Commentary - Exodus 5:22-23

Bird's-eye view

In these closing verses of Exodus 5, we are confronted with the raw, honest despair of a man of God. Moses, having obeyed God's explicit command to confront Pharaoh, finds that his obedience has resulted not in deliverance, but in disaster. The burdens on his people have been increased, their hope has been crushed, and their opinion of Moses has plummeted. In response, Moses turns back to the one who sent him and lodges a formal, heartfelt complaint. This is not the faithless grumbling of the people in the wilderness, which was horizontal and directed against Moses and Aaron. This is a vertical complaint, directed straight to the throne of God. Moses is not questioning whether God is in charge; he is questioning what in the world God is doing. The passage reveals the profound mystery of God's providence, where the path to deliverance often leads through deeper affliction. It is a necessary crisis of faith for Moses, designed to teach him, and us, that God's salvation is entirely His own work, and He will accomplish it in His own time and in His own way, often when the situation appears most hopeless.

This is a foundational moment. Before God dismantles the gods of Egypt, He must first dismantle the false expectations in the heart of His servant. Moses expected a straightforward victory, but God is orchestrating a far grander triumph, one that will leave no doubt as to who the true King is. This prayer of Moses, born of anguish, sets the stage for the revelation of God's sovereign power in the subsequent chapters. It is a stark reminder that the servants of God are often led into situations that are utterly beyond their own strength and understanding, precisely so that the glory of the deliverance will belong to God alone.

Outline

Context In Exodus

This passage is the nadir of Moses's initial efforts to liberate Israel. After his call at the burning bush (Ex 3-4), Moses, along with Aaron, has followed God's instructions. He has gathered the elders of Israel, who believed him (Ex 4:31), and has gone before Pharaoh to demand the release of God's people (Ex 5:1). The response from Pharaoh was not just a refusal, but a cruel escalation of Israel's bondage. He commanded the taskmasters to cease providing straw for the bricks, while demanding the same quota, resulting in the Hebrew foremen being beaten (Ex 5:6-19). The foremen then turned on Moses and Aaron, blaming them for their increased suffering (Ex 5:20-21). It is in this context of complete and utter failure, with the situation demonstrably worse than before he intervened, that Moses turns to God. This moment of despair is the immediate prelude to God's majestic reassurance and self-revelation in chapter 6, where He declares "I am Yahweh" and promises to fulfill His covenant promises, not in spite of the present darkness, but through it.

Key Issues

The School of Hard Providence

We have a tendency to think of obedience as a straight line to blessing. If I do what God says, things will get better. But Scripture consistently teaches us that God's economy is not so simple. God is not a cosmic vending machine where obedience goes in and blessings come out. He is a Father, and a master strategist. He is training his children and He is routing His enemies. And sometimes, the training of His children requires that things get much, much worse before they get better. This is the school of hard providence, and Moses is enrolled in the headmaster's class.

God had told Moses this would be hard. He said Pharaoh would not listen (Ex 3:19). But it is one thing to hear it in the abstract, and quite another to have the beaten faces of your countrymen accusing you. Moses is learning that God's plan included this initial failure. The purpose was twofold. First, it was to exhaust all human hope. The Israelites had to see that Moses, by himself, was powerless. Moses had to learn that his staff had no magic in it apart from the command of God. Second, it was to harden Pharaoh's heart in a very particular way, setting the stage for a series of judgments that would not just release Israel, but would also publicly humiliate the entire pantheon of Egypt and declare Yahweh's glory over all the earth. Moses's complaint is the cry of a man who sees the immediate, painful reality, but cannot yet see the grand, strategic purpose. God is about to pull back the curtain for him.

Verse by Verse Commentary

22 Then Moses returned to Yahweh and said, “O Lord, why have You brought harm to this people?

Moses does the right thing. He is crushed, accused by his own people, and a failure in the eyes of the world. He does not argue with the foremen. He does not quit. He returned to Yahweh. He takes his complaint to the right place. This is prayer. It is not neat, tidy, or pious in the stained-glass sense. It is raw, blunt, and bordering on accusatory, but it is directed to God. He addresses God as "Lord," Adonai, acknowledging His sovereign authority. And then he lays the blame squarely where it belongs. He does not ask why Pharaoh is evil; that is a given. He asks why You, Lord, have brought this harm. Moses understands the rudiments of divine sovereignty. He knows that Pharaoh is not the ultimate cause of this disaster; God is. This is a profound, if painful, theological insight. He rightly sees God's hand in the calamity, but he cannot for the life of him understand the reason.

