Ex. 5: No Go, No Straw

OK, I gotta get caught up here...Anyway, in chapter 5, Moses and Aaron go in to Pharaoh, and they tell him that God said to "Let my people go, so that they may worship me in the wilderness." You know, hold a festival and everything in God's honor. I never picked this up before, but Pharaoh was essentially getting in the way of what the Israelites were meant to do, and that is to be drawn to God, to worship him, and to fellowship with him. Could the Israelites do it while enslaved? I don't imagine that it would have done much good.

As you would suspect, Pharaoh doesn't take the request well. He has evidently forgotten about or didn't get the memo regarding that Pharaoh of Joseph's time. Pharaoh doesn't know God. So Pharaoh will not let Israel go.

Aaron and Moses persist. "Let us go, or the God of the Hebrews will bring pestilence or a sword upon us." Pharaoh again refuses and tells them all to get back to work. They're wasting time. Israel must have been gathered there before Pharaoh. As a matter of fact, he told the slave masters not to give them any more straw, they have to now gather their own, in addition to building ridiculous dog-headed statues and whatnot. To make matters worse, they were required to meet the same quota as before when they were being given straw.

"Lazy!" cried the Pharaoh. "They're all lazy. Beat them all, then they will no longer be lazy and want to go sacrifice to their God."

So God hardened Pharaoh's heart, yet the Israelites suffered for it. The Israelites just wanted to go worship God. After all, they were celebrating in the last chapter. But who do the Israelites blame? Moses and Aaron. According to the Israelites, it was their fault for going up to Pharaoh and requesting that he relinquish his free manual labor. And Moses then passes the blame onto God. And if I were there, I can't say I would do anything different.

I would think, What's the deal, God? You promised that these people would be delivered, you sent me, you gave me these signs, and now its not working? What is going wrong?

And then I look back at Ex. 4:21, where God told Moses that He was going to harden Pharaoh's heart. But Moses must have missed it, as he was so focused on his own shortcomings.