Exodus 6:1

God let the burden grow heavier so that, when freedom came, everyone would see it was the work of his strong hand alone, and nobody could credit it to Moses’ skill in bargaining or to a change of heart in Pharaoh. Israel’s very desperation would make the rescue unforgettable, and both Israel and Egypt would learn who the LORD is. Scripture shows the same pattern when God raised up Gideon while Israel lay under oppression (Judges 6). God’s timing is also his patience. He had told Abram that his descendants would return only when the iniquity of the Amorites was full (Genesis 15:16), and he acts at the hour he has chosen.

God’s strong hand rules over the choices of kings, and here it works through Pharaoh’s own stubbornness to bring about God’s purpose. Pharaoh made his own choices and answered for the hardness of his heart, and in the end God’s power broke his will and he let Israel go. Paul points to God’s purpose in Pharaoh in just this way (Romans 9:17): even a defiant ruler serves to show God’s might and to vindicate his name.

In verse 3 God looks back to the patriarchs. He “appeared” to them. The verb is râʼâh, the ordinary word for seeing, used here of God letting himself be seen and known in his meetings with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He appeared “by the name of God Almighty”, El Shaddai. Shadday is the title “Almighty”, and “All-Sufficient One” is given as a possible meaning, though its exact sense is uncertain. It is the name by which God appeared to Abram in Genesis 17:1. It suited what the patriarchs needed to know: a God with power to bless, to make fruitful and to keep promises that were humanly impossible, such as a son for Abraham and Sarah after long barrenness.

They knew the name and used it. Men began to call on the name of the LORD as early as Genesis 4:26, and God spoke to Abram as the LORD in Genesis 15:7. What the patriarchs had yet to see was that name made good in a great act of rescue. The verb “known” is yâdaʻ, which Strong’s describes as knowing by seeing, used widely for recognition, care and experience. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob knew God’s promises and his power to keep them, and they lived as strangers in the land while the promise waited. Through the exodus Israel would come to know the LORD in the way his name promised, as the God who brings his people out of slavery, redeems them and keeps his covenant. That is why verse 7 says “ye shall know that I am the LORD your God”, with the same verb.

God makes himself known in stages, as his people are able to receive it. The patriarchs’ trust in God Almighty was the foundation, the exodus showed his saving work as the LORD, and the whole of it comes to its fullness in Jesus Christ.

“And I have also established my covenant with them”. The verb qûwm means to rise or stand, and in the causative form used here it means to raise up, set up or make stand. Strong’s lists confirm and perform among its uses. God set his covenant in place with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and it still stands. The covenant, bᵉrîyth, is a binding agreement, a treaty or league. Strong’s connects the word with the covenant made by passing between pieces of flesh, which is how God bound himself to Abram in Genesis 15:9–17, although the origin of the word is uncertain. In Scripture a covenant could bind men to each other, as Abraham and Abimelech were bound, or bind God to his people, and it came with solemn oaths and promises. The covenant God means here is the one of Genesis 15, with its promise of a land and a people.

God is confirming the covenant he made long before and showing that he is now ready to carry it out. The causative verb fits that sense of upholding what he set up and bringing it to pass. In the next verse he says he has remembered it, and in verses 6 to 8 he says what he will now do. His word to the fathers is about to become Israel’s present.

God’s covenant was “to give them the land of Canaan.” The verb nâthan is the ordinary word for giving, used very widely. Then God describes Canaan as “the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers.” Mâgûwr means a temporary dwelling, a place where one sojourns. The verb behind “strangers” is gûwr, to turn aside from the road and stay as a guest. The patriarchs lived in the promised land as resident foreigners, and Abraham called himself a stranger and a sojourner among its people (Genesis 23:4).

So the promise always looked ahead, and the patriarchs lived by faith in it. Hebrews says Abraham lived in tents in the land of promise, looking for a city whose builder and maker is God (Hebrews 11:9–10), and that the patriarchs confessed themselves strangers and pilgrims on the earth, seeking a better, heavenly country (Hebrews 11:13–16). Peter calls believers strangers and pilgrims in the same way (1 Peter 2:11).

“I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel”. The verb shâmaʻ means to hear with attention and understanding, often with a readiness to respond. Nᵉʼâqâh is a groan, the cry of people in pain under oppression. God had heard their cry once already, when it went up to him from their slavery and he remembered his covenant (Exodus 2:23–25).

“Whom the Egyptians keep in bondage” uses ʻâbad, to work or serve, here of slavery forced on them. Pharaoh had set taskmasters over them and made their lives “bitter with hard bondage” (Exodus 1:11–14). God had foreseen all of it. He told Abram long before that his descendants would be afflicted in a foreign land, and that he would judge that nation and bring them out (Genesis 15:13–16).

