Exodus 5:1

CHAPTER V

Moses and Aaron open their commission to Pharaoh, 1.

He insultingly asks who Jehovah is, in whose name they require him

to dismiss the people, 2.

They explain, 3.

He charges them with making the people disaffected, 4, 5;

and commands the task-masters to increase their work, and lessen

their means of performing it, 6-9.

The task-masters do as commanded, and refuse to give the people

straw to assist them in making brick, and yet require the fulfilment

of their daily tasks as formerly, when furnished with all the

necessary means, 10-13.

The Israelites failing to produce the ordinary quantity of brick,

their own officers, set over them by the task-masters, are cruelly

insulted and beaten, 14.

The officers complain to Pharaoh, 15, 16;

but find no redress, 17, 18.

The officers, finding their case desperate, bitterly reproach Moses

and Aaron for bringing them into their present circumstances, 19-21.

Moses retires, and lays the matter before the Lord, and pleads

with him, 22, 23.

NOTES ON CHAP. V

Verse Exodus 5:1. And afterward Moses and Aaron went] This chapter is properly a continuation of the preceding, as the succeeding is a continuation of this; and to preserve the connection of the facts they should be read together.

How simply, and yet with what authority, does Moses deliver his message to the Egyptian king! Thus saith JEHOVAH, GOD of ISRAEL, Let my people go. It is well in this, as in almost every other case where יהוה Jehovah occurs, to preserve the original word: our using the word LORD is not sufficiently expressive, and often leaves the sense indistinct.