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ple which are in Egypt, and i have heard their cry k by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their

sorrows:

ich. 2. 23, 24. k ch. 1. 11. 1 Gen. 18. 21. ch. 2. 25.

Heb. 7 nogesauv, his task-masters; the whole people spoken of as one man, according to common usage. The original for task-masters, though of equivalent import, is not the same word with that so rendered, ch. 1. 11, but properly signifies exacters, translated in Job, 39. 7, driver, and in Zech. 9. 8, oppressor. The Gr. has yodikтaι, workmasters, and the Chal. Those who cause them to serve.—¶ I know their sorrows. Heb. makobauv, his sorrows, collect. sing. as before. For the import of' know,' see Note on Ex. 1. 8. Hos. 13.5, presents a parallel phraseology, 'I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought;' i. e. I compassionately knew thee; knew thee so as to succor thee.

8. Iam come down to deliver them. Heb. lehatzilo, to deliver him, collect. sing. In strict propriety of speech neither ascent nor descent can be predicated of the Omnipresent Being, but in adaptation to our modes of conceiving of the divine acts, God is said to' come down' when he puts forth in the sight of men such striking exhibitions of his power, either for grace or judgment, as shall constitute an indubitable token of his special presence. It may be remarked, moreover, that whenever the Most High is said, in the sacred volume, to 'descend,' some signal event of his providence is uniformly represented as following. Thus, when he is said to have resolved to go down' and see the sins of Sodom, the fearful overthrow of their city quickly ensued; when he came down' to thwart the building of Babel, the confusion of tongues followed, as it were, upon his footsteps; and when, in the narrative before us, he announces his purpose of descending in behalf of

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8 And mI am come down to n de liver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land, unto a good land,

m Gen 11. 5, 7. & 18. 21. & 50. 24. n ch. 6. 6, 8. & 12. 51. Deut. 1. 25. & 8. 7, 8, 9.

his people, their miraculous deliverance, with deserved vengeance upon Egypt, is the memorable result. Unto a good land and a large. Not indeed a land very large in itself, but large in comparison with their territory in Goshen, and of sufficient extent to contain with ease all the population of that race which was destined to inherit it. - Unto a land flowing with milk and honey. An abundance of milk and honey indicates a country rich in pasturage and flowers, of which the one is evinced by the teeming udders of the flocks and herds, and the other by large quantities of wild or cultivated honey. That this description held literally good of the land of promise, there is the most unquestionable evidence, not only from the declarations of Scripture, Deut. 8. 8. 32. 13. Judg. 14. 8. 1 Sam. 14. 25, 26. Ps. 81. 17, but even from what we know in modern times of the soil, climate, and productions of Palestine. But if this should be thought too rigid an interpretation of the words, 'milk' may be understood to denote all kinds of necessary food, and 'honey,' whatever is peculiarly agreeable to the palate, so that this expression, so often applied to the land of Canaan, may be simply intended to characterise a very fruitful and pleasant country, abounding in all the products necessary to the subsistence of life, and rich in the dainties which minister to the gratification of the taste. See the emphatic commendation of the soil, productions, &c. of the promised land, Deut. 8. 7-9. The same proverbial expression of plenty is fa miliar to the classic writers. Thus Eu ripides, Bac. v. 142, The field flows with milk, with wine, and with the nectar of bees.' The enemies of reve

and a large, unto a land pflowing | with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perrizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

P ver. 17. ch. 13. 5. & 33. 3. Numb. 13. 27.

Deut. 26. 9, 15. Jer. 11. 5. & 32. 22. Ezek. 20 6. q Gen. 15. 18.

9 Now therefore, behold, r the cry of the children of Israel is come u to me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them.

S

10 t Come now therefore, and 1 will send thee unto Pharaoh, that

rch. 2. 23. s ch. 1. 11, 13, 14 22. t Ps. 105 26. Micah. 6. 4.

to the serenity of the climate, prove this land to be indeed a field which the Lord hath blessed : God hath given it of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine!'- —¶Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, &c. All singular in the original, Canaanite, Hittite, &c., and so in innumerable other instances.

