The Tyrant's Two Questions Text: Exodus 5:1-9
Introduction: The Unavoidable Confrontation
We come now to one of the great confrontations in all of Scripture. This is not merely a labor dispute. This is not a political negotiation between a tribal leader and a king. This is a collision of two kingdoms, a war between two gods. On the one side, you have Yahweh, the self-existent, covenant-keeping God of Israel, represented by two eighty-year-old shepherds. On the other, you have Pharaoh, the man-god of Egypt, the ruler of the most powerful empire on earth, surrounded by all the pomp, might, and military force of his kingdom. The stage is set for a conflict that will reveal the nature of true power, the heart of tyranny, and the unwavering purpose of God to redeem His people for worship.
The central issue is one of authority. Who is in charge? Who has the right to command? Who owns the people of Israel? Pharaoh believes he does. They are his property, his workforce, the engine of his economy. But God steps onto the scene and says, in effect, "There has been a misunderstanding. Those are My people." This is the fundamental conflict that runs through all of history. The ungodly state, the secular empire, always seeks to claim total ownership over its people. It wants their labor, their children, their allegiance, and ultimately, their worship. The spirit of Pharaoh is not confined to ancient Egypt; it is the spirit of every government, every institution, every ideology that says, "Who is Yahweh that I should listen to Him?"
This passage lays bare the playbook of tyranny. When the Word of God confronts raw, pagan power, that power does not blush or reconsider. It sneers, it scoffs, and then it doubles down. It increases the oppression. It seeks to crush the very hope of deliverance by making life so unbearable that people have no time or energy to think about God. We must pay close attention, because the tactics of Pharaoh are the same tactics used by the world, the flesh, and the devil against us today. They want to drown out the voice of God with the noise of frantic, meaningless work.
The Text
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.' " 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." 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." 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!" 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. 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.' Let their slavery be hard on the men, and let them work at it so that they will have no regard for false words."
(Exodus 5:1-9 LSB)
The Divine Summons (v. 1)
The encounter begins with a direct, unvarnished command from God.
"Thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, 'Let My people go that they may celebrate a feast to Me in the wilderness.'" (Exodus 5:1)
Moses and Aaron do not come in their own name. They do not come with a petition signed by the elders of Israel. They come as ambassadors of the King of the universe. "Thus says Yahweh." This is the language of ultimate authority. This is not a suggestion. It is a royal decree. The first thing we must see is that God does not negotiate for the freedom of His people. He commands it.
And notice the claim of ownership: "Let My people go." Pharaoh operates under the delusion that the Hebrews are his people. He sees them as a demographic statistic, a line item in his labor budget. God corrects him. "They are Mine." This is the basis of our redemption. We are not our own; we were bought with a price (1 Corinthians 6:20). Our freedom from sin is not so that we can become autonomous, but so that we can be transferred from the ownership of a cruel tyrant to the loving lordship of our true King.
What is the purpose of this freedom? "That they may celebrate a feast to Me in the wilderness." Freedom is for worship. This is absolutely central. The modern world clamors for freedom, but it is a negative freedom, a freedom from all restraint, all authority, all moral law. That is not freedom; that is just a different kind of slavery. Biblical freedom is always a positive freedom, a freedom for something. We are freed from sin in order to serve and worship God. And this worship must happen "in the wilderness," away from the idolatrous system of Egypt. You cannot properly worship Yahweh while still enmeshed in the brick pits of a pagan empire. There must be a separation.
The Pagan Response (v. 2)
Pharaoh's reply is the classic response of the god-state, of the autonomous man who believes himself to be the center of the universe.
"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.'" (Exodus 5:2)
Pharaoh asks two questions that reveal the core of his rebellion. First, "Who is Yahweh?" This is not a request for information. It is a challenge of jurisdiction. It means, "By what authority does this Yahweh presume to command me? I am Pharaoh. I am the god here. I do not recognize any higher court of appeal." Every sinner, in his heart, asks the same question. "Who is God that I should obey His commands about my money, my sexuality, my time?"
His second statement clarifies the first: "I do not know Yahweh." In Hebrew, to "know" someone is not just to have intellectual data about them. It means to acknowledge, to recognize, to be in relationship with. Pharaoh is saying, "I do not recognize the authority of Yahweh. He has no standing in my court." This is the official position of every secular government. They may tolerate religion as a private hobby, but they do not, as a matter of policy, "know" the Lord or acknowledge His authority over their affairs.
