing misgiving, What good thing must I do to attain life?... What lack I yet? He who was blameless as touching the righteousness of the law, feels that such superficial innocence is worthless, that the law is spiritual and he is carnal, sold under sin.
Now, this principle need by no means be restricted to the Mosaic institutions. If this were the object of the law, it would probably explain much more. And when we return to the Old Testament with this clue, we find every condition in life examined, every social and political experiment exhausted, a series of demonstrations made with scientific precision, to refute the arch-heresy which underlies all others--that in favourable circumstances man might save himself, that for the evil of our lives our evil surroundings are more to be blamed than we.
Innocence in prosperous circumstances, unwarped by evil habit, untainted by corruption in the blood, uncompelled by harsh surroundings, simple innocence had its day in Paradise, a brief day with a shameful close. God made man upright, but he sought out many inventions, until the flood swept away the descendants of him who was made after the image of God.
Next we have a chosen family, called out from all the perilous associations of its home beyond the river, to begin a new career in a new land, in special covenant with the Most High, and with every endowment for the present and every hope for the future which could help to retain its loyalty. Yet the third generation reveals the thirst of Esau for his brother's blood, the treachery of Jacob, and the distraction and guilt of his fierce and sensual family. It is when individual and family life have thus proved ineffectual amid the happiest circumstances, that the tribe and the nation essay the task. Led up from the furnace of affliction, hardened and tempered in the stern free life of the desert, impressed by every variety of fortune, by slavery and escape, by the pursuit of an irresistible foe and by a rescue visibly divine, awed finally by the sublime revelations of Sinai, the nation is ready for the covenant (which is also a challenge)--The man that doeth these things shall live by them: if thou diligently hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God ... He shall set thee on high above all nations.
Such is the connection between this narrative and what went before. And the continuation of the same experiment, and the same failure, can be traced through all the subsequent history. Whether in so loose an organisation that every man does what is right in his own eyes, or under the sceptre of a hero or a sage,--whether so hard pressed that self-preservation ought to have driven them to their God, or so marvellously delivered that gratitude should have brought them to their knees,--whether engulfed a second time in a more hopeless captivity, or restored and ruled by a hierarchy whose authority is entirely spiritual,--in every variety of circumstances the same melancholy process repeats itself; and lawlessness, luxury, idolatry and self-righteousness combine to stop every mouth, to make every man guilty before God, to prove that a greater salvation is still needed, and thus to pave the way for the Messiah.
The second great principle of St. Paul is that faith in a divine help, in pardon, blessing and support, was the true spirit of the Old Testament as well as of the New. The challenge of the law was meant to produce self-despair, only that men might trust in God. Appeal was made especially to the cases of Abraham and David, the founder of the race and of the dynasty, clearly because the justification without works of the patriarch and of the king were precedents to decide the general question (Rom_4:1-8). Now, this is pre-eminently the distinction between Jewish history and all others, that in it God is everything and man is nothing. Every sceptical treatment of the story makes Moses to be the deliverer from Egypt, and shows us the Jewish nation gradually finding out God. But the nation itself believed nothing of the kind. It confessed itself to have been from the beginning vagrant and rebellious and unthankful: God had always found out Israel, never Israel God. The history is an expansion of the parable of the good shepherd. And this perfect harmony of a long record with itself and with abstract principles is both instructive and reassuring.
As the history of Israel opens before us, a third principle claims attention--one which the apostle quietly assumes, but which is forced on our consideration by the unhappy state of religious thought in these degenerate days.
"They are not to be heard," says the Seventh Article rightly, "which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises." But certainly they also would be unworthy of a hearing who would feign that the early Scriptures do not give a vast, a preponderating weight, to the concerns of our life on earth. Only very slowly, and as the result of long training, does the future begin to reveal its supremacy over the present. It would startle many a devout reader out of his propriety to discover the small proportion of Old Testament scriptures in which eternity and its prospects are discussed, to reckon the passages, habitually applied to spiritual thraldom and emancipation, which were spoken at first of earthly tyranny and earthly deliverance, and to observe, even in the pious aspirations of the Psalms, how much of the gratitude and joy of the righteous comes from the sense that he is made wiser than the ancient, and need not fear though a host rose up against him, and can break a bow of steel, and has a table prepared for him, and an overflowing cup. Especially is this true of the historical books. God is here seen ruling states, judging in the earth, remembering Israel in bondage, and setting him free, providing supernatural food and water, guiding him by the fiery cloud. There is not a word about regeneration, conversion, hell, or heaven. And yet there is a profound sense of God. He is real, active, the most potent factor in the daily lives of men. Now, this may teach us a lesson, highly important to us all, and especially to those who must teach others. The difference between spirituality and secularity is not the difference between the future life and the present, but between a life that is aware of God and a godless one. Perhaps, when we find our gospel a matter of indifference and weariness to men who are absorbed in the bitter monotonous and dreary struggle for existence, we ourselves are most to blame. Perhaps, if Moses had approached the Hebrew drudges as we approach men equally weary and oppressed, they would not have bowed their heads and worshipped. And perhaps we should have better success, if we took care to speak of God in this world, making life a noble struggle, charging with new significance the dull and seemingly degraded lot of all who remember Him, such a God as Jesus revealed when He cleansed the leper, and gave sight to the blind, using one and the same word for the "healing" of diseases and the "saving" of souls, and connecting faith equally with both. Exodus will have little to teach us, unless we believe in that God who knoweth that we have need of food and clothing. And the higher spiritual truths which it expresses will only be found there in dubious and questionable allegory, unless we firmly grasp the great truth, that God is not the Saviour of souls, or of bodies, but of living men in their entirety, and treats their higher and lower wants upon much the same principle, because He is the same God, dealing with the same men, through both.
Moreover, He treats us as the men of other ages. Instead of dealing with Moses upon exceptional and strange lines, He made known His ways unto Moses, His characteristic and habitual ways. And it is on this account that whatsoever things were written aforetime are true admonition for us also, being not violent interruptions but impressive revelations of the steady silent methods of the judgment and the grace of God.
THE OPPRESSION.
Exo_1:7-22.
At the beginning of the history of Israel we find a prosperous race. It was indeed their growing importance, and chiefly their vast numerical increase, which excited the jealousy of their rulers, at the very time when a change of dynasty removed the sense of obligation. It is a sound lesson in political as well as personal godliness that prosperity itself is dangerous, and needs special protection from on high.
