EXODUS 5:1 TO 6:27 / PSALM 34

READ: Exodus 5:1-6:27 / Psalm 34

Verse chosen for meditation

Exodus 6:2 God spoke to Moses and said to him, "I am the Lord."

REFLECT

Someone once said,  "It has to get worse before it gets better." How do we react before God when we pray? Do we ever feel that not only are we not receiving an answer but also that situations seem to be getting worse? Pharaoh's response to Moses was that the Israelites were getting distracted from their work (Exodus 5:4-5). When the Israelites received Pharaoh's harsh response to Moses' request that they be allowed to hold a festival of worship, it was certainly a test for Moses. For all of the details that God told him, Moses did not know headwinds coming his way. God allowed Moses to be the subject of anger and bewilderment of the Israelites (Exodus 5:21). But it was all with a purpose in mind.

God wanted His people to understand clearly that He is the Lord. He repeatedly said so throughout Exodus 6. So we read references to Himself such as "I AM WHO I AM" (the literal Hebrew has no definite tense—"I Be Who I Be"—denoting past, present and future) earlier in Exodus 3:14. God has always existed and will always exist. Here we read of God introducing a new name that He had not revealed earlier to Abraham, Isaac or Jacob. (It is used in the book of Genesis, but this is apparently because Moses, who wrote the book, was inspired by God to use it in relating the stories of the patriarchs). The newly revealed name is Yahweh (Exodus  6:2-3). It is essentially the name "I Be Who I Be" in the third person—that is, "He Be Who He Be"—and has been variously translated as "the Eternal", "the Ever-living" or even "the Self-Existent One." (Jesus later revealed that He was the one the Israelites worshiped as the great "I AM"—see John 8:58)

RELATE

God was preparing His people to understand that He was not a passing fad. The miracles that they were going to experience were a demonstration of His power and supremacy. Some scholars today, claim the plagues that came upon Egypt, for instance, were not miraculous in nature. They propound that these were merely natural phenomena exaggerated in the scriptural accounts. However, biblical historian Eugene Merrill counters: "They [the plagues] must be understood for what they were—unique but genuinely historical outpourings of the wrath of a sovereign God who wished to show not only Egypt but his own people that he is the Lord of all of heaven and earth, one well able to redeem his people from the onerous slavery they knew under Pharaoh and to make them, by covenant, his own servant people" (Kingdom of Priests: A History of Old Testament Israel, 1987, p. 65). The Israelites were so encompassed with the "gods" of Egypt that they needed to understand that His ultimate intervention would exceed anything that man could do through sorcery, magic or false worship. Most of the plagues would be a direct attack on the "gods" of Egypt. Indeed, Jethro would afterwards remark, "Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods; for in the very thing in which they behaved proudly, He was above them" (Exodus 18:11).

REST

If we would simply trust God! The things (including ploys) of man are temporal. The things of God are eternal. So while humankind may let us down, God has been, is, and will always be our loving God who watches our coming in and going out!

Tan Tee Khoon