Commentary - Exodus 2:23-25

Bird's-eye view

This short passage marks a crucial turning point in the entire biblical narrative. For four hundred years, the sons of Israel have been in Egypt, with the last portion of that time spent in brutal, soul-crushing slavery. The book of Exodus opened with the machinery of a pagan state grinding God's people into the dust, and God appeared to be silent. Moses, the would-be deliverer, is a fugitive in Midian. But here, the scene shifts from earth to heaven. The death of an unnamed Pharaoh is the mundane historical occasion, but the real action is covenantal. The groaning of Israel under their bondage finally ascends to God, not as new information to Him, but as the appointed trigger for His redemptive plan. This is the moment the alarm clock, set four centuries earlier in the covenant with Abraham, finally goes off. God hears, God remembers, God sees, and God knows. These four verbs are a drumbeat of divine attention, signaling that the time for observation is over and the time for action has come. The stage is being set for the Exodus, which is the central redemptive event of the Old Testament and the great type and shadow of the salvation Christ would accomplish on the cross.

What we are witnessing is the intersection of human misery and divine fidelity. The cry of the people is not presented here as a particularly righteous or faithful prayer. It is a raw cry of pain, a sighing born of desperation. Yet, it is enough. It rises to a God who is bound not by the quality of their faith, but by the unbreakable promise of His own covenant. His response is not based on their deserving, but on His remembering. This passage is a profound comfort to all believers who find themselves in seasons of suffering and apparent divine silence. God's clock is not our clock, but it is always right on time. His covenants are the bedrock of history, and every groan of His people is heard, every tear is seen, and every promise He has made will be kept.

Outline

Context In Exodus

These verses form the bridge between the early life of Moses (Exodus 2:1-22) and his dramatic calling at the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-10). The first part of chapter 2 details Moses' birth, his rescue from the Nile, his upbringing in Pharaoh's court, and his failed attempt to deliver his people by his own strength, which resulted in his exile. Forty years have passed since Moses fled to Midian. The generation that knew of his crime has largely passed away. Israel's situation has not improved; it has only been prolonged. This section serves to shift the camera lens, as it were, from the human protagonist, Moses, to the divine protagonist, God. It establishes the premise for God's dramatic intervention. Before God speaks to Moses in chapter 3, we are told why He is about to speak. It is not because Moses has finally become worthy, but because the suffering of the people has reached its appointed fullness and the covenant promises of God must now be activated. This passage provides the covenantal foundation for everything that is to follow: the plagues, the Passover, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the giving of the Law at Sinai.

Key Issues

The Fulcrum of Redemptive History

History is not a random series of events. It is a story, written and directed by a sovereign God. And in any good story, there are crucial turning points, moments where the plot pivots in a new direction. This passage is one of the most important of those moments in the entire Bible. For generations, the story of God's people has been one of descent: from the favor of Joseph's era, to suspicion, to enslavement, and finally to genocidal oppression. All the while, God has been, from a human perspective, silent and inactive. The narrative has been stuck.

Then comes this paragraph. It is dense, packed with meaning, and it turns everything on its head. The death of a pagan king, which might seem like a minor detail, is the event that God uses to unstuck the narrative. The groaning of the people becomes the instrument that turns the key in the covenantal lock. And God's response, described in four powerful verbs, is the engine of deliverance being ignited. This is not God reacting to an unforeseen crisis. This is God, the author, moving the story to the next chapter, precisely according to the script He wrote in eternity past and revealed in His covenant with Abraham. The groaning of Israel is real and their pain is immense, but their cry is not the cause of God's plan. Rather, their cry is part of God's plan, the appointed means by which He would set His mighty deliverance in motion.

Verse by Verse Commentary

23 Now it happened in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the slavery, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their slavery rose up to God.

The historical marker is the death of a Pharaoh. For the Israelites, this might have sparked a flicker of hope. A new king might mean a new policy. But their hope was quickly extinguished. The system of oppression was bigger than one man. Their bondage continued, and so they sighed. This is the sigh of utter exhaustion, of hopelessness. It is a deep, guttural sound of misery. But it doesn't remain a sigh. It becomes a cry, a shout for help. The text emphasizes that the reason for their cry was the slavery. This was not a general malaise; it was a specific, grinding, physical, and spiritual oppression. And this cry, born of agony, rose up to God. It pierced the heavens. This is a crucial point. Their suffering was not hidden from God. He was not distant or unaware. Their cry had a destination, and it reached it. This is the beginning of prayer, even if it is a raw and rudimentary form. It is an appeal, wrung from the depths of their being, to a power outside of themselves.

24 So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Here is the divine response, the first two beats of the drum. First, God heard. This is not simply the passive reception of sound waves. In Hebrew thought, to hear is to pay attention, to consider, to act upon what is heard. God was not just aware of the noise; He gave it His full attention. Second, God remembered. This is one of the most important covenantal terms in the Bible. It does not mean that God had forgotten His promise and was suddenly reminded, as a man might forget an appointment. God is omniscient; He cannot forget. To "remember" in a covenantal context means to begin to act on the basis of a promise previously made. The covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the bedrock promise to make of them a great nation, to give them the land of Canaan, and to bless all the nations of the earth through them (Gen. 15, 17, 26, 28). For four hundred years, that promise had lain dormant, but now God was moving to fulfill it. His memory is His faithfulness in action.

25 And God saw the sons of Israel, and God knew them.

The drumbeat continues with two more powerful verbs. Third, God saw the sons of Israel. Like "hearing," this is more than mere observation. It implies a deep, personal inspection of their condition. He saw the whips, the sweat, the tears, the infant bodies in the Nile. He saw their affliction in all its brutal detail. Nothing was hidden from His gaze. And fourth, God knew them. The word "know" here is not about intellectual data. It is the deep, relational, intimate knowledge that the Bible often speaks of. It means He acknowledged them as His own. He identified with them in their suffering. He was not a detached observer but a kinsman, a Father who felt the pain of His children. In these four verbs, we see the whole character of God's saving grace. He is a God who pays attention, who keeps His promises, who sees our suffering up close, and who knows us intimately as His own people.

Application

This passage is a deep well of encouragement for the suffering saint. There are times in every believer's life, and in the life of the Church, when God seems distant and silent. We labor under the oppression of sin, the hostility of the world, or the simple, grinding hardship of life in a fallen creation. We may feel like our prayers are hitting a brass ceiling, and we are tempted to believe that God has forgotten us. This is the lie of the enemy.

Exodus teaches us that God's delays are not denials. His silence is not indifference. He has a timetable, and it is perfect. Our groaning, our sighs, our desperate cries for help are not wasted breath. They rise up to a God who hears, who sees, and who knows us intimately. He has not forgotten His covenant, sealed for us not in the blood of animals, but in the precious blood of His own Son. The covenant He "remembers" for us is the new covenant, the promise of forgiveness, redemption, and eternal life.

Therefore, we must learn to groan rightly. We must cry out to God from the midst of our slavery to sin and misery, knowing that He hears. And we must trust that He will act. He may not send a literal Moses from the desert, but He has already sent His Son from heaven. The ultimate Exodus has been accomplished. Christ has led us out of bondage to sin and death. Our present sufferings are real, but they are the last gasps of a dying tyrant, not the permanent condition of our souls. God heard Israel's groan and delivered them from Pharaoh. He heard the groan of creation and the groan of His Son on the cross, and He will deliver us completely on the last day. He hears, He remembers, He sees, and He knows.