And this leads to his final, defiant declaration: "I will not let Israel go." Here it is. The battle of the wills. God says, "Let them go." Pharaoh says, "I will not." The entire book of Exodus from this point on is God's answer to Pharaoh's question. "Who is Yahweh?" God is about to introduce Himself. The ten plagues are God's calling card. He will dismantle the entire Egyptian pantheon, god by god, to demonstrate precisely who He is.
A Reasonable Request, A Veiled Threat (v. 3)
Moses and Aaron try a different tack. They rephrase their request in more diplomatic and reasonable terms.
"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.'" (Exodus 5:3)
They identify their God as "the God of the Hebrews." This is a way of saying, "We are not asking you to worship Him. We are just saying our God has commanded us." The request is modest: a three days' journey. This is a test. Will Pharaoh yield even a little? Will he acknowledge that this slave people might have an allegiance to a power other than him? Tyranny cannot afford to make such concessions. To grant a three-day religious leave is to admit that the state is not ultimate.
And then they add a warning, framed as a concern for their own welfare: "...lest He confront us with pestilence or with the sword." They are telling Pharaoh that their God is not a tame God. He is a God who demands obedience and judges disobedience. The implication for Pharaoh is clear: if this is what Yahweh does to His own people when they disobey, what do you think He will do to His enemies who stand in their way? It is a subtle but potent threat. The pestilence and sword that they fear for themselves are a foreshadowing of what is about to befall all of Egypt.
The Tyrant's Diagnosis: Religion is Laziness (v. 4-9)
Pharaoh is not moved. He hears their plea for worship and diagnoses it as a simple case of laziness. This is the materialistic mind at work.
"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!'... Because they are lazy, therefore they are crying out, 'Let us go and sacrifice to our God.'" (Exodus 5:4, 8)
For Pharaoh, the ultimate good is economic productivity. The brick quota is the sole measure of a man's worth. Anything that distracts from that work, especially something as intangible as worship, is seditious. He cannot conceive of a higher calling than serving the Egyptian state. He therefore misinterprets their spiritual desire as carnal laziness. This is a standard tactic of godless systems. They pathologize piety. They label devotion as delusion and worship as a waste of time.
And so, his response is not to argue with them. It is to crush them. "Let their slavery be hard on the men, and let them work at it so that they will have no regard for false words." This is the heart of the strategy. The goal is to make the people so exhausted, so beaten down, so consumed with the struggle for survival that they will not have the mental or spiritual capacity to listen to the promises of God. If you can keep a man focused on finding straw, you can keep him from thinking about salvation. The devil uses the very same tactic. He wants to fill our lives with so much busyness, so much anxiety, so much distraction, that we have no regard for the "false words" of the gospel.
By removing the straw but demanding the same number of bricks, Pharaoh is being intentionally cruel. He is engineering a situation where failure is inevitable, so that he can then blame the victims. This is how tyranny works. It creates an impossible standard and then punishes the people for failing to meet it, all the while telling them it is for their own good. It is a soul-crushing machine, and its purpose is to stamp out the last embers of hope.
Our Pharaoh, Our Exodus
This is not just a story about them back then. It is a story about us right now. Before Christ, every one of us is a slave in Egypt. Our pharaoh is sin, and he is a cruel taskmaster. He promises freedom but gives only bondage. He commands us to make bricks of self-righteousness but gives us no straw of true righteousness to do it with. We are commanded to be happy, but given no source of joy. We are commanded to be good, but left in our depravity.
Into this slavery, God sends His Son, a greater Moses, who stands before the powers of darkness and says, "Let My people go." The tyrant of our hearts sneers, "Who is this Son of God? I will not let this sinner go." And just as with Israel, when God begins His work of salvation, the tyrant often increases the oppression for a season. The conviction of sin becomes heavier. The temptations become fiercer. The world's grip seems to tighten. This is the death throe of the old master.
But our God is the God who answers Pharaoh's question. On the cross, Jesus absorbed the ultimate pestilence and sword of God's wrath that we deserved. The resurrection was the final, decisive plague against the kingdom of death. God did not just defeat our Pharaoh; He drowned him and his entire army in the Red Sea of Christ's blood.
And He has done this for a purpose: that we might go into the wilderness of this world and hold a feast to Him. We have been set free from the brick pits in order to become worshippers. We have been liberated from the tyranny of sin so that we might live in the glorious freedom of the sons of God. So when the world, your flesh, or the devil tells you to get back to your hard labors, to stop wasting your time on worship and get back to making bricks, you must remember the answer that God gave to Pharaoh. You must remember that you belong to another King, and you have been set free for a feast.