God vs. Moses and Pharaoh

When we think about the story of Israel’s release from slavery in the book of Exodus, we usually think about it in terms of God and Moses vs. Pharaoh. We don’t usually reflect on the fact that the story begins with God vs. Moses and Pharaoh.

God begins his mission to save Israel with his mission to convince Moses to ally with him in this quest. Moses has demonstrated that he is already predisposed to free Israel from Egypt in his murder of an Egyptian on behalf of a Hebrew, but when we meet Moses at Horeb by the burning bush Moses considers himself a retired savior and simply wants to live his own life. God has the difficult challenge of first convincing Moses and then Pharaoh that Israel needs to walk out of Egypt and into the desert towards a promised land. In time we’ll see the Israel itself will need the same convincing. What Moses, Pharaoh and Israel all have in common is their inability to believe or trust in God and his project.

Biblical Polytheism as a Source of Unbelief

Some of us are the products of thousands of years of monotheism. Moses was not. When God introduces himself as “The god of your fathers” He is locating Himself in a worldview of assumed polytheism.

When Pharaoh receives the message that the god of the Hebrews demands that Pharaoh let His people go out into the desert to worship Him Pharaoh will hear that demand within the political framework of gods and nations. Given the fact that Egypt is a superpower and the Hebrews are his slaves Pharaoh will assume that he has the power advantage. The plagues will be all about Pharaoh’s assumptions. The hardening will be Pharaoh doubling down on his belief that the relative superiority of the gods of Egypt in comparison to the god of his slaves is manifest in their social status. This is what Yhwh will dismantle, something not unlike what Jesus on the cross dismantles.

Moses likely bears the same assumptions of the relative spiritual power as Pharaoh does. Given the Hebrew’s position in Egypt Moses could assume to have good reason to doubt the claims of this God who meets him in the burning bush. If this burning bush God is so hot to save his people why has he waited so long? Surely he could have capitalized on Moses’ previous effort at rescue or not lingered so long as to let the situation decline so far. Moses understands that it will take more than a few tricks with snakes, skin disease and water to get Pharaoh to give up his involuntary labor force.

Human Spirituality as a Source of Unbelief

One of Moses’ first responses to God’s call on him is to assume that no one, Pharoah or the Hebrews will believe him. Why? Because people bogusly claiming to bear messages from a god is not a modern invention. Moses sees the challenge “how can we know that this is for real, that an actual god came and delivered this message and will follow thrown with consequential power in real time and space” as being more than legitimate. It’s also important to notice that God in fact recognizes the legitimacy of this challenge. Some sort of verification is in order and it will have to be along the lines that people of that place will recognize. While the final validation, that they will worship God at the mountain where Moses now stands, will be foundational, in the mean time the snake, the leprosy and the water trick will need to suffice. God in fact assures Moses that the people will believe, but not Pharaoh.

Risk of Loss as a Reason for Non-Compliance

If you recall the solution to “the Hebrew problem” was cooked up by Pharaoh’s predecessor responding to his anxiety about their multiplication.  While being frustrated in the attempt to reduce the Hebrew population it appears the Egyptians have secured a labor source and wish to continue enjoying its fruits.

Behind this, however, I think its important to assume that for Pharaoh a major reason to not let them go is “because you asked”. For Pharaoh to capitulate to a alleged messenger from a competing divinity is a challenge to his power and position. Such a power cannot go unchallenged and must not be allowed to stand.

Moses too has skin in the game.  While this God claims to be with him, Moses is the guy on the ground who can be arrested, tortured, executed, and his family enslaved. Moses rightly feels like he bears all the risk in this and he has his own ideas whether the reward, which seems to be the release of his people and nothing particularly beneficial for him personally, is reasonable or reasonably worth the risk.

God has to move both Moses and Pharaoh beyond their obstacles and into the compliance he desires.

Hardening Pharoah’s Heart

God will compromise on the Aaron question and Moses will eventually comply with God’s calling for him and the children of Israel, to Moses’ surprise will be surprisingly receptive to God’s invitation. Why? Because from their current perspective it appears that they have everything to gain, and little to lose. This will of course be tested soon enough but we’re not there yet in the story.

This is the beginning of something that will be hotly debated:

Exodus 4:21–23 (NET)

²¹ The Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the wonders I have put under your control. But I will harden his heart and he will not let the people go. ²² You must say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Israel is my son, my firstborn,²³ and I said to you, ‘Let my son go that he may serve me,’ but since you have refused to let him go, I will surely kill your son, your firstborn!” ’ ”

While everyone is dubious about this god’s prospects it is Pharaoh’s position within the empire that best accounts for his hardness of heart and the project that God is about.

Robert Alter’s comments on this are helpful.

“But I on My part shall toughen his heart.” This phrase, which with two synonymous variants punctuates the Plagues narrative, has been the source of endless theological debate over whether Pharaoh is exercising free will or whether God is playing him as a puppet and then punishing him for his puppet’s performance. The latter alternative surely states matters too crudely. The heart in biblical idiom is the seat of understanding, feeling, and intention. The verb rendered here as “toughen” (King James Version, “harden”) has the primary meaning of “strengthen,” and the most frequent synonym of this idiom as it occurs later in the story means literally “to make heavy.” God needs Pharaoh’s recalcitrance in order that He may deploy the plagues, one after another, thus humiliating the great imperial power of Egypt— the burden of the triumphalist narrative we have already noted— and demonstrating the impotence of all the gods of Egypt. But Pharaoh is presumably manifesting his own character: callousness, resistance to instruction, and arrogance would all be implied by the toughening of the heart. God is not so much pulling a marionette’s strings as allowing, or perhaps encouraging, the oppressor-king to persist in his habitual harsh willfulness and presumption.

Alter, Robert (2008-10-17). The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (Kindle Locations 7239-7249). Norton. Kindle Edition.

While Alter’s comments help, they don’t go far enough, because what is at stake here is not simply the freedom of a particular people but a system which is far more deeply rooted than any other the world has known. The New Testament calls that system “the world”, the book of Revelation calls it “Babylon” and the question to the degree that the upcoming people and nation of Israel will embody it or an alternative that Yhwh wishes to seed amongst them.

What Yhwh is doing here is beginning a process of the poor inheriting the earth. He is taking the earth back from “the world”/empire/my wellbeing at your expense, and giving it to the Hebrew slaves.

Moses is open to God’s calling because he is in the desert and outside the context of “the world”. Pharaoh is deeply entrenched in “the world” and any contact with Yhwh will harden him until he must absolutely cave of exhaustion.

Good News to the Poor

What then is the difference between what God does in his message to Moses and Pharaoh? Why will God’s coming to Moses mean good news for Moses, at considerable cost, and being cut off for Pharaoh? Why does the Old Testament return to this theme time and again and Jesus pick it up repeatedly?

Pharaoh’s position in “the world”, in the empire makes it nearly impossible for him to hear God’s call to freedom, to a new way of doing the world and this will set the stage for Yhwh to unmask and destroy all that Pharaoh imagines the world revolves around.

Moses, although highly reluctant eventually complies. While for Pharaoh the established and assumed path by his community was resistance to God’s call, for Moses the path was compliance and it meant the difference between the two of life and death.