lation have drawn arguments from the convey any adequate idea of its sur present neglected state of some parts of prising produce: it is truly the Eden o* Palestine, to invalidate the statements the East, rejoicing in the abundance oʻ of the sacred historians, who represent its wealth. The effect of this upor it as one of the most delightful spots the people was strikingly portrayed in upon the face of the earth. In this, every countenance. Under a wise and however, they have not only utterly beneficent government, the produce of failed, but by drawing the attention of the Holy Land would exceed all calcumodern travellers on the subject, have lation. Its perennial harvests; the saunwittingly contributed towards the il-lubrity of its air; its limpid springs; lustration and confirmation of the sacred its rivers, lakes, and matchless plains; records. The land has, indeed, suffered its hills and valleys; all these, added under the blighting dominion of the Saracens, Turks, and Egyptians; agriculture has been neglected; and an air of desolation has crept over its once luxuriant hills and dales, but the traces of ts original fertility and beauty are far from being wholly obliterated. We ay infer, from the following passages from the pens of eminent travellers, what Palestine was in a state of pros perity. We left the road,' says D'Arvieux, 'to avoid the Arabs, whom it is always disagreeable to meet with, and reached by a side path the summit of a mountain, where we found a beautiful plain. It must be confessed, that if we could live secure in this country, it would be the most agreeable residence in the world, partly on account of the pleasing diversity of mountains and valleys, partly on account of the salubrious air which we breathe there, and which is at all times filled with balsamic odors from the wild flowers of these valleys, and from the aromatic herbs on the hills. Dr. E. D. Clarke, speaking of the appearance of the country between Sychem and Jerusalem, says, A sight of this territory alone, can The secret impulse under which Moses

9. Now therefore behold the cry, &c. The Most High repeats this declaration from v. 7, in order to give stronger assurance to Moses that he will be with him and not suffer him to go upon a fruitless embassy. His truth, his justice, his mercy were all concerned in the liberation of his people. Such cruelties as they had suffered at the hands of the Egyptians would have awaked his vindictive providence in behalf of any people, and armed it against their oppressors. How much more when the sufferers were his own chosen people, whom he had taken under his special covenant care, whom he had sworn to protect, to befriend, to bless.

10. Come now therefore, &c. Heb. ve-attah lekah, and now go

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thou mayest bring forth my peo-u Who am I, that should go unto ple, the children of Israel, out of Pharaoh, and that I should bring Egypt. forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?

11 ¶ And Moses said unto God,

u See ch. 6. 12. 1 Sam. 18. 18. Isai. 6. 5. 8. Jer. 1. 6.

years before, in the ardor of comparative youth, he had made such an attempt, and failed. He shrinks back therefore from it now. But we are not to suppose that it was altogether from the recollection of the past that he declined the present service. He was in many respects a different man now from what he was then. He had long been leading a retired, quiet, and contemplative life, and had gained a deeper knowledge of God and of himself. He had greater experience of the dispositions and motives of men, and had

had formerly acted, in his incipient essays towards the deliverance of his people, ch. 2. 11, now becomes an open call and a full commission; and he whom the Israelites, Acts, 7. 35, 'refused saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush.' The divine Speaker here passes from promises and assurances to commands. Moses is now required to address himself to the work which God had destined him to perform. He dealt kindly with his servant in thus strength-grown in humility and a diffidence of ening and animating him with these precious hopes of success. Nothing could have been laid to his charge had he waved all such preliminary encouragements, and sternly bid him go forward without any intimations as to the result of his mission. But our merciful God deals more graciously with human infirmity. He excites a more prompt and cheerful obedience by assuring his servants of a happy issue to all the work in which they engage for him. He thus leaves our perverse and selfish and refractory hearts utterly without excuse, if we decline his service.

11. And Moses said unto God, Who am I, &c. Calling to mind the lively interest which Moses had formerly evinced in behalf of his people, and the ready zeal with which he had entered upon the redress of their wrongs, we should no doubt at first suppose that his inmost heart would have responded to the divine call, and that he would nave discovered an almost eager promptitude to enter upon so congenial a service. But no; he is appalled by the appointment. He cannot believe himself equal to it, or worthy of it. Forty

his own powers. He could better esti mate the magnitude and difficulty of the work. He could better understand the weight of opposition which would arise from a powerful king and a mighty nation; and he might also well expect to have again to encounter fear or unwillingness in his own people. Now also he would feel that he could have no protection or favor from Pharaoh's daughter, and obscure as he was in Midian, he looked upon himself as altogether insufficient and incompetent for so great an undertaking. That his backwardness was excusable no one will affirm, yet it is probably no more than justice to Moses to say, that his reply did not flow from a positively disobedient spirit, like that which prompted Jonah to flee from the presence of the Lord, but from a profoundly humble sense of his own unworthiness and incompetence for such an arduous trust. From a similar consciousness. Isaiah shrunk from the duty to which he was called of being the Lord's mes. senger, saying, 'I am a man of unclean lips ;' and Jeremiah was led to exclaim

Ah, Lord God! behold I cannot speak

12 And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a

x Gen. 31. 3. Deut. 31. 23. Josh. 1.5. Rom. 8. 31.

token to thee, that I have sent thee: when thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.

confidence out of himself, when in the deep sense of our own impotence we count it enough that he is with us and for us.- -T This shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee. Heb.

for I am a child.' Paul also was actuated by the same feeling when he anxiously enquired, 'Who is sufficient for these things? A due degree of distrust in ourselves is no doubt always proper, but we should not forget, that as there zeh leka haoth, this shall be to is a sinful pride which urges men to seek stations and employments to which they have no just pretensions, so there is a sinful humility which shrinks from the call of God, and which under the guise of self denial, or the affectation of under-valuing and debasing our own persons and qualities, indirectly charges God with foolishness in choosing instruments unsuited to his work. Let us ever aim then to observe a happy medium between self-complacency and self-disparagement. As it is God's prerogative to send by whom he will send, so he will never fail to qualify his emissaries for the errand on which he dispatches them. His commission is sufficient to empower the weakest man for the most arduous service.