Why did You ever send me?

The corporate question about the people's suffering immediately becomes a personal one. The weight of his calling is crushing him. "If this is the result, why me? Why did you pick me for this impossible task?" We remember Moses's initial reluctance at the burning bush (Ex 4:10-13). All his fears seem to be coming true. He is not eloquent enough, he is not powerful enough, he is not persuasive enough. His mission has not just failed; it has backfired spectacularly. This is the cry of a man who feels he has been set up for failure. It is a question every true servant of God has asked at some point. When the ministry is hard, when the fruit is absent, when the opposition is fierce, the temptation is to question the original call. But notice, he is asking God. He is still engaged. This is a crisis within faith, not a departure from it.

23 Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done harm to this people,

Here Moses details the grounds for his complaint. The timeline is damning. The cause and effect seem painfully obvious. The moment I started doing what You said, the suffering intensified. The problem is linked directly to the exercise of his prophetic office, speaking in Your name. This is the scandal. It was not his own bright idea to go to Pharaoh. He went as an ambassador, using the authority of the King's name. And the result of invoking the divine name has been the opposite of what was expected. Instead of deliverance, it brought greater harm. This is a real problem. When our faithful attempts to represent Christ in the world seem only to make things worse, we are in the same place as Moses. We are forced to ask if we misunderstood, or if God is up to something we cannot see.

and You have not delivered Your people at all.”

This is the bottom line. It is a statement of blunt, observable fact. "You promised deliverance, and you have not delivered." The Hebrew construction is emphatic, something like "in delivering, you have not delivered." It's a total non-event. From Moses's perspective, God has not even started. There has been no partial deliverance, no small sign of hope. There has been nothing but an increase in misery. Of course, Moses's perspective is limited. He is judging God's entire plan by the first twenty-four hours of its execution. He sees the pain of the cross, but cannot yet see the glory of the resurrection. God's delays are not denials. God was just getting started. But for deliverance to be seen as God's work, all human efforts first had to be seen to fail. The stage had to be cleared of all human pretensions, including Moses's own, so that when the curtain rose on the main act, the plagues and the exodus, the only one left standing in the spotlight would be Yahweh.

Application

Every Christian is in the business of speaking and acting in Jesus' name. And every Christian will, at some point, find themselves in the place of Moses. We will obey God, step out in faith, share the gospel, stand for righteousness, and the result will be that things get worse. A family member we witness to becomes more hostile. A stand for truth at work gets us fired. A commitment to biblical discipline in our church leads to a painful split. In those moments, our prayers will likely sound a lot like Moses's prayer. "Lord, I did what you said. Why is this falling apart? Why did you send me here? You have not delivered at all."

This passage gives us permission to be honest with God. He is big enough to handle our questions, our frustrations, and our grief. He is not a fragile deity who is offended by our lament. But it also teaches us where to take that lament. We must return to the Lord. We must not grumble horizontally to our friends or complain about our circumstances on social media. We take it to the throne. We file our complaint in the high court of heaven.

And when we do, we must be prepared for the answer God gives. The answer to Moses was not an apology, but a revelation. God did not say, "You're right, my mistake." He said, "Now you will see what I will do" (Ex 6:1). He revealed His name, Yahweh, and His sovereign power more deeply. The answer to our suffering and apparent failure is not always an explanation that satisfies our intellect, but a fresh revelation of the character of God that secures our heart. The cross is the ultimate expression of this principle. On Friday, it looked like the most colossal failure in human history. God's own Son, speaking in His Father's name, was brutalized and killed. But that very harm was the means of our deliverance. God's greatest victory looked for all the world like a defeat. Our small story is part of that great story. And we must learn to trust the author, even when the plot takes a turn we do not understand.