BRAGADAYJAH 178

So as we have seen, the children of Israel blamed Moses for interfering in their lives, and causing Pharaoh to over burden them. Of course Moses had no answer for the people; so he turned to God to ask why. “Why have you treated this people so badly?” “And why have you sent me?” “All I have done is to bring evil upon these people and you have not delivered them as you said you would.” In reproaching God, Moses did not of course remember that God had in fact told him that Pharaoh’s heart would be hardened and that he would not let the people go just like that. Anyway, God told Moses, “Don’t worry; for I shall show you what I am going to do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he shall eventually let them go; and equally with a strong hand he shall drive then out of the land of Egypt.” “Remember Moses,” God reminded him; “I am the Lord. I am the same Lord who appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty. But by the name Jehovah was I not known to them.” Many Bible expositors take the phrase, “by the name Jehovah was I not known to them,” to be mainly rhetorical. It is a case of God posing as a sort of question, “surely did they not know I am also God who keeps his covenants and not merely a provider of their needs?” In any event God now tells Moses, whether Moses knew it beforehand or not, that he the Lord Jehovah is a covenant keeping God. For indeed said the Lord God, I established my covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to give to the children of Israel the land of Canaan, and give them I will. “Surely I have heard the cry of the children of Israel and I see their oppression, and I have not forgotten my promises.” “Therefore go back to the children of Israel; tell them I am the Lord, and I will bring them out from under the burdens of their Egyptian bondage. Tell them I will redeem them and bring them out with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments, and I will take them to me for a people, and I will be unto them a God; and they will know that it is I, the Lord their God who delivered them out from under their Egyptian bondage.” More