“And I have remembered my covenant.” Zâkar means to remember, and when God remembers, his commitment to what he promised turns into action. He has held the covenant in mind all along, and his remembering leads straight into the “I will” of verse 6. The covenant is the one with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with its promises of the land, of descendants and of a people belonging to God (Genesis 15:18–21, Genesis 17:7–8). A psalm praises God for remembering his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and his promise of Canaan (Psalm 105:8–11), and Zacharias praised him for remembering his holy covenant and the oath he swore to Abraham (Luke 1:72–73).

He keeps his word because of who he is. “God is not a man, that he should lie” (Numbers 23:19), and Moses later calls him the faithful God, who keeps covenant (Deuteronomy 7:9).

The three promises of verse 6 are about freedom. “I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians” lifts the weight of forced labour off their backs. “I will rid you out of their bondage” ends the slavery itself. “I will redeem you” names the kind of rescue it will be. Gâʼal is the word for the next of kin, the relative whose part was to buy back a family member’s property or marry his widow, and it also covers deliver, ransom and avenge. God speaks as Israel’s near Kinsman, who has the right and the will to take back his own.

The redemption will come “with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments.” Zᵉrôwaʻ is the arm, a picture of force and strength, and nâṭâh means to stretch or spread out. An arm stretched out is power in full use. The phrase comes back again and again as Israel remembers the exodus (Deuteronomy 5:15, Deuteronomy 26:8, Psalm 136:11–12), and Isaiah calls on the arm of the LORD to awake and redeem again (Isaiah 51:9–11).

Shepheṭ, “judgments”, means a sentence carried out. God speaks of these judgments again just before the first plague (Exodus 7:4). They fell on Egypt in the plagues of Exodus 7–12. The last of them was the overthrow of Pharaoh’s army in the sea (Exodus 14:27). In them God shows his justice against oppressors and vindicates his oppressed people.

“I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God.” Lâqach is the common verb for taking, used here of God choosing Israel and making them his own, by grace and because of his promise to their fathers. These two lines are the covenant promise at its simplest, the two sides of one bond: Israel belongs to God, and God gives himself to Israel. He had said the same to Abraham, promising to be a God to him and to his seed (Genesis 17:7). Moses would tell Israel that they were a holy people, chosen to be God’s own (Deuteronomy 7:6), and God promised the same bond in the new covenant (Jeremiah 31:33). To be his people means to worship and serve him alone, and this promise lays the ground for the covenant God would make with Israel at Sinai.

“And ye shall know that I am the LORD your God” brings back yâdaʻ, the verb of verse 3. What the patriarchs held as promise, Israel would learn by seeing it done. They would know the LORD as the one “which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians”, and the verse closes on the very words of verse 6, with the rescue spoken of as his work already under way.

“And I will bring you in unto the land”. Bôwʼ is the everyday verb to go or come, and here to bring in. The exodus has a destination, because God brings his people out in order to bring them in. At the burning bush he had already described it as a land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3:8). It is the land “concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” He promised it to Abraham (Genesis 12:7), set it in covenant (Genesis 15:18), and confirmed it to Isaac (Genesis 26:3) and to Jacob (Genesis 35:12). He also promised the land to Abraham’s seed in Genesis 17:8. An oath binds the one who swears, and in Israel an oath sworn in the LORD’s name held fast, as Joshua found with the Gibeonites. God’s own oath is the surest word there is.

“And I will give it you for an heritage”. Môwrâshâh means a possession, something held as one’s own. The land would be God’s gift to a people who owned nothing, and Joshua records that the promise was kept (Joshua 21:43–45). Then “I am the LORD” closes the speech as it opened, the name signed beneath every promise.

They were worn out by suffering. “Anguish of spirit” is qôtser rûwach. Qôtser means shortness, from a root meaning to be short, and rûwach is spirit or breath, so the phrase pictures people short of breath, stifled and crushed, with little room left in them for hope. “Cruel bondage” is ʻăbôdâh qâsheh. ʻĂbôdâh means work, labour or service, and qâsheh means hard or severe. Their labour had just been made heavier (Exodus 5:6–23), and they had already endured generations of slavery, the building of Pharaoh’s store cities (Exodus 1:11–14) and his decree against their baby boys (Exodus 1:15–22).

Their refusal was a failure of faith in that moment, and it came from spirits crushed by affliction. God met it with patience, and he answered it with the deliverance itself.

God’s plan rested on his own covenant and oath, and he carried it forward while the people were still too broken to believe. The deliverance came because God had sworn to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their unbelief gave him the occasion to show his faithfulness beyond all doubt in the plagues and at the sea (Exodus 14). Balaam would say the same of him later (Numbers 23:19). Paul teaches that God’s faithfulness stands firm through man’s unbelief (Romans 3:3–4), and that he remains faithful to himself (2 Timothy 2:13).