Exodus 4

Subdivision 2. (Exodus 4:18-31; Exodus 5:1-23; Exodus 6:1-30; Exodus 7:1-25; Exodus 8:1-32; Exodus 9:1-35; Exodus 10:1-29; Exodus 11:1-10.)The testimony to Pharaoh, in which a division is made between Israel and the Egyptians. Typically, the testimony to the separation of the world from Him on whom it is dependent, and the separation of His people from the world. The connection of the two sections here is easily to be seen. God has already revealed to Moses, in that covenant-name which He again brings forward now, the ground upon which He takes them up. On man’s part, however, and for man’s own sake, there must be the acceptance of this; and this is the true meaning and necessity of repentance. Grace must be known and received as grace. The self-confidence natural to us must be removed, that our confidence may be in God alone. And not only must we realize the weakness of a creature, but the ruin of a fallen condition, that Christ may be God’s remedy and revelation to us. We have hitherto been occupied with God’s side of all this; now we have the human, the need of God’s grace, and the way we are brought to realize it. We have first, therefore, here, the covenant of promise developed as the only hope of man; and then, in the second section, the cutting off from all other dependence. Egypt is the world, to which naturally we belong, with its resources in itself and its independence of God. The judgments that come upon it from Him are His witnesses of its alienation from Him, and of His separation, and the separation of His people, from it. Practically, this testimony, as it is received, separates; and in this way He acted to wean Israel from the land of their birth but of their bitter servitude, and whose moral condition it revealed to them. Spite of all, we find in the after-history how, when the trials of the wilderness were felt, their hearts could go fondly back to Egypt, as in the golden calf we find also a plain reminiscence of their idolatries. All the more is the need of such dealings as these made manifest.

Exodus 4:18-7

Section 1. (Exodus 4:18-31; Exodus 5:1-23; Exodus 6:1-30; Exodus 7:1-7.)The covenant of promise the basis of redemption.

1. In the first section, then, our eyes are fixed upon the covenant itself, which, as a covenant of promise, depends for its fulfillment entirely upon the power and faithfulness of Jehovah Himself. Yet man is not thereby released from the responsibility which is ever his. Grace enables and provides for the fulfillment of it, never sets it aside. It is the fullest expression of divine sovereignty, not the abdication of it. (1) At the outset, we see the almighty hand which is at work here. Moses returns to Jethro, to find him at once ready to accede to his desire to see if his brethren in Egypt are yet alive. Then a word from Jehovah Himself assures him of the removal of the difficulties personal to himself in regard to his return to Egypt: all the men are dead that sought his life. This assurance comes at the right time. He has first to face the difficulties, be master of them morally, and then find how He at whose bidding he goes is really master. Then once more he is informed of the stubbornness of Pharaoh’s heart, in which and through which God works still as sovereign, the evil serving Him as does the good. In all this, Jehovah shows Himself to be still the almighty God of Abraham. Israel He claims as His son, His first-born. They owe their place among the nations to His adoption of them. They are born, so to speak, of His covenant with their fathers. They had not worked for this; but as it is said of their father Jacob, so is it with them, -“The children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of Him that calleth.” (Romans 9:11.) Yet this grace of God to Israel in no wise implies the rejection of other nations, rather the reverse, as the promise to Abraham long before declared, “In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed.” So here, the “first-born” implies other children. (2) In connection with the covenant with Abraham, the scene in the lodging-place by the way becomes at once and strikingly significant. Circumcision was the sign of this very covenant. (See Genesis 17:1-27.) It was the expression of that renunciation of all confidence in the flesh which leaves one to know, with dead Abraham, the power of the Almighty. God insists (as we have seen there) that the token of the covenant shall be in the flesh of all His people; and Moses, like all others, must realize the necessity of this. (3) Lastly, the people set to their seal: they believe and worship.
2. But not yet are they delivered. On the contrary, the forewarned struggle with Pharaoh is only just beginning. He openly declares that he knows not Jehovah, and that he will not let Israel go. Fresh burdens are laid upon the people, who are refused the straw they have hitherto received for their brick-making, and are bidden gather it for themselves; yet not aught of their task is to be diminished. Unable thus to perform their tasks, and beaten for their nonperformance, the people undergo a complete revulsion of feeling.

