Below are some preliminary questions to assist in the study of this passage. For a comprehensive study of the passage, download the Study Guide (PDF download).
1. Exodus 2:23 refers to Israel crying out because of their Egyptian bondage. What important detail does Numbers 20:16 (printed below) tell us about their cry?
When we cried out to Jehovah, he heard our cry and sent an angel and brought us out of Egypt. (Numbers 20:16)
Note that Israel’s cry referred to in Exodus 2:23 was not simply a crying out in the night, a desperate crying out to the stars and the wind. On the contrary, it was an earnest and conscious calling upon the Lord their God. Note, too, that it was Israel’s cry unto the Lord that set in motion the events of divine deliverance that follow: “I have heard them crying out … (8) I have come down to deliver them” (Exodus 3:7-8).
2. According to Exodus 2:24 (printed below), what is one reason the Lord responded to the Israelites’ cry for help?
And God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. (Exodus 2:24)
According to Exodus 2:24, one reason the Lord responded to Israel’s cry was because He “remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” In Exodus 3:7 the Lord identifies the nation of Israel as “my people” and He assures Moses of His intention to fulfill for them the covenant promise He originally made to Abraham (cp. Exodus 3:7-8 with Genesis 15:18-21). We can be assured that the Lord hears the cry of His people because He is the faithful God who remembers His covenant.
3. What do we learn about God’s character from Exodus 2:25 and Exodus 3:7 (printed below?)
So God looked upon the children of Israel and God was concerned about them. (Exodus 2:25)
Then Jehovah said, I have certainly seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard them crying out because of their taskmasters. I know their sorrows. (Exodus 3:7)
Exodus 2:25 informs us, “God looked upon the children of Israel and God was concerned about them.” The Lord not only recognized them as being His people, He was sympathetic and compassionate towards them when He saw their affliction. In Exodus 3:7 the Lord declares to Moses, “I have certainly seen the affliction of my people.” The Hebrew verb “to see,” may also bear the meaning, “to see with concern,” or, “to regard,”—here is a deep, true, accurate observation of their suffering, an observation that is not cold and distant but warm and empathetic.
4. What do you think it means when the Lord says of Israel, “I know their sorrows”?
In Hebrew the verb “to know” not only means intellectual knowledge or awareness, it may also bear the meaning, “to have a personal acquaintance” with someone or something—to have a personal experience with that person or thing. By way of example, Genesis 4:1 literally reads, “Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to a son.” Thus the intimacy of the marriage relationship is described as a knowing of one’s spouse. Speaking of Jesus the Messiah, Isaiah 53:3 declares, “He was despised and rejected by men; he was a man of sorrows and acquainted with suffering.”
5. Compare and contrast Moses’ observation of Israel’s plight and his action (Exodus 2:11-15 printed below) with that of the Lord as recorded in Exodus 3:7-8 (printed below).
Now it came about in those days, when Moses had grown up, that he went out to see his brothers and he observed their hard labors. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of Moses’ brothers. (12) He looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no one else present, he killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand. (13) And he went out the next day, and he saw two Hebrews fighting with each other. He said to the offender, Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew? (14) The man replied, Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you plan to kill me like you killed the Egyptian? Then Moses became afraid and thought, Surely, what I have done has become known. (15) When Pharaoh heard about this, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh’s presence and went to live in the land of Midian, where he sat down beside a well. (Exodus 2:11-15)
Then Jehovah said, I have certainly seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard them crying out because of their taskmasters. I know their sorrows. (8) I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. (Exodus 3:7-8)
Whereas Moses witnessed the oppression the people of Israel were suffering, the Lord by His divine grace had a personal and experiential acquaintance with their suffering—He did not merely observe it from a distance. Moved by compassion, Moses sought to deliver his people, but he failed to do so. He wound up fleeing into the wilderness alone. Conversely, the Lord declares that He has personally come down from heaven to deliver His people, and by means of His mighty acts described in the subsequent chapters of Exodus He will accomplish that great work of deliverance. That is why this second book of the Bible bears the title, “Exodus.”
