Commentary - Exodus 5:1-9

Bird's-eye view

This passage marks the first direct confrontation between the two great powers of the book of Exodus: Yahweh, the God of Israel, and Pharaoh, the god-king of Egypt. This is not a labor negotiation; it is a declaration of war. Moses and Aaron, acting as God's ambassadors, deliver a divine command to the most powerful man on earth. Pharaoh's response is the classic retort of every pagan tyrant and every rebellious heart: "Who is Yahweh?" He answers his own question with a defiant assertion of his own autonomy: "I do not know Yahweh, and also, I will not let Israel go." This sets the stage for the entire conflict. The issue is Lordship. Who is the true God? Whose voice must be obeyed? Pharaoh's attempt to crush this nascent rebellion by increasing the Israelites' workload is a tactical move in this spiritual war, designed to prove that his voice, the voice of the taskmaster, is louder and more powerful than the "false words" of Yahweh. The entire sequence of plagues that follows is God's methodical, crushing, and glorious answer to Pharaoh's initial question.

From a human standpoint, this first encounter is a disastrous failure. The people's suffering is intensified, and their hope is seemingly crushed. But from God's standpoint, everything is proceeding according to plan. God is not just aiming for a quiet release of His people; He is aiming for a public, world-altering demonstration of His absolute sovereignty over all other gods, powers, and empires. Pharaoh's hard-hearted defiance is the very instrument God will use to display the full measure of His glory.

Outline

Context In Exodus

This chapter immediately follows God's commissioning of Moses and Aaron in chapter 4. After overcoming his own doubts and fears, and after receiving miraculous signs from God, Moses has returned to Egypt and gathered the elders of Israel. He has delivered God's message of promised deliverance, and the people have believed and worshiped (Exod 4:29-31). Chapter 5, therefore, is the first test of that fledgling faith. It is the moment they move from hearing God's promises in private to declaring God's demands in public. The immediate result is not deliverance but increased oppression. This serves a crucial narrative and theological purpose. It demonstrates that the path of redemption is through suffering and conflict. It exposes the utter spiritual bankruptcy and cruelty of Egypt's rule. And it sets the stage for God to act in a way that will leave no doubt as to who is God, not just for Israel, but for the Egyptians and all the nations as well.

Key Issues

The Opening Salvo

Every great war begins with a formal declaration. All the diplomatic niceties are set aside, and the central point of conflict is laid bare. This is what we have in Exodus 5. This is not Moses the labor organizer coming to Pharaoh with a list of grievances from the brickyards. This is Moses the ambassador of the King of Heaven, delivering a non-negotiable command to a rival king. The issue is not working conditions. The issue is worship. The issue is sovereignty. Yahweh claims Israel as His people, and He commands that they be released to serve Him. Pharaoh claims Israel as his workforce, and he commands them to get back to their labors. There can be no compromise between these two positions. One king must bow to the other. This chapter is the opening salvo in a war that will end with the utter humiliation of Egypt's gods and the glorious redemption of God's people.

Verse by Verse Commentary

1 And afterward Moses and Aaron came and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, ‘Let My people go that they may celebrate a feast to Me in the wilderness.’ ”

The confrontation begins with the formal language of a divine herald. "Thus says Yahweh." Moses and Aaron are not speaking on their own authority. They are messengers, ambassadors delivering a royal edict. The one sending the message is identified as Yahweh, the God of Israel. This is a direct challenge. Israel is not a nation; they are a slave tribe. But their God, Yahweh, speaks as a monarch. The command is simple and direct: "Let My people go." Notice the possessive pronoun. Pharaoh thinks they are his people, his property, his workforce. Yahweh declares they are My people. The purpose for their release is not a vacation or a protest march; it is for worship: "that they may celebrate a feast to Me." Worship is the central issue. The ultimate end of redemption is not just freedom from bondage, but freedom for the joyful worship of the true God.

2 But Pharaoh said, “Who is Yahweh that I should listen to His voice to let Israel go? I do not know Yahweh, and also, I will not let Israel go.”

Here we have the central question of the entire book of Exodus, and in many ways, the central question of the entire Bible. "Who is Yahweh?" Pharaoh, considered a god himself, is being commanded by a deity he has never heard of, the god of a slave people. His question is dripping with contempt. It is not an honest inquiry; it is a defiant dismissal. He then gives a two-part answer that is the creed of every rebel against God. First, "I do not know Yahweh." This is the claim of ignorance, the agnostic shrug. He operates in a world of political and military power, and this "Yahweh" is not on his radar. Second, "and also, I will not let Israel go." This is the claim of autonomy. Even if I did know him, I would not obey him. My will is supreme. This is the essence of all sin: a refusal to acknowledge God's authority and a refusal to submit to His will.

