The Squeeze Play of Tyranny Text: Exodus 5:15-21
Introduction: When Deliverance Makes Things Worse
We have a very tidy, very sanitized view of how God's deliverance is supposed to work. We imagine that when God decides to act, the sun breaks through the clouds, the birds begin to sing, and our troubles immediately begin to recede. We think of salvation as a straight, upward line. But the Bible, in its rugged honesty, shows us that the path of deliverance is almost always down before it is up. Before the Red Sea parts, the chariots of Pharaoh are breathing down your neck. Before the resurrection, there is the cross. And before Israel is freed from bondage, their bondage gets significantly, brutally worse.
This is a feature, not a bug. God is not just interested in getting His people out of Egypt. He is interested in getting Egypt out of His people. And to do that, He must first expose the true nature of the tyranny they serve. He must reveal Pharaoh not as a stern but manageable employer, but as an irrational, blasphemous, and murderous slave-driver. He must show that the world system, when confronted with the claims of Yahweh, does not negotiate. It does not compromise. It doubles down. It squeezes.
The events in our text are what we might call the predictable backlash. Moses and Aaron have delivered God's message, "Let my people go," and Pharaoh's response was not to consider it, but to increase the oppression. He took away the straw but demanded the same quota of bricks. This is the classic squeeze play of tyranny. It is designed to do two things: first, to crush the spirit of the oppressed, and second, to make them turn on their deliverers. And as we see here, it was, in the short term, wildly successful.
This passage is therefore a crucial lesson for the church in every age. When we stand up and declare the crown rights of Jesus Christ over any area of life that a secular Pharaoh has claimed for himself, whether it be the education of our children, the definition of marriage, or the sanctity of life, we should not be surprised when the bricks-without-straw orders come down. We should not be surprised when the world squeezes, and we should not be surprised when some of our own people, feeling the pressure, turn on the very leaders who are trying to lead them to freedom. This is the anatomy of the fight, and God ordains it this way so that we learn to trust not in our own strength, or in the reasonableness of Pharaoh, but in the God who brings life from death.
The Text
Then the foremen of the sons of Israel came and cried out to Pharaoh, saying, “Why do you deal this way with your slaves? There is no straw given to your slaves, yet they keep saying to us, ‘Make bricks!’ And behold, your slaves are being beaten; but it is the sin of your own people.” But he said, “You are lazy, lazy! Therefore you say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to Yahweh.’ So now, go and labor; but straw will not be given to you, yet you must deliver the quota of bricks.” Then the foremen of the sons of Israel saw that they were in trouble because they were told, “You must not reduce your daily amount of bricks.” When they left Pharaoh’s presence, they confronted Moses and Aaron, standing there to meet them. And they said to them, “May Yahweh look upon you and judge, for you have made us a foul smell in Pharaoh’s sight and in the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us.”
(Exodus 5:15-21 LSB)
A Reasonable Appeal to an Unreasonable Power (vv. 15-16)
The first thing we see is the Hebrew foremen attempting to reason with madness. They are caught in the middle, appointed by the Egyptians to oversee their own people, and they are the ones feeling the immediate sting of Pharaoh's new policy.
"Then the foremen of the sons of Israel came and cried out to Pharaoh, saying, 'Why do you deal this way with your slaves? There is no straw given to your slaves, yet they keep saying to us, ‘Make bricks!’ And behold, your slaves are being beaten; but it is the sin of your own people.'" (Exodus 5:15-16)
Their appeal is entirely logical. It is based on a principle of basic fairness. "Why are you treating us this way? You have made our task impossible and now you are beating us for failing to achieve the impossible. The fault lies with your new policy, not with us." They are appealing to Pharaoh's sense of justice, his economic self-interest, his administrative common sense. They still believe they are dealing with a rational actor who might be persuaded by a well-reasoned argument.
This is the fundamental mistake that God's people often make when dealing with entrenched, godless power. They assume the system is merely misguided when in fact it is malign. They think Pharaoh has made a logistical error, when in reality he has made a theological declaration. Pharaoh's policy is not about brick production. It is about sovereignty. Moses came to him with a word from Yahweh, and Pharaoh's response, "Who is Yahweh, that I should obey His voice?" reveals the heart of the conflict. This isn't an industrial dispute; it is a war of worship. Pharaoh is not just a king; in the Egyptian system, he is a god. And he will not have another God before him.
The foremen's plea, "it is the sin of your own people," is an attempt to shift blame to the Egyptian taskmasters. But in a tyrannical system, blame is a weapon that only flows downhill. The foremen are learning that there is no court of appeal. When the state becomes god, there is no one to appeal to beyond the state. Any appeal for justice is interpreted as a challenge to its absolute authority. They thought they could reason with the crocodile, but the crocodile only understands domination.
The Tyrant's Accusation (vv. 17-18)
Pharaoh's response is not to engage their argument, but to attack their character and their motives. This is the universal tactic of tyrants.
"But he said, 'You are lazy, lazy! Therefore you say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to Yahweh.’ So now, go and labor; but straw will not be given to you, yet you must deliver the quota of bricks.'" (Exodus 5:17-18 LSB)
Notice the two accusations: laziness and false piety. First, "You are lazy, lazy!" The problem is not the impossible task; the problem is your defective character. The system is fine; you are the problem. This is how godless systems always maintain their legitimacy. They pathologize dissent. If you object to the state-mandated curriculum, you are a hateful bigot. If you question the economic policy, you are greedy. If you resist the lockdown, you are selfish. The one thing the system cannot do is admit that its demands are unjust or irrational. So it must locate the fault in you.