Is it merely by chance again that we find in this first of histories examples of the folly of relying upon political connections? As the chief butler remembered not Joseph, nor did he succeed in escaping from prison by securing influence at court, so is the influence of Joseph himself now become vain, although he was the father of Pharaoh and lord of all his house. His romantic history, his fidelity in temptation, and the services by which he had at once cemented the royal power and saved the people, could not keep his memory alive. The hollow wraith of dying fame died wholly. There arose a new king over Egypt who knew not Joseph.
Such is the value of the highest and purest earthly fame, and such the gratitude of the world to its benefactors. The nation which Joseph rescued from starvation is passive in Pharaoh's hands, and persecutes Israel at his bidding.
And when the actual deliverer arose, his rank and influence were only entanglements through which he had to break.
Meanwhile, except among a few women, obedient to the woman's heart, we find no trace of independent action, no revolt of conscience against the absolute behest of the sovereign, until selfishness replaces virtue, and despair wrings the cry from his servants, Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?
Now, in Genesis we saw the fate of families, blessed in their father Abraham, or cursed for the offence of Ham. For a family is a real entity, and its members, like those of one body, rejoice and suffer together. But the same is true of nations, and here we have reached the national stage in the education of the world. Here is exhibited to us, therefore, a nation suffering with its monarch to the uttermost, until the cry of the maidservant behind the mill is as wild and bitter as the cry of Pharaoh upon his throne. It is indeed the eternal curse of despotism that unlimited calamity may be drawn down upon millions by the caprice of one most unhappy man, himself blinded and half maddened by adulation, by the absence of restraint, by unlimited sensual indulgence if his tendencies be low and animal, and by the pride of power if he be high-spirited and aspiring.
If we assume, what seems pretty well established, that the Pharaoh from whom Moses fled was Rameses the Great, his spirit was of the nobler kind, and he exhibits a terrible example of the unfitness even of conquering genius for unbridled and irresponsible power. That lesson has had to be repeated, even down to the days of the Great Napoleon.
Now, if the justice of plaguing a nation for the offence of its head be questioned, let us ask first whether the nation accepts his despotism, honours him, and is content to regard him as its chief and captain. According to the principles of the Sermon on the Mount, whoever thinks a tyrant enviable, has already himself tyrannised with him in his heart. Do we ourselves, then, never sympathise with political audacity, bold and unscrupulous "resource," success that is bought at the price of strange compliances, and compromises, and wrongs to other men?
The great national lesson is now to be taught to Israel that the most splendid imperial force will be brought to an account for its treatment of the humblest--that there is a God Who judges in the earth. And they were bidden to apply in their own land this experience of their own, dealing kindly with the stranger in the midst of them, "for thou wast a stranger in the land of Egypt." That lesson we have partly learned, who have broken the chain of our slaves. But how much have we left undone! The subject races were never given into our hands to supplant them, as we have supplanted the Red Indian and the New Zealander, nor to debauch, as men say we are corrupting the African and the Hindoo, but to raise, instruct and Christianise. And if the subjects of a despotism are accountable for the actions of rulers whom they tolerate, how much more are we? What ought we to infer, from this old-world history, of the profound responsibilities of all free citizens?
We attain a principle which reaches far into the spiritual world, when we reflect that if evil deeds of a ruler can justly draw down vengeance upon his people, the converse also must hold good. Reverse the case before us. Let the kingdom be that of the noblest and purest virtue. Let no subject ever be coerced to enter it, nor to remain one hour longer than while his adoring loyalty consents. And shall not these subjects be the better for the virtues of the Monarch whom they love? Is it mere caprice to say that in choosing such a King they do, in a very real sense, appropriate the goodness they crown? If it be natural that Egypt be scourged for the sins of Pharaoh, is it palpably incredible that Christ is made of God unto His people wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption? The doctrine of imputation can easily be so stated as to become absurd. But the imputation of which St. Paul speaks much can only be denied when we are prepared to assail the principle on which all bodies of men are treated, families and nations as well as the Church of God.
It was the jealous cruelty of Pharaoh which drew down upon his country the very perils he laboured to turn away. There was no ground for his fear of any league with foreigners against him. Prosperous and unambitious, the people would have remained well content beside the flesh-pots of Egypt, for which they sighed even when emancipated from heavy bondage and eating the bread of heaven. Or else, if they had gone forth in peace, from a land whose hospitality had not failed, to their inheritance in Canaan, they would have become an allied nation upon the side where the heaviest blows were afterwards struck by the Asiatic powers. Cruelty and cunning could not retain them, but it could decimate a population and lose an army in the attempt. And this law prevails in the modern world, England paid twenty millions to set her bondmen free. Because America would not follow her example, she ultimately paid the more terrible ransom of civil war. For the same God was in Jamaica and in Florida as in the field of Zoan. Nor was there ever yet a crooked policy which did not recoil either upon its author, or upon his successors when he had passed away. In this case it fulfilled the plans and the prophecies of God, and the wrath of man was made to praise Him.
There is independent reason for believing that at this period one-third at least of the population of Egypt was of alien blood (Brugsch, History, ii. 100). A politician might fairly be alarmed, especially if this were the time when the Hittites were threatening the eastern frontier, and had reduced Egypt to stand on the defensive, and erect barrier fortresses. And the circumstances of the country made it very easy to enslave the Hebrews. If any stain of Oriental indifference to the rights of the masses had mingled with the God-given insight of Joseph, when he made his benefactor the owner of all the soil, the Egyptian people were fully avenged upon him now. For this arrangement laid his pastoral race helpless at their oppressor's feet. Forced labour quickly degenerates into slavery, and men who find the story of their misery hard to credit should consider the state of France before the Revolution, and of the Russian serfs before their emancipation. Their wretchedness was probably as bitter as that of the Hebrews at any period but the last climax of their oppression. And they owed it to the same cause--the absolute ownership of the land by others, too remote from them to be sympathetic, to take due account of their feelings, to remember that they were their fellow-men. This was enough to slay compassion, even without the aggravation of dealing with an alien and suspected race.
