Moses and Aaron have returned to Egypt with a commission from God and signs that won the elders' confidence. The people believed. They bowed and worshiped. Now comes the first confrontation with Pharaoh — and it goes badly. What Moses may have anticipated as an immediate breakthrough becomes instead a deepening of Israel's misery. Pharaoh is not a passive obstacle; he is an active antagonist who regards himself as divine — the son of Ra, the living representative of cosmic order — and he will not yield without a sustained demonstration of power that dwarfs his own. These chapters show that redemption does not always move in a straight line, and that God's purposes advance even through apparent setback.
Exodus 5:1–7:7
Pharaoh Resists and Israel Groans
Main Highlights
- Pharaoh dismisses the God of Israel entirely and retaliates by removing straw from Israel's brick quotas while keeping the quota unchanged.
- The Israelite foremen, crushed by the worsening conditions, turn on Moses — and Moses brings his confusion directly to God in raw, honest prayer.
- God responds with seven "I will" promises grounded in His covenant identity, not in Israel's capacity to receive them.
- Moses and Aaron are recommissioned with a clear structure: Moses as God's prophet to Pharaoh, Aaron as Moses' prophet to the people.
Standing Before the Most Powerful Man in the World
Moses and Aaron walk into Pharaoh's court with a request that, from any Egyptian perspective, is absurd. They speak in the name of a God Pharaoh has never heard of and ask the most powerful ruler in the ancient world to release his entire labor force for a three-day religious festival in the wilderness:
"Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, 'Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.'" — Exodus 5:1 (ESV)
Pharaoh's response is withering and immediate: "Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go." — Exodus 5:2 (ESV).
To hear that response only as political arrogance is to miss its full weight. In the Egyptian worldview, Pharaoh was not merely a king — he was a god incarnate, the living son of Ra, the mediating figure between the human and divine worlds, responsible for maintaining cosmic order (ma'at). His very person was sacred. The idea that an unknown deity named "the Lord" could issue him a command was not just politically objectionable; it was cosmologically incoherent. From where Pharaoh stood, Moses was not just making a labor request — he was making a theological claim. A nobody from the wilderness was implying that the god behind him outranked the son of Ra.
Brevard Childs notes in his Exodus commentary (1974) that Pharaoh's question — "Who is the Lord?" — is the central question the entire book of Exodus is structured to answer. It is not a rhetorical dismissal but a genuine contest of sovereignty. By the time the plagues have run their course and Israel has passed through the sea, Pharaoh and Egypt will have received an extended and devastating answer.
Moses and Aaron press the request, warning of plague or sword if Israel cannot worship. Pharaoh's response is to frame Moses and Aaron as troublemakers who are disturbing the workers from their burdens. He issues an immediate order: the straw supply for brickmaking is cut off, but the daily quota of bricks remains unchanged. The Israelites must now scour the land for stubble to substitute for straw — while still meeting the same production target. The task supervisors are beaten for falling short. What was oppressive before has become actively crushing.
The Cost of Obedience: Israel Turns Against Moses
The Israelite foremen go to Pharaoh themselves and plead for relief. Pharaoh dismisses them: "You are idle, you are idle; that is why you say, 'Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.'" — Exodus 5:17 (ESV). They leave Pharaoh's presence and encounter Moses and Aaron waiting outside. Their words are bitter:
"The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us." — Exodus 5:21 (ESV)
This is the first of what will become a recurring pattern in Exodus: the people Moses is trying to save turning against him in their suffering. The accusation is understandable. Moses showed up claiming to speak for a God who would deliver them, and what followed was not deliverance but an increase in their misery. Their anger is the anger of people who had a brief and painful flicker of hope, and who now see their conditions made worse for it.
We find it significant that the text does not rebuke the foremen for saying this. It does not call their anger faithless or their complaint sinful. It simply records it. Their bitterness is honest, and the narrator treats it as honest. These are people in real suffering, whose brief hope has been crushed. If anyone reading Exodus has ever cried out to God and found their situation made worse before it got better, this passage is for them.
