Exodus 1:7-22 And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty… I. There are three aspects in which the oppression of Israel in Egypt may be viewed. It was the fulfilment of God's own word; it was education; it was a type. 1. The covenant with Abraham had included the prediction of four hundred years of oppression in a strange land. The fulfilment is reached through the fears and cruel policy of Pharaoh. The Bible decisively upholds the view that not in Israel alone, but everywhere, the movements of nations, as the incidents of individual lives, are directed by God. To it the most important thing about Egypt and the mighty Rameses was that he and it were the instruments for carrying out God's designs in reference to Israel. Has not history verified the view? Who cares about anything else in that reign in comparison with its relation to the slaves in Goshen? 2. The oppression was, further, education. We can say nothing certainly as to the teaching which Israel received in science, art, letters, or religion. Some debts, no doubt, accrued in all these departments. Probably the alphabet itself was acquired by them, and some tinge of acquaintance was made by a few with other parts of the early blossoming Egyptian civilization. But the oppression taught them better things than these. Pressure consolidates. Common sorrows are wonderful quickeners of national feeling. The heavier the blows, the closer grained the produce of the forge. Not increase of numbers only, but tough knit consciousness of their unity, was needed for their future. They acquired some beginnings of that extraordinary persistency of national life which has characterized them ever since, in these bitter days. Note further, they learned endurance, without which the education of a nation, as of a man, is defective. The knowledge of God's covenant with Abraham would in some degree be preserved, and it taught them that their affliction was part of the Divine plan for them. So they would learn — at least the best of them would — to look for the better things following which the covenant held forth, and would be able to see some gleam of the dawn even in the thickest darkness. "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" The evil foretold and accomplished is turned into prophecy of the good foretold and yet unseen. 3. The growth of Israel under its oppression. The pressure which was intended to crush only condensed. "The more they afflicted them, the more they... grew." So the foiled oppressors glared at them with a mixture of awe and loathing, for both feelings are implied in the words rendered "were grieved." It is the history of the nation in a nutshell. The same marvellous tenacity of life, the same power of baffling oppression and thriving under it, have been their dower ever since, and continue so yet. The powers that oppress them fill the world with their noise for awhile, and pass away like a dream; they abide. For every tree felled, a hundred saplings spring up. What does it mean? and how comes it? The only answer is that God preserves them for a better deliverance from a worse bondage, and as His witnesses in their humiliation, as they were His in their prosperity. The fable of the one of their race who bade Christ march on to Calvary is true concerning them. They are doomed to live and to wander till they shall recognize Him for their Messiah. That growth is a truth for God's Church, too. The world has never crushed by persecuting. There is a wholesome obstinacy and chivalry in human nature which rallies adherents to a persecuted cause. Truth is most powerful when her back is at the wall. Times of oppression are times of growth, as a hundred examples from the apostles' days down to the story of the gospel in Madagascar prove. The world's favour does more harm than its enmity. Its kisses are poisonous; its blows do no hurt. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them. |
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