During that long
period of time the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned because of
the slave labor. They cried out, and their desperate cry because of their
slave labor went up to God. – Exodus 2:23 (NET)
This king of Egypt
was the king mentioned in the first chapter of Exodus. It is said that he
“did not know about Joseph” (1:8a), and “put foremen over the Israelites to
oppress them with hard labor” (1:11a). This king “made the Israelites
serve rigorously…by hard service with mortar and bricks and by all kinds of
service in the fields” (1:13, 14b). This could almost be read as
something of an echo of the “fall” of the Genesis narrative, when hard and
rigorous labor was introduced to the original
covenant-and-divine-image-bearers.
It was in the midst
of this subjection to a foreign power that the Israelites were said to have
groaned and cried out, with that cry going up to their God. It is said
that their“God heard their groaning, God remembered His covenant with Abraham,
with Isaac, and with Jacob” (2:24). This is part of the story that is
told in association with the Passover. Passover, of course, is the yearly
remembrance of the deliverance of the Creator God’s people from their
oppression in Egypt. It is a celebration
of the end of exile, and of the beginnings of exodus wrought at the hands of
their God. Though the story culminates in redemption and rescue and the
destruction of their enemies, the story begins with the groaning of the people
and progresses through God’s miraculous intervention on behalf of His people.
As a reader of
Scripture considers the entirety of the Scriptural narrative, recognizing that
the thinking of the New Testament writers was shaped not only by the
Christ-event, but also by the story of Israel , this use of “groan” and
“groaning” is quite interesting. It is a tremendously evocative word, as
it conjures up a depth of emotion that is reserved for describing truly great
suffering. We find “groan” used most descriptively and usefully in the
New Testament, in the eighth chapter of the Apostle Paul’s letter to the
Romans, with Paul employing these words in what would appear to be a clear
connection to the story of the Exodus.
If we are paying close
enough attention, and if we are reading the text properly and with a mindset
shaped by the long-running covenantal narrative, we can find the Apostle Paul
using the language and imagery that would be associated with ideas correlated
to exodus throughout his writings. With this, Paul seems to be following quite
comfortably in line with the prophets of Israel that came before him, as
reference to the exodus from Egypt, along with imagery designed to evoke
thoughts of exodus, is regularly used throughout the works that comprise the
Hebrew canon.
So how do we find
these words used in Romans? Paul uses them in relation to the
creation---the natural world. He begins by writing, “For the creation
eagerly waits for the revelation of the sons of God” (8:19). This reminds
us that the creation itself is an important concern of the God of Scripture,
and that salvation is not limited to people alone. It is with these words that we can begin
tying this to the Exodus account, in that there had been a prophecy that Israel
would sojourn in Egypt for a set number of years.
Much like the people
of Israel in the first century knew that the time was drawing near for God to
act on behalf of His people through His Messiah (owing to the 490 year term
that was associated with the prophecy of Daniel), God’s people in Egypt knew
that the time was drawing near for their long sojourn in Egypt to come to an
end. They merely awaited a deliverer to lead them out from their place and
state of subjugation, awaiting such with eagerness.
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