Moses brings the complaint directly to God — not privately in his heart, but openly, in the form of raw prayer:
"O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all." — Exodus 5:22–23 (ESV)
This is a moment of remarkable candor. Moses does not pretend to understand God's timing. He does not package his confusion in appropriate theological language. He protests plainly that what God sent him to do has only made things worse, and that no deliverance has come. Nahum Sarna observes that Moses' willingness to bring his confusion directly to God — rather than abandon the mission entirely — is itself a form of faith. He has nowhere else to take the question. What Moses cannot yet see is that the worsening of conditions is not evidence that God has forgotten — it is the stage on which God's power will be displayed most unmistakably.
God Speaks: Seven Promises and a Name
God responds to Moses' complaint not with comfort but with a formal covenant declaration — one of the most carefully structured speeches in all of Exodus:
"Say therefore to the people of Israel, 'I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.'" — Exodus 6:6–8 (ESV)
Seven first-person promises are embedded in this speech. Douglas Stuart, in his Exodus commentary in the New American Commentary series, counts them carefully: I will bring you out; I will deliver you; I will redeem you; I will take you as my people; I will be your God; I will bring you to the land; I will give it to you. Each promise addresses a dimension of Israel's current condition — bondage, slavery, the absence of covenant identity, homelessness, the unpossessed inheritance. The speech does not ignore the present difficulty; it declares that every aspect of it has already been addressed in God's purposes.
The repetition of "I am the Lord" three times — at the opening, at the midpoint, and at the close — frames the entire speech as a statement of divine identity. The promises are not conditional on Pharaoh's cooperation or Israel's faithfulness. They rest on who God is. The covenant does not waver with circumstances.
Moses brings this speech to the people. They cannot receive it: "They did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery." — Exodus 6:9 (ESV). People ground down by long suffering do not always receive covenant promises well. Their ears are full of their foremen's beatings and their bodies are full of fatigue. This does not stop God. The mission continues, carried forward on God's own stated intention.
What strikes us here is the phrase "broken spirit." The Hebrew is kotzer ruach — literally, shortness of spirit, a spirit too compressed by suffering to expand toward hope. God's seven promises land in a room where the people cannot even stand up straight enough to hear them. That is not a condemnation of the people. It is an honest description of what long suffering does to the human capacity for hope. And it is remarkable that God goes on anyway — not because Israel has recovered enough to receive the word, but because the word does not depend on Israel's capacity to receive it.
The Genealogy and the Renewed Commission
Exodus 6 inserts a genealogical passage focused on the tribe of Levi, tracing the line from Levi to Aaron and Moses through their father Amram and mother Jochebed. To a reader eager for the narrative to proceed, this can feel like an interruption. But the insertion serves a precise purpose: it anchors Moses and Aaron within the covenant community of Israel. They are not self-appointed deliverers or charismatic outsiders. They are sons of Israel's priestly tribe, connected to the community by blood and covenant history going back to the patriarchs.
Notably, this is the first time Jochebed is named in the Exodus narrative — the mother who hid Moses in the basket, who nursed him in Pharaoh's household, whose faithfulness is now traced through the genealogical record as the mother of Aaron, Moses, and Miriam. She appears earlier in the story without a name; she is named here in the family line. The covenant community keeps its records.
God renews the commission once more, and Moses' objection remains unchanged: "Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me?" — Exodus 6:30 (ESV). The same man who objected at the burning bush objects again here. God's answer this time clarifies the structure of authority more precisely: Moses will function as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron will serve as Moses' prophet. What God commands, Moses enacts. What Moses commands, Aaron speaks. What Aaron speaks, Pharaoh hears. Keil and Delitzsch, in their classic Old Testament commentary, observe that this layered structure of prophetic mediation — where the word originates above and is passed down through a chain — mirrors the pattern of prophecy throughout Israel's later history. Moses is the first and paradigmatic prophet: a man who speaks not from his own authority but as the designated mouthpiece of the living God.
We keep coming back to the fact that Moses is still objecting. God has appeared in fire. He has given signs. He has spoken the most theologically dense name in the Old Testament. He has patiently answered five excuses. He has met Moses at a lodging place and nearly killed him over an uncircumcised son. He has spoken seven "I will" promises to the covenant people. And Moses still comes back with: I am not a good speaker. There is something almost comforting in this. The man who will part the sea and receive the law does not arrive at Sinai as a confident man. He arrives as a stuttering, reluctant messenger who kept arguing with God — and God used him anyway. The mission runs on God's purpose, not Moses' personality.
Last updated: March 3, 2026.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.