Exodus 1: 1 - 22
He doesn’t know him
1 Now these are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt; each man and his household came with Jacob: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; 4 Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 5 All those who were descendants of Jacob were seventy persons (for Joseph was in Egypt already). 6 And Joseph died, all his brothers, and all that generation. 7 But the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them. 8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; 10 come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were in dread of the children of Israel. 13 So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. 14 And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor. 15 Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of one was Shiphrah and the name of the other Puah; 16 and he said, “When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive. 18 So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, and saved the male children alive?” 19 And the midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are lively and give birth before the midwives come to them.” 20 Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very mighty. 21 And so it was, because the midwives feared God, that He provided households for them. 22 So Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born you shall cast into the river and every daughter you shall save alive.”
How can you say you do not know someone when everyone else in your country knows the person? How about this question/ Do we Americans know who Abraham Lincoln was? I know that there are some really uneducated people in our country but I think most if not all Americans would have heard something about Abraham Lincoln. Just last week our country recognized ‘Presidents Day’. For this holiday we see on commercials every year some actors dressed up like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. So, you really have to have your thought tied up on your smart phone to have never heard about Abraham Lincoln. Would you agree?
This is why I am quite surprised when I read that a new Pharaoh came into power who did not know Joseph. How could anyone in the then known world not know about Joseph. He was the one anointed by God to save the whole world from the worst famine in history. Well, one excuse I might buy is that Joseph’s Egyptian name was Zaphnath-Paaneah so they might not know his Hebrew name but there is more here than this.
Let's say you're a huge fan of a celebrity, like Tiger Woods, the professional golfer. You know all the facts about his life: when he was born, where he went to school, and some problems he has gone through. You've seen all his news reports and you have watched all the sports programs about him.
You might know everything about him, but would you say you know him? Probably not, though I assume you'd like to. And what would it take to know him, rather than just know about him or know of him?
So here is a little information which might help us understand what is going on in chapter 1 of Exodus. For one thing the type of knowledge one might have about someone is called impersonal knowledge, while the type that would lead you to say you "know somebody" is called personal knowledge. But what is it about them that makes knowing about someone so different from knowing them?
For us believers in the deity of The Lord Jesus Christ this ‘knowing’ is the foundation of our lives. We know that our Lord Jesus Christ is alive and we ‘know Him’ now as our Lord and Savior. He lives in us so we have a relationship with God and do not just have brain knowledge of knowing about Him.
Personal knowledge comes from being acquainted with someone, or being able to recognize someone, or having the capacity to interact with someone smoothly. None of these thoughts are sufficient to explain the depth of "knowing someone,"
There are some curious things we should think about just having this type of knowledge. Scholars have called this type of knowledge "limited transferability." For instance, if someone know some impersonal knowledge about Jesus Christ, he or she can share this information with someone else and they will know it as well. But if you ‘know’ The Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ personally you can tell someone else all the information in the world about Him yet that person will not ‘Know’ our Master and King. He will just be able to understand facts about him. Do you understand this point? Another person has to experience his on personally close relationship with our Lord to be able to really ‘Know Him.’
Today, we begin the Book of Exodus. It contains the continuing remarkable story of how the children of Israel were enslaved in a foreign land, Egypt, and of how God raised up a man, Moses, and used him to deliver His people out of this slavery in Egypt. It then details how they began the journey that took them to the land promised by Him to their ancestors. It finally reveals how God at that time made a unique covenant with them at Sinai, and established them as His chosen people, with His earthly dwelling place among them.
1 Now these are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt; each man and his household came with Jacob:
This verse continues on the teaching of Genesis. It takes up where Genesis left off, summarizing what has gone before in a few verses. Those who entered Egypt with Jacob were his eleven sons (excluding Joseph who was already in Egypt) and their ‘households’. The households would include servants. Thus they may well have numbered in all a few hundred.
2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; 4 Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 5 All those who were descendants of Jacob were seventy persons (for Joseph was in Egypt already).
