Further Instructions - Exodus 3:16-22

3:16-17 – No doubt, this conversation with God has been overwhelming and Moses really isn’t enthusiastic about his job assignment, so God lays out a step-by-step plan on what exactly Moses is to say and do and who with to accomplish this. First, God says that Moses is to “Go, and gather the elders of Israel together,” and tell them what God has said, as far as Him seeing them and their struggles and that God is here to save them and give them “the land of the Canaanites… unto a land flowing with milk and honey,” and there are several other tribes that inhabit this land right now. We’ve discussed the concept of “mild and honey” before, but I’m satisfied here to just let it mean a land of abundance.

It's interesting here too that this land that the Hebrews are being given is already inhabited and I’ve always thought that this wasn’t fair to the people who live there to be thrust out of their homes. But this discussion in 1 Nephi 17:33-35 helped me understand this when Nephi asks of the people already living in the land promised to the Hebrews, “do ye suppose that the children of this land, who were in the land of promise, who were drive out by our fathers, do ye suppose that they were righteous? Behold, I say unto you, Nay. Do ye suppose that our fathers would have been more choice than they if they had been righteous? I say unto you, Nay. Behold, the Lord esteemeth all flesh in one; he that is righteous is favored of God. But behold, this people had rejected every word of God, and they were ripe in iniquity; and the fulness of the wrath of God was upon them.”

This helped me to understand that this wasn’t an Israel/Palestine situation, where one group of people showed up and claimed the land because they say that God promised it to them and then displaced and murdered the people who were already living there. God had been watching this area of land and the people in it for centuries and it was only when the people were no longer worthy to live in the land because they had rejected the gospel, that’s when they were kicked out of the land. It’s also interesting to consider that the land on the Canaanites that the Hebrews were going to be led to was the land where Jacob had lived a few hundred years before. The fact that this land had gone from amenable to living in peace to being ripe for destruction in the time that the Israelites were gone is something to consider. Perhaps one of the reasons why Jacob’s descendants were removed from that area for the time that they were was because the people in the land were going to become so wicked that it would have destroyed Israel as well. I know that God has removed me from situations that were about to turn bad in order to protect me, and maybe that was part of what was at play here when God told Jacob it was alright to leave.

As far as going to the “elders of Israel” initially, one might think that going directly to Pharaoh would have been the most prudent avenue because he was the one who made the decisions. TB notes of ancient Hebrew social structure, “elders are the people’s representatives, an elected or appointed class of leadership. Elders are not a part of the hereditary hierarchy that forms the ruling class of Prince, Chief, and Head. Kind of interesting, to me, that God sent Moses NOT to the rulers of Israel, but to the common people’ representatives. Jesus would do exactly the same thing: he went to the people, not the institutional religious authorities.” Jesus went to the worthy “common” people to help with his ministry, not the Pharisees or Sanhedrin.

3:18 – Unlike in the movies however, God’s job for Moses wasn’t initially to free the people permanently and take them far away. Instead, God instructs Moses to go with the elders of Israel to Pharaoh and ask, “we beseech thee, three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.” This is much different than “Let my people go!” And it makes sense if we consider that the people of Egypt weren’t rabid to leave Egypt to go back to where they came from and have their own independent culture, religion and society. TB explains, “Like all of us, Israel didn’t want to change, they just wanted their circumstances to be different. They didn’t so much mind being in Egypt and being associated with (and polluted by) Egyptian culture and Egyptian religion. They just didn’t like the slavery part. So, God began by telling Moses that Israel had to separate itself from Egypt, so that He could have them all to Himself that He might show them what proper worship is.”

Pharaoh could have seen this request as not so much a rejection of Israel’s place in Egyptian society, but instead just a rejection of Egypt’s religion, and a desire for their own. This really puts so much of the next 40 years into perspective when Israel keeps wanting to go back to Egypt. It’s not that they were rejecting anything about Egypt, just the harsh living conditions. They just wanted to have what the Egyptians had and be treated like the Egyptians were. Essentially, they were forced to give up everything they had in order to know God, and for most of them, it wasn’t worth it. Is it worth it to me? To give up everything in order to know God? The whole purpose of the song and dance with “let us go for 3 days,” to what God says will be completely leaving and going to a bounteous land, as TB says, “the dividing and separating of God’s people from the world is crucial. And, the elders need to see that pharaoh has a far deeper hold over them than they realized; the king od Egypt doesn’t just want their labor, he wants them mind, body, and spirit. Pharoah wants what Satan wants. Pharoah’s refusal to allow them to separate from but 72 hours that they might worship God will show the elders that the only path before them is to permanently separate from Egypt.”

It’s interesting how God does this step-by-step thing with us as well. I remember several times when I’ve been praying for guidance or direction and one way is blocked, sometimes just temporarily, so that when I finally do make a decision, even if it’s the same one as before, there are some circumstances that are just a little bit different. Maybe I wasn’t ready, maybe someone else wasn’t ready, all types of different reasons, but I’ve seen this play out in my own life many times.

3:19-22 – God knows, and tells Moses that this plan will not work and that Pharaoh will refuse to let the people go at all, even for just three days, but “I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go.” This in fact, turns out to be such a big deal that 3,000 years later we are still talking about and making movies referring to the 10 plagues of Egypt. But once Pharoah does finally let the Hebrews go, “every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment… and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.”

I don’t know why it’s important for Israel to take the treasures of Egypt with them into the desert, but for some reason it is. TB explains it very well that after God showed his wonders and Pharoah told the Hebrews to go, “God said Egypt would gladly give Israel anything they wanted just to be rid of them. In reality, Egypt would come to fear the presence of Israel… or better yet, the presence of Israel’s God. Here we have another God produced irony: the slaves plunder their masters.” Further explaining that at the time, it was tradition that in war, the side that won would go through and take the treasures of the losing side. TB continues, “Israel was not the victor; they had done NOTHING to overcome Egypt. God did it all and Israel benefited from it.” God was the victor, so He let Egypt take the spoils, maybe to set them up in the future with wealth, maybe to just further remind Egypt that He was the superior God.