Second, Pharaoh directly connects their supposed laziness to their desire to worship. "Therefore you say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to Yahweh.’" He sees their religious devotion not as a genuine obligation but as a flimsy excuse to get out of work. The pagan mind cannot comprehend true worship. It sees everything through a lens of power and utility. To Pharaoh, "worship" is just a code word for "shirking your duty to me." He is contemptuous of their God because he is contemptuous of any authority but his own. He is saying, "Your desire to worship this Yahweh is interfering with my brick production. Therefore, your worship is illegitimate."
This is a profound insight into the secular mindset. The world will tolerate your religion so long as it remains a private hobby that makes no demands on the public square. But the moment your worship of Yahweh requires you to say "no" to Pharaoh's demands, your faith will be redefined as a public nuisance, an act of rebellion, or, as he puts it, laziness. And his solution is not to reason, but to command: "Go and labor." He simply reiterates the impossible demand, rubbing their noses in their own powerlessness.
The Sinking Realization (v. 19)
The foremen's appeal has not only failed; it has backfired. They leave the throne room with their situation made demonstrably worse.
"Then the foremen of the sons of Israel saw that they were in trouble because they were told, 'You must not reduce your daily amount of bricks.'" (Exodus 5:19 LSB)
The Hebrew here is potent. They saw that they were "in evil" or "in a bad situation." The meeting with Pharaoh shattered their illusions. They had hoped for a reasonable negotiation, an administrative fix. Instead, they got the door slammed in their faces. The decree was not a mistake; it was the fixed and settled will of the king. There would be no relief.
This is a necessary and painful part of the process of deliverance. God must bring His people to the end of their own resources. He must show them that there is no hope to be found in appealing to the better nature of the beast. The beast has no better nature. The world system is not your friend. It will not listen to reason. It will not be moved by your plight. It is, as John says, passing away, but it will not go quietly. The foremen's hope was in Pharaoh. God had to crush that hope in order to replace it with a better one.
They saw they were in trouble. This is the beginning of wisdom. You cannot look to God for deliverance until you first realize that you need delivering. As long as you think you can manage your slavery, as long as you think you can negotiate better terms with Pharaoh, you are not yet ready for the Exodus. God brought them to this point of despair to teach them that their only hope lay outside the entire Egyptian system.
Blaming the Deliverer (vv. 20-21)
Crushed by Pharaoh, the foremen now turn their anger and frustration on the nearest available target: Moses and Aaron.
"When they left Pharaoh’s presence, they confronted Moses and Aaron, standing there to meet them. And they said to them, 'May Yahweh look upon you and judge, for you have made us a foul smell in Pharaoh’s sight and in the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us.'" (Exodus 5:20-21 LSB)
This is a stunning turn of events. They come out from being condemned by a pagan tyrant and immediately pronounce a curse on God's chosen prophets, and they do it in the name of Yahweh. "May Yahweh look upon you and judge." They are so spiritually disoriented that they are asking God to condemn the very men He sent to save them. Their charge is specific: "You have made us a foul smell...to put a sword in their hand to kill us." In other words, "Things were manageable before you showed up. We had a system. It was oppressive, but it was stable. You came with your talk of God and freedom, and all you have done is make our lives unbearable and put us in danger of death."
This is the slave's mentality. The slave prefers the security of the chain to the risks of freedom. He resents the one who comes to break the chain because the process is loud and disruptive and dangerous. It is much easier to blame Moses than it is to blame Pharaoh. Blaming Pharaoh is terrifying; he has all the power. Blaming Moses is easy; he is one of them.
We must see this pattern for what it is. When the church begins to speak prophetically to the culture, it makes the church a "foul smell" to the world. It makes things awkward. It invites hostility. And when that hostility comes, there will always be those within the church who say to the faithful pastors and leaders, "Why did you have to stir things up? We had a nice, quiet arrangement with the world. They left us alone, and we left them alone. Now, because of you, they have a sword in their hand to kill us." They blame the faithful for the world's predictable reaction to the gospel. They mistake the doctor who diagnoses the cancer for the cause of the disease.
Conclusion: The Necessary Despair
This entire episode feels like a catastrophic failure. Moses' first foray into prophetic ministry has resulted in harsher slavery for his people and a curse on his own head from the men he was sent to lead. And in the very next verses, Moses himself will cry out to God in despair. But this is not failure. This is God's ordained process.
God is teaching everyone involved a crucial lesson. He is teaching the foremen that Pharaoh is not a reasonable ruler but a god-hating tyrant, and that their only hope is in Yahweh. He is teaching Pharaoh that this is not a labor dispute he can crush with force, but a confrontation with the God of all creation. And He is teaching Moses that deliverance is not accomplished by human negotiation or political maneuvering, but by the raw, sovereign power of God alone.
This initial failure was necessary to clear the ground of all human pride and all false hopes. It had to get worse before it could get better, because God was arranging the stage for a demonstration of His power that would echo through all of history. He brought them to the point of utter helplessness so that when the deliverance came, no one could claim any credit. Pharaoh could not boast of his mercy, the foremen could not boast of their negotiating skills, and Moses could not boast of his leadership. Only God would get the glory.
So it is with us. God often leads us into situations where our circumstances get worse, where our appeals are rejected, and where even our friends turn against us. He does this to strip away our self-reliance. He does it to make us desperate. Because it is only in that desperation that we finally stop trying to reason with Pharaoh and turn with empty hands to the only one who can break the chains of our bondage. This is the painful, but necessary, prelude to every great work of God.