Now, it is instructive to observe these reappearances of wholesale crime. They warn us that the utmost achievements of human wickedness are human still; not wild and grotesque importations by a fiend, originated in the abyss, foreign to the world we live in. Satan finds the material for his master-strokes in the estrangement of class from class, in the drying up of the fountains of reciprocal human feeling, in the failure of real, fresh, natural affection in our bosom for those who differ widely from us in rank or circumstances. All cruelties are possible when a man does not seem to us really a man, nor his woes really woeful. For when the man has sunk into an animal it is only a step to his vivisection.
Nor does anything tend to deepen such perilous estrangement, more than the very education, culture and refinement, in which men seek a substitute for religion and the sense of brotherhood in Christ. It is quite conceivable that the tyrant who drowned the Hebrew infants was an affectionate father, and pitied his nobles when their children died. But his sympathies could not reach beyond the barriers of a caste. Do our sympathies really overleap such barriers? Would God that even His Church believed aright in the reality of a human nature like our own, soiled, sorrowful, shamed, despairing, drugged into that apathetical insensibility which lies even below despair, yet aching still, in ten thousand bosoms, in every great city of Christendom, every day and every night! Would to God that she understood what Jesus meant, when He called one lost creature by the tender name which she had not yet forfeited, saying, "Woman, where are thine accusers?" and when He asked Simon, who scorned such another, "Seest thou this woman!" Would God that when she prays for the Holy Spirit of Jesus she would really seek a mind like His, not only in piety and prayerfulness, but also in tender and heartfelt brotherhood with all, even the vilest of the weary and heavy-laden!
Many great works of ancient architecture, the pyramids among the rest, were due to the desire of crushing, by abject toil, the spirit of a subject people. We cannot ascribe to Hebrew labour any of the more splendid piles of Egyptian masonry, but the store cities or arsenals which they built can be identified. They are composed of such crude brick as the narrative describes; and the absence of straw in the later portion of them can still be verified. Rameses was evidently named after their oppressor, and this strengthens the conviction that we are reading of events in the nineteenth dynasty, when the shepherd kings had recently been driven out, leaving the eastern frontier so weak as to demand additional fortresses, and so far depopulated as to give colour to the exaggerated assertion of Pharaoh, "the people are more and mightier than we." It is by such exaggerations and alarms that all the worst crimes of statesmen have been justified to consenting peoples. And we, when we carry what seems to us a rightful object, by inflaming the prejudice and misleading the judgment of other men, are moving on the same treacherous and slippery inclines. Probably no evil is committed without some amount of justification, which the passions exaggerate, while they ignore the prohibitions of the law.
How came it to pass that the fierce Hebrew blood, which was yet to boil in the veins of the Maccabees, and to give battle, not unworthily, to the Roman conquerors of the world, failed to resent the cruelties of Pharaoh?
Partly, of course, because the Jewish people was only now becoming aware of its national existence; but also because it had forsaken God. Its religion, if not supplanted, was at least adulterated by the influence of the mystic pantheism and the stately ritual which surrounded them.
Joshua bade his victorious followers to "put away the gods whom your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve ye the Lord" (Jos_24:14). And in Ezekiel the Lord Himself complains, "They rebelled against Me and would not hearken unto Me; they did not cast away the abominations of their eyes, neither did they forsake the idols of Egypt" (Eze_20:8).
Now, there is nothing which enfeebles the spirit and breaks the courage like religious dependence. A strong priesthood always means a feeble people, most of all when they are of different blood. And Israel was now dependent on Egypt alike for the highest and lowest needs--grass for the cattle and religion for the soul. And when they had sunk so low, it is evident that their emancipation had to be wrought for them entirely without their help. From first to last they were passive, not only for want of spirit to help themselves, but because the glory of any exploit of theirs might have illuminated some false deity whom they adored.
Standing still, they saw the salvation of God, and it was not possible to give His glory to another.
For this cause also, judgment had, first of all, to be wrought upon the gods of Egypt.
In the meantime, without spirit enough to resist, they saw complete destruction drawing nearer to them by successive strides. At first Pharaoh "dealt wisely with them," and they found themselves entrapped into a hard bondage almost unawares. But a strange power upheld them, and the more they were afflicted the more they multiplied and spread abroad. In this they ought to have discerned a divine support, and remembered the promise to Abraham that God would multiply his seed as the stars of heaven. It may have helped them presently to "cry unto the Lord." And the Egyptians were not merely "grieved" because of them: they felt as the Israelites afterwards felt towards that monotonous diet of which they used the same word, and said, "our soul loatheth this light bread." Here it expresses that fierce and contemptuous attitude which the Californian and Australian are now assuming toward the swarms of Chinamen whose labour is so indispensable, yet the infusion of whose blood into the population is so hateful. Then the Egyptians make their service rigorous, and their lives bitter.
And at last that happens which is a part of every downward course: the veil is dropped; what men have done by stealth, and as if they would deceive themselves, they soon do consciously, avowing to their conscience what at first they could not face. Thus Pharaoh began by striving to check a dangerous population; and ended by committing wholesale murder. Thus men become drunkards through conviviality, thieves through borrowing what they mean to restore, and hypocrites through slightly overstating what they really feel. And, since there are nice gradations in evil, down to the very last, Pharaoh will not yet avow publicly the atrocity which he commands a few humble women to perpetrate; decency is with him, as it is often, the last substitute for a conscience.
Among the agents of God for the shipwreck of all full-grown wrongs, the chief is the revolt of human nature, since, fallen though we know ourselves to be, the image of God is not yet effaced in us. The better instincts of humanity are irrepressible--most so perhaps among the poor. It is by refusing to trust its intuitions that men grow vile; and to the very last that refusal is never absolute, so that no villainy can reckon upon its agents, and its agents cannot always reckon upon themselves. Above all, the heart of every woman is in a plot against the wrong; and as Pharaoh was afterwards defeated by the ingenuity of a mother and the sympathy of his own daughter, so his first scheme was spoiled by the disobedience of the midwives, themselves Hebrews, upon whom he reckoned.
Let us not fear to avow that these women, whom God rewarded, lied to the king when he reproached them, since their answer, even if it were not unfounded, was palpably a misrepresentation of the facts. The reward was not for their falsehood, but for their humanity. They lived when the notion of martyrdom for an avowal so easy to evade was utterly unknown. Abraham lied to Abimelech. Both Samuel and David equivocated with Saul. We have learned better things from the King of truth, Who was born and came into the world to bear witness to the truth. We know that the martyr's bold protest against unrighteousness is the highest vocation of the Church, and is rewarded in the better country. But they knew nothing of this, and their service was acceptable according as they had, not according as they had not. As well might we blame the patriarchs for having been slave-owners, and David for having invoked mischief upon his enemies, as these women for having fallen short of the Christian ideal of veracity. Let us beware lest we come short of it ourselves. And let us remember that the way of the Church through time is the path of the just, beset with mist and vapour at the dawn, but shining more and more unto the perfect day.
