Imagine with me, what it is like to be in the midst of such trauma, such incomprehensible change, such fear-mixed-with-relief-mixed-with-fear again, as the Israelites are experiencing in our story.
Imagine what it was like. Imagine a small family unit. Father. Mother. Brothers, sisters. Perhaps grandparents.
You are there. Your parents are slaves. Your father has been one of thousands of slaves conscripted to build pyramids and palaces for the king, the Pharaoh. The backbreaking work includes making the very bricks for construction. Because all the families of the slaves nevertheless are thriving, because babies continue to be born to the Israelite women, hale and healthy, treatment of them, and their families, grows steadily worse, more and more harsh.
One night your father returns from his grueling work oddly energized, not as exhausted as you are used to seeing him. He’s heard some news; it’s trickled through the ranks of workers until a friend whispered in his ear: there is a man, an Israelite, who has taken on the job of arguing with the Pharaoh for your people’s freedom. This man seems to have come from nowhere, Midianite wife and child in tow, a herder by all appearances. And yet, it was whispered, he had actually grown up in the royal palace. And now… it seems he has been appointed by God to bring every Israelite, every person descended from Jacob, out of slavery and in to freedom...