Episode 343 - "The New King Did Not Know Joseph" - Exodus 1:8-14
Ex. 1:8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. 13 So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.
Do you remember how the book of Genesis opens? God, who was present at the beginning of time, created everything. It’s simple and direct, but it creates the setting for the story of Creation, and the lone character in the story at this point is God. Then, verse 2 reveals a conflict; the earth was formless and void, and it was dark. What makes a story a story is the plot, which reveals how that conflict will be resolved.
Exodus is also a story within a greater story setup in Genesis. The book of Genesis has the reader looking for the “Seed of the woman” who will resolve the problem of sin and death by crushing the serpent's head. (Gen 3:15) As Genesis unfolds, we find that God chooses a man named Abram (later Abraham) and makes a covenant promise to him and his descendants to bless them, give them land and innumerable descendants, and they will be a blessing to the nations. God promised that he would bless those who blessed Abraham and curse those who cursed Abraham. Oddly, God also told Abraham that his descendants would someday be in a foreign land and oppressed for four hundred years, but that God would remember his covenant, deliver them out of bondage, and bring them back to the land which God had promised to them.
At the end of Genesis, we read about how God used Abraham’s great-grandson Joseph to be a blessing to the nation of Egypt as well as his family by managing the grain stored up in preparation for seven years of great famine that God had revealed in a dream to Pharaoh, which Joseph interpreted. Up to this point, and through the introduction to Exodus, the covenant promise is working out positively. Abraham’s grandson Jacob (Israel) and his family are in a foreign land. But there is a mutual blessing happening. Egypt has been blessed because the Israelites were welcomed, and God has caused the Israelites to thrive.
But we are soon introduced to a conflict. Joseph had died, and the Pharaoh who knew the history had died, and a new Pharaoh who “did not know Joseph” came to power. (Ex 1:8) The conflict develops quickly. Ignorance led to fear. Fear developed into paranoia. The paranoia led to the bias against and oppression of the Israelites. Now, we see how God’s warning to Abraham is coming to reality. Soon, we will see exactly how far removed this new Pharaoh is from the one who trusted God’s revelation as interpreted by Joseph. As a result, we will read how faithful God is to his word.
So, what might we gain from this brief introduction to the conflict of the Exodus story? I don’t think one has to try too hard to recognize that what occurred in the mind of this new Pharaoh happens in individuals today. Ignorance of what God has done in the past can lead to fear and bias against God and other people. Perhaps it doesn’t lead to such extreme actions in every case. But when we live in ignorance, fear, and some measure of paranoia, we may alienate ourselves from others to whom God may want us to be a blessing. As the story of the Bible continues, the Israelites will be instructed to set up memorials that will evoke questions from later generations and create opportunities to pass on the stories of God’s faithfulness to his promises. The God of the Bible makes Himself known, and we must remember that He is a God who keeps the promises He makes and wants to bless those who follow Him.