In the meantime, God acknowledges, and Holy Scripture celebrates, the service of these obscure and lowly heroines. Nothing done for Him goes unrewarded. To slaves it was written that "From the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance: ye serve the Lord Christ" (Col_3:24). And what these women saved for others was what was recompensed to themselves, domestic happiness, family life and its joys. God made them houses.
The king is now driven to avow himself in a public command to drown all the male infants of the Hebrews; and the people become his accomplices by obeying him. For this they were yet to experience a terrible retribution, when there was not a house in Egypt that had not one dead.
The features of the king to whom these atrocities are pretty certainly brought home are still to be seen in the museum at Boulak. Seti I. is the most beautiful of all the Egyptian monarchs whose faces lie bare to the eyes of modern sightseers; and his refined features, intelligent, high-bred and cheerful, resemble wonderfully, yet surpass, those of Rameses II., his successor, from whom Moses fled. This is the builder of the vast and exquisite temple of Amon at Thebes, the grandeur of which is amazing even in its ruins; and his culture and artistic gifts are visible, after all these centuries, upon his face. It is a strange comment upon the modern doctrine that culture is to become a sufficient substitute for religion. And his own record of his exploits is enough to show that the sense of beauty is not that of pity: he is the jackal leaping through the land of his enemies, the grim lion, the powerful bull with sharpened horns, who has annihilated the peoples.
There is no greater mistake than to suppose that artistic refinement can either inspire morality or replace it. Have we quite forgotten Nero, and Lucretia Borgia, and Catherine de Medici?
Many civilisations have thought little of infant life. Ancient Rome would have regarded this atrocity as lightly as modern China, as we may see by the absolute silence of its literature concerning the murder of the innocents--an event strangely parallel with this in its nature and political motives, and in the escape of one mighty Infant.
Is it conceivable that the same indifference should return, if the sanctions of religion lose their power? Every one remembers the callousness of Rousseau. Strange things are being written by pessimistic unbelief about the bringing of more sufferers into the world. And a living writer in France has advocated the legalising of infanticide, and denounced St. Vincent de Paul because, "thanks to his odious precautions, this man deferred for years the death of creatures without intelligence," etc.[2]
It is to the faith of Jesus, not only revealing by the light of eternity the value of every soul, but also replenishing the fountains of human tenderness that had well-nigh become exhausted, that we owe our modern love of children. In the very helplessness which the ancient masters of the world exposed to destruction without a pang, we see the type of what we must ourselves become, if we would enter heaven. But we cannot afford to forget either the source or the sanctions of the lesson.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Professor Curtiss quotes a volume of family memoirs which shows that 5,564 persons are known to be descended from Lieutenant John Hollister, who emigrated to America in the year 1642 (Expositor, Nov. 1887, p. 329). This is probably equal in ratio to the increase of Israel in Egypt.
[2] J. K. Huysmans--quoted in Nineteenth Century, May 1888, p. 673.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv1, 7, 13, 15, 22 Exo_1:1. With Jacob.] These words are strongly emphatic in…
ISRAEL OPPRESSED IN EGYPT
CRITICAL NOTES.—
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Exo_1:1. With Jacob.] These words are strongly emphatic in the orig. “WITH JACOB EACH MAN AND HIS HOUSE came in.” Thus at a single stroke—the whole story of the aged patriarch’s coming down into Egypt is recalled: thus at once does “Exodus” strike its roots into “Genesis.”
Exo_1:5. For Joseph] This is obscure. A more exact rendering makes all clear: “But (so waw freq. when w. an emph. nominative, as here) JOSEPH had already come into Egypt.” A mark of exactness: “Count him in the seventy; but remember HE had come before.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Exo_1:1-6
GOD’S KNOWLEDGE OF MAN’S DOMESTIC LIFE
I. He knows the Children of the Family. “Reuben, Simeon.” He knows the peculiarity of their mental life—of their moral character—of their disposition—no matter how large the Family. He knows the friendly relations, or otherwise, that exist between the members of the home, and the intentions of each. This thought ought to subdue all discord—inspire fervent sympathy—and lead the family to purity of life.
II. He watches the journeyings of the Family. “Which came into Egypt.” The Family may be called to journey in search of commercial employment—in search of health—pleasure—or to enhance the interests of divine truth—in all such wanderings every member is noted by God, who recognises their place of settlement. We should not journey into “Egypt” without an indication of the divine will. All family changes should be under the instruction of heaven. This insures—safety—protection—development—though sometimes discipline. Such was the case with this family, they were shielded while in Egypt, they multiplied under disadvantageous circumstances, they were prepared by sorrow for their important future.
III. He marks the Death of the Family. “And Joseph died and all his brethren.” Not one member passes from the family circle without the divine knowledge. God permits it—and ordains it to be a means of good to those remaining. This should hush the voice of complaint. God knows all about our home-life—a consolation in trial.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON THE VERSES
Exo_1:1. Family life is at the basis of all history and religious progress.
Family life has frequently to pass through continued discipline to prepare it to exercise a holy influence upon the nation, and to make it a channel for the divine purpose:—This discipline is 1 Painful—Taskmasters.
2. Deceptive—the King.
3. Accumulative—Taskmasters—then the Midwives—lastly the River.
4. Harmonious—all tended to one end.
5. Completive—their freedom.
A life can sometimes be compressed into a name.
Men gather permanent record from an incidental connection with the progress of the Church.
Relationship to the Church, at certain crises of its history has given immortality to many names that otherwise would have been lost in obscurity.
Some names are omitted in this history that their silence may lend emphasis to these spoken.
The small and feeble beginnings of the Church. An old man on a journey, changing his place of residence, surrounded by his kindred:—
1. A pathetic sight—leaving old associations—the scene of old and happy memories—going into a strange country.
2. Unusual—it is not often that we see old men leaving a place in which they have spent a life-time—they like to end their days amid familiar scenes and companions.
