Exodus 3:17

_AND THE LORD SAID, I HAVE SURELY SEEN THE AFFLICTION OF MY PEOPLE WHICH ARE IN EGYPT, AND HAVE HEARD THEIR CRY BY REASON OF THEIR TASKMASTERS; FOR I KNOW THEIR SORROWS;_ I have surely seen the affliction of my people ... literally, seeing I have seen. The verb has here the sense of looking with the watchful eye and sympathetic feeling of love. AND HAVE HEARD THEIR CRY - a vehement cry throughout the land of their dispersion; a cry of oppressed anguish against the oppressor; a cry of pain, resentment, and helpless despondency. Thus the servitude of the Israelites themselves, as well as the cruel destruction of their male children, which followed the accession of the new dynasty in Egypt, effected the subjective preparation of that people for the exodus, by awakening in the general bosom intense longings for release. Verse 8. I AM COME DOWN TO DELIVER THEM (see the note at...

17._And I have said. _By this expression God reminds us that he in his secret counsel determines what he will do, and therefore that we must put a restraint on our desires, which otherwise press forward too fast, and let him freely and voluntarily appoint what he knows to be best to be done; not because he has need of taking time to deliberate, but that we may learn to depend on his providence. By this decree the children of Israel were assured that the end of their woes was near, because there is nothing which can prevent God from performing his work. But he speaks briefly, as of a thing well known; because what had been handed down through the patriarchs, as to their future deliverance, was not entirely forgotten. He enumerates several nations whose lands He would give them, that he might thus the more attract them to come forth. With the same object he affirms that the whole country f...

16-22 Moses' success with the elders of Israel would be good. God, who, by his grace, inclines the heart, and opens the ear, could say beforehand, They shall hearken to thy voice; for he would make them willing in this day of power. As to Pharaoh, Moses is here told that petitions and persuasions, and humble complaints, would not prevail with him; nor a mighty hand stretched out in signs and wonders. But those will certainly be broken by the power of God's hand, who will not bow to the power of his word. Pharaoh's people should furnish Israel with riches at their departure. In Pharaoh's tyranny and Israel's oppression, we see the miserable, abject state of sinners. However galling the yoke, they drudge on till the Lord sends redemption. With the invitations of the gospel, God sends the teaching of his Spirit. Thus are men made willing to seek and to strive for deliverance. Satan loses h...

THE CALL AND MISSION OF MOSES. EXPOSITION EXODUS 3:1 THE MISSION OF MOSES. After forty years of monotonous pastoral life, affording abundant opportunity for meditation, and for spiritual communion with God, and when he had attained to the great age of eighty years, and the hot blood of youth had given place to the calm serenity of advanced life, God at last revealed Himself to Moses "called him" (Exodus 3:4), and gave him a definite mission. The present chapter is' intimately connected with the next. Together, they contain an account of that extraordinary and indeed miraculous interchange of thought and speech between Moses and God himself, by which the son of Amram was induced to undertake

AND I HAVE SAID,.... Within himself, resolved in his own mind, and had declared it to Moses: I WILL BRING YOU UP OUT OF THE AFFLICTION OF EGYPT: with which they were afflicted in Egypt, and by the Egyptians; this he both purposed and promised to bring them out of: unto the land of the Canaanites, c. then in the possession of the Canaanites, and others after named Exodus 3:8....

CHAPTER 3 THE BURNING BUSH AND THE CALL AND COMMISSION OF MOSES _ 1. The vision of the burning bush (Exodus 3:1)_ 2. Jehovah speaks and calls Moses (Exodus 3:4) 3. Moses' answer (Exodus 3:11) 4. The name revealed (Exodus 3:13) 5. The commission of Moses (Exodus 3:15) 6. The promise (Exodus 3:19) The two last verses of the preceding chapter form the introduction to the great manifestation of Jehovah in the burning bush and the call

EXODUS 3:16 J. MESSAGE TO THE ELDERS. This paragraph, which overlaps the last, contains J's account of Moses's instructions, which are to be passed on (not as in Exodus 3:15 E, to the people at large, but) to the elders of Israel. We here first touch on an important Hebrew institution which both preceded and outlasted the monarchy The tribal elders (p. 112) or sheikhs were themselves a development from the heads of families, and gave place, after the settlement, to a localised aristocracy, the elders of the city. In any case their authority was wide, but somewhat undefined and lacking in coercive power. They were official representatives of weight and character, but they needed to carry with them the body of men who stood behind them, and they admitted of a chief sheikh (such as Moses) or a judge or king over th

Exodus 3:1 TO EXODUS 4:17. Moses commissioned by Jehovah at Horeb to deliver His people. The dialogue between Jehovah and Moses, as in other cases (cf. Delitzsch on Genesis 12:1), must be pictured, not as one audible externally, but as giving expression, in _words_which are naturally those of the narrators, to Moses" mental communings with God, through which he was gradually taught by Him that, in spite of the difficulties which he saw before him, he was nevertheless to be His appointed agent for accomplishing Israel's deliverance (cf. the dialogue in Jeremiah 14-15). See further, on the sense in which God is to be understood as -speaking" to a man, the Introduction, p. xlvii f....

THE TEXT OF EXODUS TRANSLATION 3 Now Mo-ses was keeping the flock of Je-thro his father-in-law, the priest of Mid-i-an: and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness, and came to the mountain of God, unto Ho-reb. (2) And the angel of Je-ho-vah appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. (3) And Mo-ses said, I will turn aside now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. (4) And when Je-ho-vah saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Mo-ses, Mo-ses. And he said, Here am I. (5) And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. (6) Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of I-saac, and the God of Jacob. And Mo-s...

THE CALL OF MOSES AND HIS COMMISSION TO BE THE DELIVERER OF ISRAEL 1. Horeb] The names Horeb and Sinai seem to be synonymous, though it has been suggested that Horeb is the name given to the entire mountain range, while Sinai denotes the particular mountain where the Law was given. Assuming that the Pentateuch is composed of different documents, it is better to believe that Horeb is the name used by one set of writers and Sinai by another. Horeb is here called THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD by anticipation. The reason of the appellation follows in Exodus 19. At the same time, it is not improbable that there was a sanctuary on Mt. Sinai from earliest times, connected with the worship of the Babylonian moon-god Sin....