So Moses returned to Egypt as commanded by God, taking with him the rod of God. Aaron met him on the way, being directed by God to do so, and with their hearts filled with the divine promises they reached the land of bondage. In the midst of Israel’s bonds there was a measure of freedom amongst the chiefs, and the thrall of the nation did not disturb its order, for the elders of Israel at once gathered together to hear from the two servants of Jehovah the strange story of the burning bush, and to see the three great signs of God. “And the people believed, and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that He had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped.”
Israel, from that day, was a different people. True they had their seasons of fresh anguish and hopelessness, but never more were they the spiritless slaves they had been, for the promise of God was in their breasts.
Having lightened the hearts of the weary people, Moses and Aaron went to the king with this message, “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let My people go, that they may hold a feast unto Me in the wilderness.”
Surrounded by priests and princes, Pharaoh haughtily replied, “Who is Jehovah that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go.” Pharaoh knew the gods of his land, and also those of the surrounding nations he had conquered. Their images he had seen, but of Jehovah, the invisible, the eternal, he was ignorant, and he ridiculed the idea of His power, for were not the people of Jehovah Pharaoh’s very slaves? If Jehovah, the God of the Hebrews, was a god indeed, why had He allowed His worshippers to be under the power of a nation which gave its allegiance to deities who embodied the ideas of Creator, Supreme Ruler, Life Giver, Deliverer. Judge, and such glories as belong to Jehovah alone? Was Jehovah a God that a king of Egypt need listen to? Pharaoh scorned the God of the Hebrew.
His answer to the demand for Israel’s freedom was not delayed. He commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, “Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore; let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks which they did make heretofore ye shall lay upon them, ye shall not diminish aught thereof, for they be idle... Let there more work be laid upon the men, that they may labor therein; and let them not regard vain words.”
Vain words! Such is ever the enemy’s description of the truth of God. But Pharaoh had to see whether God’s words, liberty and rest, were vain.
This picture of slaves making bricks is quite a little history. Here are (B) men busy mixing, kneading, and carrying the clay; (A) molding bricks to their proper form and size; (D) smoothing off rough edges; (C) carrying away; (F) and stacking them, while (E) the inevitable taskmasters with their rods, are ready at hand to enforce the labor laid upon the slaves. The slaves are of a paler skin than the Egyptians.
The bricks were made of the Nile mud, mixed with straw, and were dried in the sun. Bricks made without straw have been found in the site of Pithom, thus affording a strange confirmation of Israel’s hardships as mentioned by Moses.
The corn was not always reaped close to the earth, but the ears were cut off, and the long stubble was left standing in the fields. In such cases the ears were taken in baskets to the threshing-floor. After that, the straw was chopped up and used for the bricks. The operation of cutting off the ears of the corn and carrying them away is clearly shown in this picture from the monuments.
In consequence of the edict of Pharaoh, “the people were scattered abroad through all the land of Egypt to gather stubble instead of straw.” They had to toil over the fields in the burning sun to pull up the long stubble, and then they had to bring it to the brick-field and to chop it up for their work. “Ye be idle! ye be idle!” resounded through the land, and the Egyptian taskmasters beat the officers of Israel and urged on the labor.
The blows that fell upon them almost made Israel believe Jehovah’s promise of liberty to be but “vain words.” Their case vas harder than ever, and the appeal to Pharaoh was fruitless; “Ye are idle! ye are idle!” he cried, and urged on the people to their tasks.
It is frequently the case that God’s people experience some bitter disappointment upon having their hearts filled with joy in believing. The enemy tried his hand on Israel, and with success. But what God promises He performs.
Seeing Israel’s misery, He assured Moses of the fulfillment of His word by again unfolding His own name to him. The ever I AM could not change, and He would bring His people out; but such was Israel’s anguish of spirit and such their cruel bondage, that they hearkened not.
It is just at this juncture, when Israel was in despair and Moses was overwhelmed, that the record introduces the genealogy of Aaron and Moses, and their high dignity as God’s servants in the deliverance of Israel. And we see that, though Israel was enslaved, still there was no loss in their tribal order or in the headship of their princes. Israel was a nation: it was not reduced to a herd of slaves even at the time of its most bitter and hopeless bondage. The genealogy indicates a new starting point in the divinely given history. In this case it begins the story of the era of fulfillment of the promise of deliverance.
There seems to be every probability that in the city of Rameses the chief wonders of Jehovah were wrought. We are now giving Brugsch as our authority. Meneptah “had his royal seat” there. On the eastern frontier of Egypt, in the low-lands of the Delta, in Zoan-Tanis, was the proper royal residence of the Pharaoh.” This city, from a military point of view, formed the very “key of Egypt.” It was most magnificent, as its ruins demonstrate. “A sandy plan, as vast as it is dreary, called at this day San, in remembrance of the ancient name Zoan, and covered with gigantic ruins of columns, pillars, sphinxes, stele, and stones of buildings... shows the position of that city of Tanis, to which the Egyptian texts and classic authors are agreed in giving the epithet of ‘a great and splendid city of Egypt.’ According to the geographical inscriptions, the Egyptians gave to this plain, of which Tanis was the center, the name of Sokhot Zoan, ‘the plain of Zoan ‘; the origin of which name is traced back as far as the age of Rameses II. The author of the seventy-eighth Psalm makes use of precisely the same phrase”: “Marvelous things did He in the sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan” (ver. 12).