Exo_1:5. “For Joseph was in Egypt already.” This sentence contains a volume of history. Why was he in Egypt already?—
1. Because it was the refuge from the folly of an over-indulgent parent. Jacob would have spoiled Joseph—would have pampered him—weakened his moral energies—therefore God sent him into Egypt—a better school for his moral education.
2. Because of the deception of jealous brothers.
3. In order that he might welcome the Church shortly to come there.
4. Because of the kindly providence of God. The providence that sent Joseph to Egypt was kindly:—(i.) Because it elevated his social position. (ii.) It taught his brethren the guilt of deception. (iii.) It saved a nation from the horrors of famine. (iv.) It taught a king the divine philosophy of a dream. (v.) It placed a godly life in the midst of a wicked court. (vi.) It ultimately brought Jacob’s family to unity, peace, and prosperity.
Thus Joseph in Egypt was the punishment of parental indulgence, the victim of a brother’s hatred, the child of a merciful providence, the Ruler of a vast Empire.
There may be wrapped up in the history of one absent member of your family circle the fortune of a kingdom, and the sequel of your early life.
God generally sends a Joseph into Egypt to mitigate the force of all our trials.
Exo_1:6.
I. Death removes the most useful men. “Joseph.”
1. He had instructed his brethren.
2. He had enriched his father.
3. He had saved his nation.
4. He had taught the world an eternal lesson—Yet he died.
II. Death removes the largest families. “All his brethren.”
III. Death removes the proudest nations. “Pharaoh.”
1. Pitiable.
2. Irremediable.
3. Admonitory.
THE DEATH OF A WHOLE FAMILY.—
I. It was a very large family. There were twelve sons. Of the largest family that gladdens the house, or that mingles in social intercourse, each member must go the way of all the earth.
II. It was a very diversified family. “Joseph and all his brethren” are words few and easily recorded; but each one of those twelve had a history distinct from any other, experiences unlike, and many altogether unknown to his brother:—
1. They were diversified in their sympathies.
2. They were diversified in their social position.
III. It was a very tried family. Every family has its own sorrows. Tried:—
1. By bereavement—Rachel dies.
2. By discord amongst the brothers.
3. By a grievous famine.
IV. A very influential family. In addition to the influence, beneficial as it was vast, which Joseph wielded over Egypt, each of the twelve sons of Jacob was the source—the head—of one of the twelve tribes. These tribes have been the great religious teachers of the race, the priests and the prophets of humanity, the people especially chosen by God to reveal Himself—to foretell the Messiah—to be the ancestors of His own Son.
V. A very religiously privileged family. The instructions of Jacob. We have here in their death:—
1. A rebuke to family pride.
2. A warning against seeking satisfaction in family joys.
3. A lesson as to the right use of family relationships.
4. A reason for expecting family meetings after death. [Homilist.]
Families pass away—independent of domestic love and care. Nations pass away—independent of legal constitution or military prowess.
Generations pass away—independent of their number, wealth, or genius.
This generation is but the new spring rising from the winter of the past.
Joseph died—God deprives the Church of her comfort and stay:
1. That she may gain the power of self-reliance.
2. That she may shew her ability to be independent of all human instrumentalities.
3. That she may move into the exigencies of the future.
Men die; the Church progresses: God is eternal.
Sometimes the new generation is not equal in moral character to the old—the new king knew not Joseph.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Exo_1:1-6. As trees growing in the wood are known—some by difference of their trunks, and some by the properties of their branches, leaves, flowers, and fruits; but this knowledge is had of them only whilst they stand, grow, and are not consumed; for if they be committed to the fire, and are turned into ashes, they cannot be known. It is impossible that, when the ashes of divers kinds of trees are mingled together, the tall pine tree should be discerned from the great oak, or the mighty poplar from a low shrub, or any one tree from another: even so men, whilst they live in the wood of this world, are known—some by the stock of their ancestors, some by the flourishing leaves of their words and eloquence, some in the flowers of beauty, and some in the shrub of honesty, many by their savage ignorance, and some by their kindness; but when death doth bring them into dust, and hath mixed all together, then their ashes cannot be known—then there is no difference between the mighty princes of the world and the poor souls that are not accounted of [Candray].
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain On v1 I. Joseph was still a son, though lord over…
Exo 1:6
I. Joseph was still a son, though lord over Egypt (Gen 45:9-11). His heart yearned over his father with all a child’s clinging trustfulness.
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II. Jacob’s heart fainted, for the news was to him too good to be true. There is in life an element which is constantly upsetting probabilities; thus calling men up from lethargy. The news was too romantic at first for Jacob; but he always had an eye for the practical, and when he saw the wagons, his heart revived (vers. 25-28).
III. In the meeting of Joseph with his father there is a beautiful combination of official duty and filial piety. Joseph is administrator of the resources of Egypt; he cannot abandon his position and go away to Canaan, but he goes part of the way to meet his father (Gen 46:29-30).
IV. Jacob summed up his earthly life by calling it a pilgrimage. His days seemed few and evil when he looked back upon them. We get to see the brokenness of the life, its incompleteness, its fragmentariness, when we get to the end of it (Gen 47:7-9).
V. The last scene of this eventful history is given us in the text. (1) Joseph died. The best, wisest, and most useful men are withdrawn from their ministry. The world can get on without its greatest and best. The death of Joseph was a national event, an event of wide importance. (2) His brethren died. There we begin to lose individuality; we cannot all be equally conspicuous, each cannot have his name written in history as having died. The great thing is to leave behind us, not a mere name, but influences that hearts will feel.
Parker, The City Temple, 1871, p. 161.
References: Exo 1:6.—R. S. Candlish, Scripture Characters and Miscellanies, p. 9.1:10-12.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xvii., No. 997. Exo 1:12.—J. Van Oosterzee, Year of Salvation, vol. ii., p. 385. 1—J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era, p. 1; Parker, vol. ii., p. 17.1:8-11, Exo 2:5-10.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., pp. 50, 53.1-2.—G. Gilfillan, Alpha and Omega, vol. ii., p. 42. 2—Parker, vol. ii., p. 19. Exo 2:1-3.—H. Wonnacott, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 24. Exo 2:3—J. Hamilton, Works, vol. v., p. 1. Exo 2:5-15.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. ii., p. 55. Exo 2:6.—T. Champness, Little Foxes, p. 72. Exo 2:6-9.—F. W. Robertson, Sermons, 4th series, p. 250. Exo 2:10.—Parker, vol. ii., p. 26. Exo 2:1-10.—W. M. Taylor, Moses the Lawgiver, p. 7.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
F. W. Grant 1903 · Public Domain On v1 Section 1. (Exo 1:1-22.)
Section 1. (Exo 1:1-22.)