12. And he said, Certainly I will be with thee. Chal. 'My Word shall be for thy help.' It no doubt for the most part holds true, that those who are in reality the best fitted for the peculiar work of God are usually prone to esteem themselves the least so; yet the promised presence of Jehovah is sufficient to silence every plea which would prevent the humble-minded from going forward in any prescribed deliverance, reformation, or change in the church or the world. No other than this simple consideration is afforded in order to remove the misgivings of Moses. It was of no consequence who he was, or what he could do, as long as Omnipotence led the way before him. We render the highest honor to God when relying on his proffered aid, we seek no ground of VOL. I

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thee a sign. These words are understood by most of the Rabbinical commentators to refer to the supernatural appearance which Moses was now called to witness in the burning bush. According to this mode of interpretation there is a two-fold assurance conveyed to him in the two several clauses of this verse; first, that God would be with him, and protect him in his embassy to Pharaoh. Of this fact he might regard the spectacle before him as a sign' or token; for as he saw the burning bush subservient to the divine pleasure without being consumed, so he might be confident of being enabled to execute the commission assigned to him without personal harm. Secondly that when this was accomplished, when he had delivered his message to Pharaoh, and brought out the people from Egypt, then both he and all the host of Israel should serve God, by oblations of sacrifice and praise, upon that very mountain where he now stood. The mass of modern interpreters, however, understand the token here spoken of, to refer, not to the vision of the divine glory in the burning bush, but to the actual future result of the mission now devolved upon Moses: the sign promised was no other than the event itself, which was predicted; q. d. 'Go now and try, and you shall find, by the event, that I have sent you.' Of these interpretations the former is more agreeable to the He brew accents, which indicate a marke distinction between the former and the latter clauses of the verse; and it seems

13 And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to

also better to accord with our ordinary conceptions of the use of a sign, which is understood to be something addressed to the outward senses rather than to the faith of the recipient, and is of course naturally regarded rather as a cause, help, or confirmation of faith, than its object. The latter view of the passage, however, it must be admitted, is strongly corroborated by Isaiah, 7. 14. Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.' Here both the sign and the thing promised are future. But, the point is one which after all we must leave undecided.

13. Behold, when I come, &c. The diffidence of Moses is not yet overcome. Still doubting and irresolute, he ventures to urge another difficulty in the words of this verse. He supposes that his own people will rigidly interrogate him by way of sifting the authority under which he acts, and will particularly require of him an account of the nature, character, and attributes of the Being whose commission he bore. This is undoubtedly the true sense of the term name in this connexion. It is not so much the common title by which he was known that they would wish to learn for it is supposed by the wording of the text that he would announce him as the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob'--as the new and significant denomination, which he might be expect ed to assume on this occasion. The people were well aware by tradition that whenever God had been pleased to honor any of their ancestors with a new revelation, it was his wont, in order to give it greater weight, to assume a new characteristic denomination, expressive

me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?

14 And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said Thus shalt thou say unto the chil

mainly of that attribute which served as a security for the fulfilment of the promise. Thus when he appeared to Abraham, Gen. 17. 1, and promised him a son in his old age, he announced himself as El Shaddai, God Almighty, infinitely able to accomplish all his purposes. So also we find the occasional titles Most High, Ancient of Days, Jah, &c. In like manner, Moses took it for granted that on an occasion so momentous as the present, they would expect the announcement of some new and appropriate name, which should carry in its import a kind of pledge for the performance of all that he was pleased to promise.

14. God said unto Moses, I am that I

ehyeh asher אחיה אשר אהיה .am. IHeb

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ehyeh, literally, I will be that I will be. The Gr. resolves it, ɛyw ɛipi o wv, I am he that is, or the Existing One. Arab. The Eternal who passeth not away.' A somewhat similar denomination occurs, Rev. 1. 4, where John invokes grace and peace' from Him which is and which was, and which is to come,' which is supposed to be a paraphrase or exposition of the name Yehovah, a word derived from the same root

hayah, and of kindred import with the phrase before us. See Note on Ex. 6. 3. The title, 'I am that I am,' pro. perly denotes the underived, eternal, and unchangeable existence of the great Being to whom it is applied, carrying in it also the implication that He, in distinction from all others, is the one only true God, the God who really is, while all the pretended deities of the Egyp tians and other nations were a vanity, a nonentity, a lie. It implies, more. over, as founded upon the immutability of the Divine nature, the certain and

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