The number seventy indicates divine completeness, being an intensification of seven. We need to note that women, children and servants were mainly ignored in this listing. Everything centered on Jacob and his male seed for they were the heads of their households. This was the foundation on which Israel was to be built, but all, males, women, children and servants would be a part of ‘the children of Israel, as they had been of their ‘father’ Abraham.
And Joseph died, all his brothers, and all that generation.
Joseph died, his brothers died, all that generation died one by one. Time is passing. Women, children and servants are included in ‘all that generation. During that time they had no doubt as a whole prospered and enjoyed great freedoms but they all died
7 But the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.
Although death continued, God was with them and conditions were ripe for their expansion. All they required was provided for them while Joseph was alive and by the time he died they were well established. As a result of his wisdom they were mainly sited in the land of Goshen in the delta region where many Semites could be found who had sought shelter in Egypt. The result was their great expansion in numbers – ‘So much so that the land was ‘filled with them’. They seemed to be everywhere. God was prospering them.
This being so we must ask why they did not now return to their homeland. The visit to Egypt had been in order to escape famine, and once Joseph was dead they had no reason for staying there. Certainly Joseph had expected them to return (Genesis 50.24-25). But the pleasures and ease of Egypt seemingly seemed to offer more than the land which had been promised to their forefathers, and they remained in Egypt. It was not that they were not warned. God had already pointed out that in Egypt only suffering awaited (Genesis 15.13-14), and we might therefore have expected them to take heed. But they did not do so, and thus by their procrastination ensured the fulfillment of the prophecy.
We see here the two sides of God’s sovereignty. On the one hand the quiet call to them based on His promises to Abraham was to trust God and go home, on the other was the fact that God had already prophesied that they would not do so. The whole history of salvation is cluttered with similar failures of God’s people to obey Him, and His merciful and final triumph over their disobedience as He patiently brings about His will. It is all a part of His sovereign working. His people are foolish and disobedient and He regularly has to drag them kicking and screaming into salvation.
8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.
Once Joseph died the influence of what he was would gradually decrease until eventually it would cease altogether. But the point is not that. The attitude of the new king was rather an explanation of why this king acted as he did in view of the previous history that has been recounted. Do we not see the same thing in America? People who do not know the men who founded our country interpret from their current position what these meant or did not mean. For example when they wrote about the separation of state and religion it did not mean that religion had no right in government policies, it meant that the government could not interfere with it which is exactly what is happening today in our country.
Joseph and his descendants honored The Most High God. The Egyptians gave honor to Joseph’s God because they knew it was because of Him that they survived. This new Pharaoh did not know nor recognize Joseph’s God, El Shaddai.
9 And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; 10 come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land.”
The Israelites kept to themselves and it was obvious that they were blessed by God. This new king hit on something that pollutes our land today and that is ‘fake news.’ The fear that this new Pharaoh put forth to the people of Egypt was that he instilled in them a fear and a hatred of the Israelites. He kept feeding the people the lies that if there was a war the Israelites would not be part of the Egyptian military defense but would turn against the people. In addition, he added that they would then flee the land taking with them much resources and wealth that would cripple the nation.
11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and Raamses.
We see here a tactic that has been used throughout mankind’s walk on this earth. A nation who is lazy looks upon those who are doing quite well. After lies have developed a national consensus of hatred toward a certain ethnic group then slavery follows. Go to the History Channel and see this evil in action conducted by the NAZI’s against the Jews.
The lives of the Israelites completely changed and they became slave laborers for Pharaoh. One moment they were living their lives pleasantly as they had always lived them, watching over their herds and flocks, the next the soldiers of Pharaoh arrived and they found themselves enslaved and recruited into forced labor of an extreme kind.