The first actings of grace: the hidden hand of overruling power.
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Grace in its first actings is here shown to us: the small beginning of a nation in the seventy souls that came into Egypt with Jacob, contrasted with their marvelous and irrepressible increase. Even the bondage into which they come had been already assured them, and what seemed most against them was really the working out of promise for them. The hand of power works in disguise, yet one to faith quite penetrable. It is the same story essentially, whether told of the nation of Israel or of any of the Lord’s redeemed.
First, we are reminded how it is the children of Israel are found in Egypt: every man and his household came with Jacob. The natural name of their father is in perfect place here. We do not inherit grace. We came into the land of bondage with our father Adam.
The bondage itself, however, does not begin at once; for conscious bondage is not the expression of our mere natural state. The man in the seventh of Romans is not a mere child of nature. You will not find such an one crying out, "Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?" That is an expression of felt bondage. There was a time when Egypt pleased us well enough, as there was a time when Egypt pleased Israel well enough. Afterward, we find them remembering with desire the good things they had in Egypt, as the golden calf was an imitation of the worship of Egypt. They had had a flourishing and happy time there, as we know; and it was God who, seeing a need in them they saw not, as He says Himself, "raised up Pharaoh," and thus brought about a state of bondage. Egypt thus became "the smoking furnace" of Abraham’s vision (Gen 15:1-21), in which, however, it was really God who thought upon His covenant.
So with us all -the life of God begins in the very ability to feel death; and the light, as at the beginning, shines but on a chaos. Thus are our hearts set yearning after Himself. The famine in the far-off land makes us think upon the bread in a father’s house.
Pharaoh’s expedient to keep the people down and in bondage should be noted: he uses their own strength against themselves. They build him store-cities, -cities whence he may provision his troops; and these cities are in Goshen, -in the lands allotted to themselves. Thus every where men rivet their own chains. If it is money that a man is after, every dollar he puts into his treasury only sets his heart more upon it. Every thing that the heart prizes here, the more one succeeds in getting it, the more will it attach the heart to itself. "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" And this is true, in principle, of Christians also. If we allow our hearts to go out after the world in any shape, the more we gain of it, the more its weight will drag us down to earth.
F. W. Grant, The Numerical Bible (4th ed., 1903) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv1, 6, 8 Exo 1:1 - - Exo 1:14.
Exodus
FOUR SHAPING CENTURIES
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Exo 1:1 - - Exo 1:14.
The four hundred years of Israel’s stay in Egypt were divided into two unequal periods, in the former and longer of which they were prosperous and favoured, while in the latter they were oppressed. Both periods had their uses and place in the shaping of the nation and its preparation for the Exodus. Both carry permanent lessons.
I. The long days of unclouded prosperity. These extended over centuries, the whole history of which is summed up in two words: death and growth. The calm years glided on, and the shepherds in Goshen had the happiness of having no annals. All that needed to be recorded was that, one by one, the first generation died off, and that the new generations ‘were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty.’ The emphatic repetitions recall the original promises in Gen 12:2, Gen 17:4 - Gen 17:5, Gen 18:18. The preceding specification of the number of the original settlers {repeated from Gen 46:27} brings into impressive contrast the small beginnings and the rapid increase. We may note that eloquent setting side by side of the two processes which are ever going on simultaneously, death and birth.
One by one men pass out of the warmth and light into the darkness, and so gradually does the withdrawal proceed that we scarcely are aware of its going on, but at last ‘all that generation’ has vanished. The old trees are all cleared off the ground, and everywhere their place is taken by the young saplings. The web is ever being woven at one end, and run down at the other. ‘The individual withers, but the race is more and more.’ How solemn that continual play of opposing movements is, and how blind we are to its solemnity!
That long period of growth may be regarded in two lights. It effected the conversion of a horde into a nation by numerical increase, and so was a link in the chain of the divine working. The great increase, of which the writer speaks so strongly, was, no doubt, due to the favourable circumstances of the life in Goshen, but was none the less regarded by him, and rightly so, as God’s doing. As the Psalmist sings, ‘He increased His people greatly.’ ‘Natural processes’ are the implements of a supernatural will. So Israel was being multiplied, and the end for which it was peacefully growing into a multitude was hidden from all but God. But there was another end, in reference to which the years of peaceful prosperity may be regarded; namely, the schooling of the people to patient trust in the long-delayed fulfilment of the promise. That hope had burned bright in Joseph when he died, and he being dead yet spake of it from his coffin to the successive generations. Delay is fitted and intended to strengthen faith and make hope more eager. But that part of the divine purpose, alas! was not effected as the former was. In the moral region every circumstance has two opposite results possible. Each condition has, as it were, two handles, and we can take it by either, and generally take it by the wrong one. Whatever is meant to better us may be so used by us as to worsen us. And the history of Israel in Egypt and in the desert shows only too plainly that ease weakened, if it did not kill, faith, and that Goshen was so pleasant that it drove the hope and the wish for Canaan out of mind. ‘While the bridegroom tarried they all slumbered and slept.’ Is not Israel in Egypt, slackening hold of the promise because it tarried, a mirror in which the Church may see itself? and do we not know the enervating influence of Goshen, making us reluctant to shoulder our packs and turn out for the pilgrimage? The desert repels more strongly than Canaan attracts.
II. The shorter period of oppression. Probably the rise of a ‘new king’ means a revolution in which a native dynasty expelled foreign monarchs. The Pharaoh of the oppression was, perhaps, the great Rameses II., whose long reign of sixty-seven years gives ample room for protracted and grinding oppression of Israel. The policy adopted was characteristic of these early despotisms, in its utter disregard of humanity and of everything but making the kingdom safe. It was not intentionally cruel, it was merely indifferent to the suffering it occasioned. ‘Let us deal wisely with them’-never mind about justice, not to say kindness. Pharaoh’s ‘politics,’ like those of some other rulers who divorce them from morality, turned out to be impolitic, and his ‘wisdom’ proved to be roundabout folly. He was afraid that the Israelites, if they were allowed to grow, might find out their strength and seek to emigrate; and so he set to work to weaken them with hard bondage, not seeing that that was sure to make them wish the very thing that he was blunderingly trying to prevent. The only way to make men glad to remain in a community is to make them at home there. The sense of injustice is the strongest disintegrating force. If there is a ‘dangerous class’ the surest way to make them more dangerous is to treat them harshly. It was a blunder to make ‘lives bitter,’ for hearts also were embittered. So the people were ripened for revolt, and Goshen became less attractive.
