Exodus 9:1 “Then the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, and tell him, Thus saith the LORD God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me.”
Exodus 12:38, “And a mixed multitude went up also with them; and flocks, and herds, [even] very much cattle.”
Exodus 32:7 “And the LORD said unto Moses, Go, get thee down; for thy people, which thou broughtest out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted [themselves]”
I started off this morning studying Exodus 32 in my Hebrew Bible and I saw something I had not noticed before. I am 64 years old and after all these years of studying God’s Word I am still running across things that are very obvious that I have never seen before. In this case I find that God is telling Moses to go down to thy people. Since when did they become Moses’s people? I thought they were God’s people, you know, “Let my people go.” Then He says, “which you brought out of the land of Egypt.” If I were Moses I think I would have turned to God at this point and said, “Now listen here God, don’t go pinning all this on me, it was your idea in the first place for me to go to the Egypt and your idea to convince the people to leave. I mean I was quite happy tending sheep, but no, you had to pull me out of my nice cushy job to become a leader to a bunch of whinny complaining people.”
Various commentators give their reasons why these people suddenly became Moses’s people. The most common explanation is that Moses was given charge and responsibility for the children of Israel and thus when they strayed, it was Moses’s fault. Another explanation is that they were only God’s people in a spiritual sense, in the natural they were Moses’s people. Some say it is to express the love Moses had for the people. Some say the Lord was so displeased with the children of Israel that He could not refer to them as His people. The simple fact is, we do not know why God did not refer to the children of Israel as His people at this point.
I tend to follow the teachings of the Jewish sages on this matter. I do not intend to argue that my take on this matter is correct because I could be wrong, but you cannot prove me wrong either, no more than I can prove the learned commentators wrong with their view. However, I present my take on this only to seek a common ground which is a spiritual lesson.
The Jewish sages teach that God commanded Moses to take only the children of Israel to the promised land. Yet, Scripture teaches in Exodus 12:38 that a mixed multitude went up with them. The word mixed multitude in Hebrew is the word arab. This led some to believe these were people originally from Arabia or a desert people. The word itself can also mean dark so it might refer to a dark skinned people, people who migrated from Africa. It is also a word for a surety, a pledge and intermixture suggesting people of a different race who intermarried with the Hebrews. The word is also used for agreeable and sweet. They might have just been friends of the Hebrews who wanted to escape the tyranny of the Pharaoh. I think they were Hyksos, the people who had conquered Egypt during the time of Joseph and ruled Egypt. By the time of Moses the Hyksos were overthrown and the empire was restored to the Egyptians and the Hyksos who did not flee were enslaved just as the Hebrews.
God instructed Moses to take only His people. Of course we are all His people, He created us all, but in this context we must interpret His people as a reference to the Hebrews and no one else. The sages teach that Moses was so kindhearted that he could not leave behind these remaining people who were not Hebrews but just as much enslaved as the Hebrews and when they pleaded with him to let them join the Exodus, Moses could not refuse. It is not that God turned a blind eye to their suffering, but He knew how they would corrupt the Hebrew people just as He was trying to introduce to them a pure faith in Him. Indeed we learn in Numbers that it was these foreign people these arabs who were first to complain and bellyache about the food. They were the ones to first become unglued when they discovered no water at Rephadim and were likely the ones who floated the idea of returning to the worship of the Egyptian god Apis and create a golden calf. Although there is no Scripture to back this up, the Jewish sages and tradition teach that these arabs killed Hur, Moses’s and Aaron’s nephew, and the son of Miriam when he tried to prevent the arabs from making the gold calf (Talmud, Sanhedrin 69b and Sotah 11b). They then threatened Aaron who tried to buy time by getting everyone to donate their jewelry, starting first with their gold earrings which were the most precious pieces of jewelry to people steeped in Egyptian culture and thus the most difficult to give up. Aaron was hoping to delay this formation of the golden calf until the return of Moses.
Thus God was making a distinction here and basically telling Moses, “You tried to do a good thing by bringing along the foreign people who were not my people. Yet I knew they would corrupt my people as you can easily see them doing right now. These are your people, Moses, your chosen ones that are doing this and corrupting my people.” In other words, God is telling Moses, “I told you so.”
Whether I am wrong or right, the message is still correct. When God gives us a command, we obey it. We don’t try to bend the rules, even if it seems right. For instance God has revealed in my heart to never drink a drop of an alcoholic beverage. Not that it is sinful, not that it is wrong for everyone, it is just wrong for me, that is my own personal revelation. Perhaps I am the type that would easily become an alcoholic and could not control my drinking such that even one drink would send me into an addiction. I don’t know why I just know in my heart it is a command by God to me personally, not Biblically. I may attend a Passover, or a communion where an alcoholic wine is used. I have to refuse or lip sync drinking it. Even if I convince myself that it is only not to offend my host to take a drink it would violate a personal command from God to me. I mean that is a good thing is it not, to not offend your host? Yet God’s personal command to me even overrides that. It is up to me to explain to my host that there is absolutely nothing wrong in drinking that wine, it is only me and my relationship to God and my promise to him that I personally cannot drink it. That in why I do not condemn another person for using wine. Perhaps that is all that it is, God teaching me to respect the revelation in others. I don’t know, I just know what Moses painfully learned in Exodus 32:7, “This all your fault Moses, it is your people not mine who are causing this mess. Had you obeyed me, this would not have happened.” When God gives us a personal command in our hearts, we obey it, even if it may seem to be the right thing to do to bend that command a little or even outright disobey it.
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