Exodus 3:9

_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...

7-10 God notices the afflictions of Israel. Their sorrows; even the secret sorrows of God's people are known to him. Their cry; God hears the cries of his afflicted people. The oppression they endured; the highest and greatest of their oppressors are not above him. God promises speedy deliverance by methods out of the common ways of providence. Those whom God, by his grace, delivers out of a spiritual Egypt, he will bring to a heavenly Canaan....

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

NOW THEREFORE, BEHOLD, THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL IS COME UNTO ME,.... See Exodus 2:23: AND I HAVE ALSO SEEN THE OPPRESSION WHEREWITH THE EGYPTIANS OPPRESS THEM; which is repeated to observe the great notice he took of it; and the reason of his descent and appearance in this wonderful manner, as well as of the urgent necessity of Moses's going to deliver the people from their oppression....

Exodus 3:1. _Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb._ It must have been a great change for Moses, after forty years in the court of Pharaoh, to be spending another forty years in the wilderness. But it was not waste time; it required the first two periods to make Moses fit for the grand life of the last forty. He must be a prince, and he must be a shepherd, that he might be both a ruler and a shepherd to God's people, Israel. He must be much alone; he must have many solitary communings with his own heart; he must be led to feel his own weakness. And this will be no loss of time to him; he will do more in the last forty years because of the two forties thus spent in preparation. And it is not lost time that a man takes in putting on his harness before he

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 2:23 TO EXODUS 3:15. THE CALL OF MOSES ( FIRST ACCOUNT). Exodus 2:23_ a_, J, Exodus 2:23 _b_ - Exodus 2:25 P, Exodus 3:1 E, Exodus 3:2_ a,_ J, Exodus 3:4_ b_, E, Exodus 3:5 J,...

HAVE ALSO SEEN THE OPPRESSION, ETC. God's eyes are always upon his people, he notes all their sorrows, and their oppressors will finally have to reckon with him....

CHILDREN. sons....

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....