God used Pharaoh’s foolish wisdom, as He had used natural laws, to prepare for the Exodus. The long years of ease had multiplied the nation. The period of oppression was to stir them up out of their comfortable nest, and make them willing to risk the bold dash for freedom. Is not that the explanation, too, of the similar times in our lives? It needs that we should experience life’s sorrows and burdens, and find how hard the world’s service is, and how quickly our Goshens may become places of grievous toil, in order that the weak hearts, which cling so tightly to earth, may be detached from it, and taught to reach upwards to God. ‘Blessed is the man . . .in whose heart are thy ways,’ and happy is he who so profits by his sorrows that they stir in him the pilgrim’s spirit, and make him yearn after Canaan, and not grudge to leave Goshen. Our ease and our troubles, opposite though they seem and are, are meant to further the same end,-to make us fit for the journey which leads to rest and home. We often misuse them both, letting the one sink us in earthly delights and oblivion of the great hope, and the other embitter our spirits without impelling them to seek the things that are above. Let us use the one for thankfulness, growth, and patient hope, and the other for writing deep the conviction that this is not our rest, and making firm the resolve that we will gird our loins and, staff in hand, go forth on the pilgrim road, not shrinking from the wilderness, because we see the mountains of Canaan across its sandy flats.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain On v1 Oppression of the Israelites
Oppression of the Israelites
5. Seventy souls] Jacob himself is included in the number: cp. Gen_46:8-27. Of the seventy, sixty-eight were males. If to the direct descendants of Jacob we add the wives of his sons and grandsons, and the husbands of his daughters and grand-daughters, and all their servants with their families, it appears that the total number of those who entered Egypt was very considerable, several hundreds if not thousands. This fact, as well as the acknowlodged prolificness of the Hebrew nation, serves to account for their rapid increase in Egypt. At the time of the exodus they must have numbered about three millions: see on Exo_12:37.
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7. Observe the number of words denoting increase. The land is the land of Goshen in the Delta of the Nile.
8. This verse marks the turn of the tide in the fortunes of Israel. Hitherto they have been tolerated and honoured; now they are feared and oppressed. The change of treatment is here said to be connected with a change in the government of Egypt. As mentioned in the Introduction, Egypt for several hundred years was ruled by an alien dynasty, called the Hyksôs, or Shepherd kings. These were Asiatics, and would therefore naturally tolerate the Hebrew race with whom they may have had affinity. But the Hyksôs were at length expelled, and a native dynasty once more occupied the throne of Egypt. It is usually supposed that this new dynasty is meant by the new king which knew not Joseph. One of the most famous kings of the nineteenth dynasty was Rameses II (about 1340 b.c.). He was a great architect, and many monuments remain to attest his greatness, such as the temples at Luxor, Abydos, etc. He is generally held to be the Pharaoh of the Oppression, and his son and successor (Merenptah or Mineptah) the Pharaoh of the exodus: see on Exo_14:28. Against this, however, is to be considered the fact that this Merenptah has left monuments in which he records that he has invaded Palestine and destroyed the Israelites, who are represented as living there at his time. Accordingly the oppression and exodus of the Israelites are by some placed much earlier than the time of Rameses and Merenptah, as early as the 15th cent. b.c.
11. Treasure cities] store cities, situated on the frontier, and serving both as strongholds for defence against invasion and as military depots of provisions and arms. Pithom] i.e. the 'Abode of the Setting Sun,' has been identifled with Tel-el Maskhuta, between Kassassin and Isma¿liyeh. The walls of this ancient city are found to have been constructed of bricks made of Nile mud and chopped straw. Raamses] or Rameses, has not yet been identified, but is supposed to have been situated at the modern Tel-el Kebir. It was in existence at the time of Joseph, as appears from Gen_47:11, so that it was probably repaired or enlarged at a later date.
12. The more they multiplied] The whole history of the exodus and sojourn in the wilderness is designed to show that nothing can destroy the people of Israel, or thwart the divine purpose with regard to them.
14. Service in the field] This refers to the construction of irrigation canals and embankments, as well as to the making of bricks for building. With what rigour the system of forced labour was employed may be judged from the fact recorded by Herodotus that 120,000 workmen lost their lives in the construction of a canal connecting the Nile and the Red Sea in the time of Pharaoh Necho. In modern times Mohammed Ali's canal from the Nile to Alexandria cost 20,000 lives.
15-22. Failing to weaken or diminish the Israelites by such severe labour, the Egyptian king has recourse to a more direct method, that of infanticide. He orders the slaughter of all the Hebrew male children at birth. This also fails, Pharaoh's own daughter becoming one of the links in the chain of deliverance.
With Pharaoh's edict may be compared that of Herod ordering the Massacre of the Innocents of Bethlehem (Mat_2:16;).
15. The names of only two of the mid-wives have been preserved. These two were probably connected with the royal palace.
16. Stools] RV 'birthstool.'
19. There was, no doubt, some truth in what the midwives said, though their womanly instincts led them to evade the unnatural command of the king.
