When Evil Tries to Reverse God’s Creation (Exodus 1-2:14)
Have you ever felt like this world is undoing everything God created as good? This is nothing new and was undoubtedly what the ancient Israelites experienced in Egypt.
Exodus 1-2:14
Today's Scripture Passage
A Few Thoughts to Consider
Have you ever felt like this world is undoing everything God created as good?
This is nothing new and was undoubtedly what the ancient Israelites experienced in Egypt. Turning to Exodus 1, we notice clear parallels between Exodus and Genesis. The first six words of Exodus 1:1 are the same as Genesis 46:8, and the language of creation is sprinkled throughout the Exodus text. This connection to Genesis is intentional.
By establishing a connection to the creation narrative, the author of Exodus helps readers take a step back and see where this narrative fits into the broader context. Peter Enns writes, “It is only in seeing their situation from the broad, divine point of view that the readers can hope to gain a full understanding of their lot in life.”[1] And it helps us see the real horror of Egyptian cruelty wasn’t just what they did to humanity, but it was also their attack on God.
Enns goes on to write:
The very oppression of the Egyptians in wanting to reduce the number of Israelites is antithetical to the created order. This is the sin of Egyptian slavery, which anticipates a point to be elaborated in subsequent chapters: Since the increase of the Israelites in Egypt is a fulfillment of the creation command, it is fitting to speak of the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt in creation language and to punish the Egyptians by means of a series of creation reversals (the plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea).[2]
God had created his people and given them a covenant. Now, by commanding the male newborns to be killed, Pharaoh’s treatment of the Hebrew people not only seeks to undo God’s creation command but also the promise given to Abraham that in his seed, all of the nations of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 22:18).
The Hebrew people needed a redeemer to deliver them because, as Chapter 1 notes, they were under political slavery (8-10), economic slavery (11-14), social slavery (15-22), and spiritual slavery (1:8-2:25; 9:1).[3] Life looked bleak, but just when things were at their darkest, a man named Moses entered the picture.
A Meditation to PRAY
Praise | Lord, thank you for being faithful even in the darkest times.
Release | I release my fears to you. Even though I might be going through a prolonged season of suffering or feeling like you don’t care, I will trust you.
Ask | Strengthen my faith in you and your timing.
Yield | Your ways are higher than my ways, and your thoughts are higher than my thoughts.
A Challenge to Act Like Christ
As we’ll soon discover, there are strong parallels between Moses and Jesus. For example, Exodus 2 and Matthew 2 (where an evil King Herod attempts to murder Jesus) are very similar. Making this connection, Enns writes:
Both have to do with the birth of a young male child, whose life is threatened by the ruling monarch, at first secretly, but later in open hostility. The child is rescued in the nick of time, but the other children are slaughtered in a vain effort to remove the threat of the one child. A closer study, moreover, reveals other features of Matthew’s account which tie the gospel to the Moses story. The quotation from Hos. 11:1, ‘Out of Egypt have I called my son’, draws a typological parallel between Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and Jesus’ ascent from the same land. Again, the order to return to the land of Israel in 2:20 is a clear reference to Moses’ instructions in Ex. 4:19.
Enns goes on to note, “The twin concepts of salvation and creation, which we have already glimpsed in Exodus 1, are brought together in the New Testament in the person of Christ.”[4] Using this same creation language, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!”
Here is why this is significant. When we are in Christ, we are part of Christ’s body, his church. And this connects us to a story that began at creation. “By virtue of the church’s relationship to Christ the Creator, the Christian’s salvation is a new beginning. The church’s link with the past extends to creation, since its very identity is found in its relationship with the Creator himself.”[5]
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[1]Peter Enns, Exodus, The NIV Application Commentary. Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 45.
[2]Peter Enns, Exodus, The NIV Application Commentary. Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 43.
[3]Tony Merida, Exalting Jesus in Exodus, Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary. Accordance electronic ed. (Nashville: B&H Publishing Group, 2014), 8.
[4]Peter Enns, Exodus, The NIV Application Commentary. Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 48-49.
[5]Peter Enns, Exodus, The NIV Application Commentary. Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 48-49.
