V Moses and Aaron here deal with Pharaoh to get leave of him to go to worship in the wilderness.

I. They demand leave in the name of God, ver. 1. and he answers their demand with a defiance of God, ver. 2.

II. They beg leave in the name of Israel, ver. 3. and he answers their request with further orders to oppress Israel, ver. 4-9. These cruel orders were,

1. Executed by the task-masters, ver. 10-14.

2. Complained of to Pharaoh, but in vain, ver. 15-19.

Verse 3. Complained of by the people to Moses, ver. 20, 21. and by him to God, ver. 22, 23.

Verse 1. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go - Moses, in treating with the elders of Israel, is directed to call God the God of their fathers; but, in treating with Pharaoh, they call him the God of Israel, and it is the first time we find him called so in scripture. He is called the God of Israel, the person, Gen. xxxiii, 20, but here it is Israel the people. They are just beginning to be formed into a people when God is called their God. Let my people go - They were God's people, and therefore Pharaoh ought not to detain them in bondage. And he expected services and sacrifices from them, and therefore they must have leave to go where they could freely exercise their religion, without giving offense to, or receiving offense from, the Egyptians.

Verse 2. Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice? - Being summoned to surrender, he thus hangs out the flag of defiance. Who is Jehovah? I neither know him nor care for him; neither value nor fear him. It is a hard name that he never heard of before, but he resolves it shall be no bugbear to him. Israel was now a despised, oppressed people, and by the character they bore he makes his estimate of their God, and concludes that he made no better figure among the gods, than his people did among the nations.

Verse 3. We pray thee, let us go three days journey into the desert - And that on a good errand, and unexceptionable: we will sacrifice to the Lord our God - As other people do to theirs; lest if we quite cast off his worship, he fall upon us - With one judgment or other, and then Pharaoh will lose his vassals.

Verse 5. The people are many - Therefore your injury to me is the greater, in attempting to make them rest from their labours.

Verse 6. The task-masters, were Egyptians, the officers were Israelites employed under them.

Verse 7. Straw - To mix with the clay, or to burn the brick with.

Verse 8. They are idle - The cities they built for Pharaoh, were witnesses for them that they were not idle; yet he thus basely misrepresents them, that he might have a pretense to increase their burdens.

Verse 9. Vain words - Those of Moses and Aaron.

Verse 14. In thy own people - For if they had given us straw, we should have fulfilled our task.

Verse 21. The Lord look upon you, and judge - They should have humbled themselves before God, but instead of that they fly in the face of their best friends. Those that are called to public service for God and their generation, must expect to be tried not only by the threats of proud enemies, but by the unjust and unkind censures of unthinking friends. To put a sword in their hand to slay us - To give them the occasion they have long sought for.