The Set Up - Exodus 1:8-14

1:8-10 - The political system that the Hebrews walked into when Jacob first left Canaan for Egypt was uniquely suited to them, Goshen was prime real estate for shepherding, the land was incredibly fertile, and they were ethnically cousins to the ruling party, the Hyksos. This lasted about 200 years, so even though Joseph and all that generation died, the Hyksos remained in power so surely Joseph’s legacy and loyalty was rewarded with favorable action until the new ruling class took over. I’m not exactly sure how the power structure changed from foreign Hyksos rule over Egypt to an actual Egyptian pharaoh, but my guess is that it wasn’t a peaceful affair, and all the information that we get is that “there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.”

I always wondered at this statement because I thought “Joseph played such a crucial role in the survival of Egypt and the world during the famine, it would be in the history books, surely a new ruler wouldn’t take over who had absolutely no idea about that history.” I think it’s a flaw in the translation and how our English works now, because surely it wasn’t that this new king, who was Egyptian, was completely uniformed about Joseph and the whole famine event, but that he didn’t hold Joseph and by extension the Hebrews, in esteem and favoritism.

In fact we get proof that not only does the king know who Joseph is because of how determined he is to make the Hebrews suffer, and this is because not only were they non-Egyptian foreigners living in some of the best land in Egypt, but because they were Semites, related to the horribly oppressive Hyksos who ruled Egypt so cruelly for so many centuries. The new Pharoah looked at the 25% Hebrew population and saw many problems with it.

First, he was surely still bitter about how the Hebrews were treated during the reign of the Hyksos, that they were given premium lands and treatment when the Egyptian people themselves were being obliged to become slaves in order to survive. But second, he saw this foreign people who had no loyalty to the new political party as an enormous threat.

TB notes, “This new Egyptian Pharaoh promptly announces that the Israelites, who had been honorable and worthy citizens of Egypt for nearing 200 years, are suddenly a danger to Egypt. And, they’re a danger because ‘they are many more than we.’ In other words, the Pharaoh played the ‘race’ card. Since those hated Hyksos rulers were Middle Eastern Semites… and seen as cousins of essentially the same stock as the Hebrews… they were all lumped together in one big pot. Now that the Hyksos rulers were defeated, those who supported those rulers, and probably looked a lot like those rulers… the Israelites… became persona non grata. And, they would bear the brunt of Egypt’s newfound nationalism and Paranoia.”

When Pharoah says that the Hebrews outnumber the Egyptians, obviously that was an exaggeration, in the overall population of Egypt as a whole, TB guestimates that the Hebrews made up 25% of general population. However, in the area of Goshen specifically, the Hebrews almost certainly outnumbered the native Egyptians there. The paranoia wasn’t just based on the sheer population numbers however, because even though they might still be a minority, if an enemy of Egypt came to cause trouble, disloyal Hebrews might have been tempted to join them against Egypt, and those additional troops might have been enough to overpower the present ruling class. Pharoah explains his logic, saying, “that then there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us.” This is a reasonable concern.

1:10-14 - When confronted with these concerns, Pharoah’s solution isn’t the one that I personally would have chosen, because he decides that in order to keep the Hebrews from hating the Egyptians enough to join their enemies, he’s going to make them slaves. Whereas the Hebrews had spent centuries as shepherds, Pharoah now decides that the Hebrews will be slaves, specifically brick makers and construction workers, “and they built for Pharoah treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.” The description of “treasure cities” in the footnotes is “graineries,” so it’s not like they were making solid gold thrones or anything.

This was a difficult and arduous lifestyle that had been forced upon the Hebrews, and “they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens.” I would imagine that taskmasters are similar to overseers in American slave history, and those guys were not the type to motivate the workers with positive reinforcement, it was violence and cruelty then and I’d imagine that that’s what it was back in Egypt.

TB notes that the slave workers would have only consisted of the men and almost certainly not the women and children, which might seem like not so bad, but if you consider that it took the labor of everyone in order to survive at that time, removing a significant portion of that work force would devastate the whole society. For example, if you have a group of 40 men, 40 women, and 20 children who could do the work for survival, then suddenly instead of having 100 people working, suddenly now there’s only 60, that’s a 40% reduction in the work force, while the needs remained the same. That would indeed be a crushing burden.

However, as the “rigor” of their servitude increased, “and they made their lives bitter with hard bondage… The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.” This is similar to the situation that Jacob had when Laban constantly changed the terms of their agreement, and when Jacob got to keep the white goats, more white goats where born, and when Jacob could only keep the spotted goats, more spotted goats were born. There is no way that there could be any type of human influence in those conditions, especially anciently. Just like in the situation with the Hebrews in Egypt, the Hebrew population flourished, regardless of the significant reduction in the workforce to sustain them. There is no amount of human intervention that can force a society to have strong, healthy children for generations, even when you have removed a large portion of people providing for that survival.

We’ve seen throughout human history that married couples continue to have sex regardless of their financial circumstances. This means that surely the Hebrews weren’t having more sex than the Egyptians, so if the opportunities for pregnancy were similar, then the only explanation for the Hebrews having more quantity and quality children can only be the hand of God. TB notes, “here we see one of the God-patterns emerge that will continue until Jesus cones again: the more you persecute God’s people, the more fruitful they will become. Israel never grew more and faster, and the Church never grew more and faster, than when under the worst persecutions.”

Another example of this is in the Book of Mormon when the people of Alma are enslaved by Amulon and the Lamanites. Amulon also set guards and taskmasters over the people of Alma, to make sure that they worked and to also keep them from praying, but they continued to pray in their hearts, “and now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord” (Mosiah 24:15). When brainstorming what ways the Lord could easy their burdens, not only a spiritual and mental shift of strength and support, but also by having bountiful harvests, good health, etc and it sounds like this is some of what the Hebrews experienced that aided in their “fruitfulness.”

Not only did this enslavement increase the presence of God in their lives with their success in spite of their afflictions, but the IM suggests that there might have also been other benefits to the time Israel spent in bondage. Some of those reasons include the uniting of the people, motivated by “the cruelty of the taskmasters, the hatred that existed between the Hebrews and the Egyptians, and the length of their trying servitude.” Additionally, this hatred between the two cohabitating peoples, “prevented intermarriage between the Hebrews and their neighbors… At the end of 430 years, the Lord now decreed that the time had arrived for Israel to occupy her own land and there become that ‘peculiar people’ who would await the coming of their Messiah.”

This is an interesting concept because slavery is absolutely abhorrent, and the Hebrew experience was not a positive one, but the conditions were such that this was the only way that the Israelite people were prepared to receive the promised land. This causes me to do some reflecting on my own life and circumstances, and I see that the suffering that I have endured has often produced outcomes that were necessary in my journey. While that seems like a hollow sentiment because suffering is terrible, I keep telling myself that suffering that serves no purpose is cruelty, and God is not cruel, therefore there was no other way.