The Burning Bush where God revealed himself to Moses as YHWH - I AM Photo: Lightstock
When Blessing Became Bondage
When Joseph was in charge of Pharaoh's kingdom of Egypt, the Israelites, who had journeyed with Jacob and family, settled in Goshen where they multiplied and prospered. But when Joseph died, the Bible says, " a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt."
“Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labour, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labour in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labour the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly." (Exodus 1:8-14)
The Israelites Cry Out To God In Their Bondage
Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill all male Hebrew babies. The midwives, however, refused to kill the babies because they feared God.
Babies being thrown into the Nile Scene from Prince of Egypt Egyptian crocodile god Sobek Wikimedia
When Pharaoh heard of the midwives' refusal, he ordered the babies to be thrown into the Nile - a scene depicted in one of the temples in the film Prince of Egypt, showing babies being thrown into the Nile as a sacrifice to the Egyptian crocodile god Sobek. (Exodus 1:15-22)
God Hears His Children's Cries & Sends A Leader
The desperation of the Israelites' treatment by the new Pharaoh led to them crying out to God.
God called Moses, who had been brought up by Pharaoh's daughter in the royal palace after she had found him floating in a reed basket at the side of the River Nile, when his Hebrew mother had saved him from being killed. But when he grew up, he had fled from Egypt for killing an Egyptian slave driver and ended up living with his father-in-law Jethro in the desert of Midian.
One day while minding Jethro's sheep in the back side of the desert, God grabbed his attention through the unlikely scene of a bush that appeared to be on fire, but was not burning. Intrigued by the strange sight, he turned aside to see what was going on and heard a voice speaking to him from the bush.
" When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!”
And Moses said, “Here I am.”
“ Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”
Then he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
It was the start of a journey that would see Moses leading the Children of Israel out of Egypt to the land God had promised his ancestor Abraham. And in the process the enemy would try to thwart God's plans at every turn.