Having returned to Egypt from Midian and reestablished a connection with his brother Aaron, Moses is now reintroduced to his people

Exod 5 - Together, Moses and Aaron go to ask Pharaoh to let the Hebrew people go “hold-a-pilgrimage festival” ["hag" in Hebrew is related to hajj in Arabic] in the wilderness. Pharaoh wants to know “Who is YHWH, that I should hearken to his voice” (5:2). Pharaoh accuses them of just being lazy and looking for an excuse to get out of doing the work he wants them to do. Instead of letting them go, he increases their workload—they must now gather their own straw for the brick-building they are doing.  The “foremen” [Jews working to supervise the work] accuse Moses and Aaron of just giving the pharaoh an excuse to punish them and make their lives miserable. And even Moses seems to have doubts about the mission he believes God has sent him on. He complains to God that the mission He has sent him on has only made things worse, and that they need God to DO something to help deliver his people.

Exod 6 – God assures Moses that He will punish Pharaoh. He repeats to Moses the essence of his promises: that through his appearances to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He established a covenant which He is now acting upon – He will rescue His people from their slavery; He will take them as His own.  And the people “will know that I, the Lord am [their] God when I free [them] from the labor of the Egyptians and bring [them] into the land which I swore [to give their ancestors]” (6:7-8). God tells Moses again to go speak His word to Pharaoh and Moses gets a little into God’s “face” (6:12), saying that even the sons of Israel (the foremen) would not listen to him, why should Pharaoh.

The people have trouble believing in Moses “because of their dejection and hard slavery” (6:9).  This may well be the reason Moses was delivered from slavery early in his life—see 1:14. God knew that he had to have a man not crushed by the experience of slavery.  

God tells Moses again to go speak His word to Pharaoh and Moses gets a little into God’s “face” (6:12), saying that even the sons of Israel (the foremen?) would not listen to him, why should Pharaoh. This line is repeated at the end of the chapter, so it must have been important.

Genealogies of Moses and Aaron are given (6:14-27) perhaps to emphasize the legitimacy of their ties to the people, as descendants of Levi.

Exod 7 – God tells Moses that He will make Moses “as a god for Pharaoh” with Aaron serving as his prophet or go-between.  He also tells his that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart so he will resist letting God’s people go.

Moses’ age is said to be 80 when he confronts Pharaoh and his brother Aaron is 83 [multiple of 40 plus 3—‘perfect’ numbers]. I have trouble believing this is meant at all to be historically accurate – if indeed anything in the narrative reflects history as we think of it.

Moses will be given magical powers – a difficult part of the narrative for that Quaker part of me that shares early Friends’ disdain of such things. It is helpful to me to remember that much in the narrative is probably metaphor and not promoting a belief in magic. Moses is competing here with sorcerers and magicians and he will outshine them all. Still, God will harden Pharaoh’s heart. God will have to beat Egypt down with a series of plagues:

The first “blow” or plague—the waters of the Nile will change to blood (7:17-21). It will “reek” and the fish in it will die.  The blow lasts seven days but pharaoh’s “magicians” can do this one too.  The second blow—frogs—is threatened.

The note in my Jerusalem Bible says that in the plagues narrative all the traditions are combined: the “Priestly Tradition,” the “Yahwistic,” and the “Elohistic.” There are variation is the number of plagues recounted in the different versions, but all three have the last plague. We will go into the whole series next time.