21. Made them houses] i.e. blessed them with marriage and many descendants: cp. Rth_4:11; 2Sa_7:27; 1Ki_11:38.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v17 (See Scofield "Psa 19:9").
feared
(See Scofield "Psa 19:9").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v1 Analysis and Annotations
Analysis and Annotations
I. ISRAEL’S DELIVERANCE OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE EGYPTIANS
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1. The House of Bondage
CHAPTER 1
1. The names of the children of Israel; their increase (Exo 1:1-7)
2. The new king and his policy (Exo 1:8-11)
3. The continued increase (Exo 1:12)
4. Their hard bondage (Exo 1:13-14)
5. The midwives commanded (Exo 1:15-16)
6. Their disobedience and God’s reward (Exo 1:17-21)
7. Pharaoh’s charge to all his people (Exo 1:22)
The opening verses take us back once more to the end of Genesis; as already stated the word “now” (literally, “and”) makes Exodus a continuation of the previous book. They had come into Egypt while Joseph was already there. Joseph and all his brethren had passed away, but their descendants multiplied rapidly. The Hebrew word “increased” means “swarmed.” The seventh verse (Exo 1:7) emphasizes their wonderful increase both in numbers and in power. Inasmuch as a comparatively short time had elapsed after Joseph’s death, some 64 years only, infidelity has sneered at the description of this increase. It is generally overlooked that besides the 70 souls which came into Egypt a very large number of servants must have accompanied them. Abraham had 318 servants born in his house. Jacob had a still larger number. And they had been received into the covenant, though they were not natural descendants. The command of circumcision extended to “every man child in your generations, he that is born in the house, or bought with money of any stranger, which is not thy seed” (Gen 17:12). There may have been thousands of such servants besides immense herds of cattle. Yet even this does not fully explain the great increase. It was miraculous, the fulfillment of the promises given to the patriarchs. God witnessed thereby that they were His people.
The Egyptian account given by their historian Manetho, speaking of the Hyksos, the shepherd kings of the East, is in all probability a distorted account of the increase and influence of the Israelites. A new king, or dynasty, then arose. Josephus, the Jewish historian, states: “The government was transferred to another family.” The debt which Egypt owed to Joseph was forgotten.
The increasing Israelites filled the Egyptians with terror, hence the attempt to crush them by hard labor and the cruel taskmasters. They were used in the construction of some of the great monumental buildings and became the slaves of the Gentiles. The ruins of cities bear witness to it, for they were composed of crude brick and in many of them straw was not used (Exo 5:10-12). The oppression was in degrees. But the more they were afflicted, the more they multiplied and grew. Here we may read the history of Israel among the Gentiles. Their increase and expansion has produced what is known as “anti-Semitism.” The Gentiles fear the Jews. Their miraculous increase always takes place when oppression and persecution is upon them. When they are oppressed then God’s time for deliverance draws nigh.
Their oppression and sorrow in Egypt was also permitted for their own good. The idolatry of Egypt began to corrupt the chosen people. See Jos 24:14; Eze 20:5-8; Eze 23:8.
The attempt to destroy all the male children follows next. Satan, who is a murderer from the beginning, manifested his cunning and power in this way. He desired to destroy the seed of Abraham so as to make the coming of the Promised One impossible. The murder of Abel was his first attempt. Here is an attempt on a larger scale, which was followed by many others. See Exodus 14, 2Ch 21:4; 2Ch 21:17; 2Ch 22:10; Est 3:6; Est 3:12-13; Matt. 2, etc. Throughout the history of Israel during this age Satan has made repeated attempts to exterminate this wonderful people, because he knows God’s purpose concerning their future. His final attempt is recorded in Rev. 12.
Pharaoh was the instrument of Satan, and is a type of him. Blessed is the record of the faithful Hebrew midwives. They were pious women. Satan tried to use woman again for his sinister purposes, but he failed. Later we find that the wicked Pharaoh was defeated by the faith of a Hebrew mother and by the loving kindness of his own daughter (chapter 2). And God rewarded the actions of these women. They received honors; their families increased and were blest. When Pharaoh saw his attempt frustrated he appealed to his own people to commit wholesale murder. They began to sow an awful seed; the harvest came when years later there was no house in Egypt without one dead, when the firstborn were slain. Gal 6:7 applies also to nations, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that he shall also reap.” God honored the Hebrew midwives because they honored Him. The retribution came upon cruel Egypt in God’s own time.
And yet there are other lessons. Egypt is the type of the world; Pharaoh the type of the prince of this world. The bondage of sin and the wretchedness of God’s people, still undelivered, are here depicted. God permitted all so that they might groan for deliverance. The house of bondage opens the way for redemption by blood and by power.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv1, 8, 15 The Rapid Growth of the People
The Rapid Growth of the People
v. 1. Now these are the names of the children of Israel which came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob:
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v. 2. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,
v. 3. Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin,
v. 4. Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher.
v. 5. And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls; for Joseph was in Egypt already. The order is: the sons of Leah, the son of Rachel, the sons of Rachel’s handmaid, the sons of Leah’s handmaid. As in Gen 46:27, seventy souls are mentioned as the forefathers of the children of Israel, it being expressly stated that the sons came, each with his family, with his wife and children. The small number serves as a fine contrast over against the immense multitude that is spoken of at the time of the Exodus.
v. 6. And Joseph died, and all his brethren and all that generation. Joseph died at the age of one hundred and ten years, Gen 50:26, apparently the first one of the brothers to be taken away; but he was soon followed by the other members of his own generation, Levy dying about twenty years after him, Exo 6:16.
v. 7. And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them. The heaping of the expressions, five different terms being used to emphasize this point, indicates the extraordinary growth of the people, a factor brought about not only by natural fertility and the eagerness for children, but above all by the fulfillment of God’s promise to all the patriarchs. They filled the entire land, particularly Goshen, so that the country swarmed with their numbers. God’s promises never fail, and it is a matter of wisdom to trust in them with firm confidence.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 6, 8, 11, 13, 15, 18, 20 This refers to all the people who live in…
household
This refers to all the people who live in a house together, usually a large family with servants. (See: Metonymy)
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seventy in number
"70 in number" (See: Numbers)
Joseph was already in Egypt
"Joseph lived in Egypt before his brothers"
translationWords
Israel
Egypt
Jacob
Reuben
Simeon
Levi
Judah
Issachar
Zebulun
Benjamin
Dan
Naphtali
Gad
Asher
Joseph (OT)
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv1, 2, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20 1:1-22 The need for deliverance was obviously related to…
1:1-22 The need for deliverance was obviously related to the Israelites’ condition (the Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy, 1:13); it also was related to promises God had made to the patriarchs years earlier. The Lord had promised Abraham that his descendants would be a great nation, living in freedom in the land of Canaan. At this point, Abraham’s descendants were slaves in Egypt under a pharaoh determined to decimate them as a people. God would have to rescue the people if his promises were to be kept.
1:1 Israel is the name God had given to Jacob, son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham (Gen 32:28). • Many years earlier, Jacob and his family had moved to Egypt, seeking refuge from severe drought (see Gen 46:1-7). Thanks to Joseph’s wisdom and leadership (see Gen 41:25-49), a steady grain supply had been stored (see Gen 42:1-2; 45:5-7).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.