From their late joy, they pass into a state of murmuring and despair. How often is this the case in the experience of a soul awakening under the gospel to realize the power of sin within him, and his own inability to meet and master it! In this condition, the gospel itself seems but a new torture. The work of Christ being yet unknown, and that we are justified as ungodly -as sinners, not as saints, -the unconquerable hardness of the heart amazes and appalls one. Sin seems to be more than ever master, and our hands busier than ever forging and riveting our own chains. The gospel itself seems to have failed with us.

It is only that we ourselves have failed as yet to apprehend the gospel. 3. Once again, then, God makes known to them His name Jehovah, patiently reiterating what He has already said. They were now to know Him by this name. All the opposition, all this obstinate tyranny, was only to destroy absolutely all other dependence than in Himself. This is a necessity, that faith may have its rightful and only object. God, by Himself and acting from Himself, is our salvation. If for the present faith even seems to be gone, this too is needful to make us realize that faith itself is not our dependence, but Christ is. Thus God gives an imperative commandment now to Moses and Aaron to bring the people out of the land of Egypt. 4. And here we are bidden to pause a moment, to see who these are upon whom is laid this burden. Their genealogy is put before us, -plainly, in its meaning as to the history here, theirs alone. The fact that others have place in it does not obscure this, but in reality makes it more apparent. Reuben and Simeon only have a place: those who might seem to have, as the elder sons of Jacob, a claim above Levi to furnish the deliverer of Israel, yet who do not, and who are looked at here only to be passed by. But as God does nothing without the fullest reason for it, so there is reason in this case, not upon the surface, no doubt, but yet to be discovered where there is faith to discern.

Certainly, a genealogy at this point should awaken attention. Is it an interruption? Is it a mere bit of archaeology? or what? First, the sons of Reuben: Reuben we have seen set aside long since from his birthright, and for personal causes. Boiling up as water, impetuous, and unsteady, he should not excel. Here we have not this, but the record of his sons’ names only, four in number: Enoch -“dedicated,” Pallu -“separated,” Hetzron -“enclosed,” and Carmi -“vine-dresser.” It is evident that these names make a harmonious series numerically significant, and, at first sight, one would say, good throughout. Enoch is the name of one who walked with God, and was taken without seeing death to be with God. It was also, however, the name of a son of Cain, and, as here, a first-born son. It is in general no good argument when thus there seems no sign of the presence of evil, except indeed. outside. Self-righteousness may have its dedication and its separation (Pharisee-like) and its inclosure and its cultivation, -nothing is said of positive fruit and these four sons naturally, in their very number, speak of what is worldly and unspiritual, -a thing quite easily linked with much pretension. Simeon’s sons are six, a still more unfavorable number, as we know. The meaning of their names I do not attempt to interpret, but they end with the ill-omened “Saul,” the half Canaanite. Thus Simeon too is set aside. Levi is the third son, a number which speaks of resurrection -the power of God manifest when on man’s part all is gone. His ruin is owned, and in Levi’s case we have one who illustrates this: “joined” to Simeon in that display of “cruel” wrath which Jacob denounces, yet taken up now in the sovereign grace of God, working for His glory. Thus also typically this same Levi, “joined,” speaks of the mediatorship of Christ, only fully reached in resurrection. The death He has passed through is the confession of the death under which man lay. With Levi accordingly the genealogy expands, and the Spirit of God lingers over it, recording the number of years of Levi himself, of Kohath, and of Amram, as well as (later on) of Aaron and Moses at the time of Israel’s deliverance. Who can doubt that there is much to be found here beside mere history? What we have seen may serve to show at least that the principles of the covenant are maintained all through the history, and that this it is a design of the genealogy to bring out. 5. And again, for the third time, God declares that He is Jehovah, and that Israel, and the Egyptians too, shall know it: the very hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, which calls for the judgments soon to sweep over the land, being that which He would use for blessing in this way to any with whom there might be preparedness for it.