It is interesting that the Egyptians learned about ‘Store cities’ from Joseph where he stored all the excess harvests from the seven bountiful years. The purpose of these, among others, was to act as places where grain, oil, wines and so on, obtained from taxation, could be stored. They also probably stored weapons and armaments for maintaining frontier and defense forces. The cities were fairly close to the border.
12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were in dread of the children of Israel.
The activity did not serve to diminish the numbers of the children of Israel. Rather they seem to have continued to expand in numbers, so that their superiority of numbers becomes a matter of alarm to the Egyptians. It seems clear that in all this they retained their identity as a people, and their ‘tribal’ organization and worship.
13 So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. 14 And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor.
Emphasis is laid on the hardness of their lives and the bitterness with which they looked back on better times. But their service was not limited to building, for others of them were forced to work in the countryside. This would have included the gathering of straw and stubble to make bricks and the digging of canals and irrigation channels, and the construction and use of different methods of transporting irrigation water. They had become an even more enslaved people than the Egyptians, seen as suitable for degraded work.
15 Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of one was Shiphrah and the name of the other Puah; 16 and he said, “When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.”
Do you see the next part in Satan’s tool for the destruction of a race? After you demonize a ethnic group you enslave them. Then getting them out of the eye of the public you eliminate or exterminate them.
As easy way to exterminate a certain group of people is not to just wait until they are grown. It is a lot easier to kill them before they have a chance to live. To me it is amazing the group Planned Parenthood’ founder Margaret Sanger’s original plan was to kill off all African American babies. Sanger was a eugenicist and a racist. She wanted abortion clinics and birth control for minorities. She also supported forced sterilization. Today this truth is kept hidden from the public who fully support this abomination.
17 But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive. 18 So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, and saved the male children alive?” 19 And the midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are lively and give birth before the midwives come to them.”
The order given by the authorities was clear. Male children born of Israelites must be smothered at birth. A series of ‘accidents’ must happen. The authorities wanted it done discreetly. Even they did not want to be involved in open genocide. This is a typical statement of bureaucrats who have not thought through the situation and cannot conceive that they will be disobeyed.
20 Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very mighty. 21 And so it was, because the midwives feared God that He provided households for them.
God prospered His people because the numbers of people continued to grow and expand rapidly, and God prospered the midwives and they too were fruitful. ‘He made them houses’ probably means that they had many children so that their houses were. This would probably be true of all the midwives not just the two mentioned. None would lose by obeying God. They prospered all round. They did what God desired, and God gave them what they desired.
The lesson for us all from this situation is that God does not necessarily step in to make life easy for His people even when He prospers them. Whom the Lord loves, He chastens for their good. Sometimes we may not understand what is happening, but if we saw things as He does we would realize what purpose He has in it. Indeed we are challenged here about our own way of life. Is our prime purpose to serve God and do His will? We must ask ourselves, what is most important to us?
22 So Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born you shall cast into the river and every daughter you shall save alive.”
Now reaching a high level of frustration Pharaoh throws his secret schemes to the wind. Instead of killing the Israelites babies he just opening wants them destroyed. He does not care now what the people might think. He issues the order to all Egyptians that all Hebrew new born sons are to be thrown into the Nile, probably under the pretext of offering them to the gods. They were to be sacrificed to the Nile god. The daughters, however, were to be protected. They would cause no trouble and would have their uses. This served a twofold purpose. It demonstrated their loyalty to the Nile god, and it would in time limit the strength of Israel.
In my lifetime we had the listing of two groups – abortionists and non-abortionists. In I call Satanic wisdom these blinded followers pushed for the public to think of little babies as just a part of the woman’s body. Thereby if you just cut out a part of a person’s body in surgery what’s the big deal? Then is a quick massive advertising campaign they changed the horrible word ‘Abortionist’ to Pro-choice and the murdering of our babies can now be conducted with more mental peace.
Pharaoh came up with a similar idea. The killing was first to be hidden as due to childbirth and then to be seen as a religious act, as an offering to the Nile god. By this means they preserved their consciences.
