Exodus 3:7-11

 

From this excerpt from Exodus in the Old Testament, it is recorded in my The New American Bible that Moses has been called by God to step forward as God’s spokesman to go to Egypt to arrange the release of the Hebrew people from their heavy, miserable yoke of slavery and oppression: “But the Lord said, ‘I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slaver drivers, so I know well what they are suffering. Therefore I have come down to rescue them from the hands of the Egyptians and lead them out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey, the country of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. So indeed the cries of the Israelites has reached me, and I have truly noted that the Egyptians are oppressing them. Come, now! I will send you to Pharaoh to lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”

 

My response: there must have been something very special about Moses to be so selected by Yahweh himself. Yahweh has heard the pleas and prayers from Hebrew slaves, praying for his aid to secure their release from bondage. Notice that God does not want his chosen people to be enslaved—he wants them to be free. Implicitly, then being a slave is a social institution aligned with evil rulers on earth, that do not serve God. Chosen people, those that walk with God, are a free people and need and require liberty in some way. This all seems embedded in the story of Exodus. Note how that phrase slave driver is now universally known and used in sundry applications. Even Biblical nouns are famous cultural reference points.

 

The earthly Eden that the released Hebrews would be led to by Moses is a good and spacious land of flowing milk and honey. This poetic metaphor is one of the now famous metaphors in English and American lore.

 

On Page 61 of my Bible, the Catholic scholars have a footnote taking note of the fact that for Yahweh to come down to earth personally to facilitate the liberation of His chosen people is a “figure of speech signifying an extraordinary divine intervention in human affairs.”

 

Not often does God intervene personally and directly in the flesh to sway the direction of human events.

 

Let me record those verses from the Holy Bible (KJV): “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; And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Eyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Caananites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Eyptians oppress them. Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.”