3 Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please, let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to Yahweh our God, lest He confront us with pestilence or with the sword.”

Moses and Aaron moderate their tone. They drop the formal "Thus says Yahweh" and make a more polite, reasonable-sounding request. They identify Yahweh as "the God of the Hebrews," a less confrontational title. They ask nicely, "Please." And they frame the request in terms of a threat to themselves. If we don't obey our God, He might strike us down. This could be seen as a bit of strategic diplomacy, trying to make the command more palatable. But it also reveals their own fear of the God they serve. They know that Yahweh is not a God to be trifled with, and their obedience is not optional. They are caught between a tyrannical king and a holy God.

4-5 But the king of Egypt said to them, “Moses and Aaron, why do you draw the people away from their work? Get back to your hard labors!” And Pharaoh said, “Look, the people of the land are now many, and you would have them cease from their hard labors!”

Pharaoh completely ignores the theological substance of their request. He refuses to engage on the question of God's authority. Instead, he reframes the entire situation as a labor dispute. In his worldview, there are only two categories: work and idleness. Worship is idleness. He accuses Moses and Aaron of being agitators, stirring up the workforce and disrupting his economy. "Get back to your hard labors!" is the cry of the tyrant. The machinery of the state must not be stopped, especially not for something as frivolous as worship. He notes that the people are many, which reveals his underlying fear. A large, idle slave population is a dangerous thing. His solution is to keep them too busy and too tired to think about freedom.

6-7 So on that day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters over the people and their foremen, saying, “You are no longer to give the people straw to make brick as previously; let them go and gather straw for themselves.

The tyrant's response to a plea for mercy is to increase the cruelty. His decree is immediate ("on that day") and diabolically clever. Straw was a necessary binder for mud bricks. By withholding the supply of straw, Pharaoh creates an impossible situation. The people must now spend their time and energy foraging for a key raw material that was previously provided for them.

8 But the quota of bricks which they were making previously, you shall set upon them; you are not to reduce any of it. Because they are lazy, therefore they are crying out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to our God.’

This is the heart of the oppressive decree. Not only must they find their own straw, but their production quota remains the same. It is a command to do the impossible. The stated reason for this is a slanderous lie: "Because they are lazy." The desire to worship God is interpreted through a purely materialistic and godless lens as a desire to shirk work. The tyrant cannot comprehend a motive higher than his own economic interests, so he attributes the basest of motives to God's people. This is a tactic used by oppressors in every generation: redefine religious devotion as laziness, sedition, or social disruption.

9 Let their slavery be hard on the men, and let them work at it so that they will have no regard for false words.”

Pharaoh now states his ultimate goal with chilling clarity. He wants to crush them with labor. He wants to make them so exhausted, so beaten down, so consumed with the struggle for survival, that they will have no time, energy, or mental space to listen to the promises of God. He calls the words of Moses, which are the words of Yahweh, "false words." This is the fundamental antithesis. The kingdom of man, represented by Pharaoh, seeks to drown out the Word of God with the noise of ceaseless, meaningless labor. The tyrant's hope is that a man who is scrambling for straw from dawn till dusk will have no capacity to hope for a promised land.

Application

The spirit of Pharaoh is not confined to ancient Egypt. It is alive and well today. It is the spirit that asks, "Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?" It is the spirit of the secular state that views the church's worship as an unproductive use of time that could be better spent contributing to the gross domestic product. It is the spirit of the tyrannical employer who demands total allegiance and sees family time or Lord's Day rest as a threat to the bottom line. It is the spirit in our own hearts that labels the demands of discipleship as "too much" and the desire for holiness as "laziness" in the pursuit of worldly success.

Pharaoh's tactic was to make the Israelites' work so hard that they would have no regard for God's "false words." The enemy still uses this tactic. He seeks to fill our lives with so much busyness, so much anxiety, so much toil and distraction, that we become deaf to the promises of God. He wants us to be so consumed with making bricks, with or without straw, that we forget we are called to build a kingdom.

This passage forces us to ask ourselves whose voice we are listening to. When the demands of our King conflict with the demands of the world, whose command do we obey? The initial result of Moses' obedience was not relief, but greater suffering. We should not be surprised when our own faithfulness to Christ results in pushback, difficulty, and the world demanding that we make bricks without straw. But we must remember that Pharaoh's defiance was the very thing that set the stage for God's greatest triumph. Our struggles and the world's opposition are not signs of God's absence, but rather the dark canvas upon which He intends to paint the masterpiece of His power and glory.