The Divine injunction to gather the elders.
God here added another injunction to those which he had previously given (Exodus 3:10), as to the modus operandi which Moses was to adopt. He was to go to the children of Israel, but not immediately or as the first step. Before making any appeal to them he was, in the first instance, to "gather the elders of Israel together." In this is involved a principle of very general application. When great designs are on hand, consultation should first be with the few. With the few matters can be calmly and quietly discussed, without passion or prejudice; questions can be asked, explanations given. And the few will have influence with the many. This was the whole idea of ancient government, which was by a king, a council, and an assembly of the people, which last was expected to ratify the council's decision. Direct appeal to the masses is, as much as possible, to be avoided. The masses are always, comparatively speaking, ignorant, stolid, unimpressible. Great ideas take root and grow by being first communicated in their fulness to a "little flock," who spread them among their companions and acquaintance, until at length they prevail generally. So our Lord called first the Twelve, and then the Seventy, and made known his doctrine to them, leaving it to them to form the Church after his ascension.
The promises to the elders, and to Moses.
The elders were promised two things:
Pharaoh's obduracy, and God's mode of overcoming it.
There are stubborn hearts which no warnings can impress, no lessons teach, no pleading, even of God's Spirit, bond. With such he "will not always strive." After they have resisted him till his patience is exhausted, he will break them, crush them; overrule their opposition, and make it futile. God's will surely triumphs in the end. But it may be long first. God is so patient, so enduring, so long-suffering, that he will permit for months, or even years, the contradiction of sinners against himself. He will not interfere with the exercise of their free-will. He will warn, chide, chasten, afflict, contend with the sinner; try him to the uttermost; seek to lead him to repentance; give him chance after chance. But he will not compel him to submit himself; man may resist to the last; and even "curse God and die" at war with him. The final success in such a struggle cannot, however, rest with man. God "will not alway be chiding, neither keepeth he his anger for ever." At the fitting time he "stretches forth his hand and smites" the sinner, strikes him down, or sets him aside, as the storm-wind sets aside a feeble barrier of frail rushes, and works his own will in his own way. Mostly he works by natural causes; but now and again in the history of the world he has asserted himself more openly, and has broken the power and chastised the pride of a Pharaoh, a Benhadad, or a Sennacherib, in a miraculous way. Such manifestations of his might produce a marked effect, causing, as they do, "all the kingdoms of the earth to know that he is the Lord God, and he only" (2 Kings 19:19).
God brings good out of evil.
Had Pharaoh yielded at the first, the Egyptians would have seen the departure of Israel with regret, and would have in no way facilitated it. The opposition of the king and court, the long struggle, the ill-usage of the Israelites by the monarch who so often promised to release them, and so often retracted his word, awoke a sympathy with the Israelites, and an interest in them, which would have been altogether lacking had there been no. Opposition, no struggle, no ill-usage. Again, the plagues, especially the last, thoroughly alarmed the Egyptians, and made them anxious to be quit of such dangerous neighbours. "Egypt was glad of their departing, for they were afraid of them" (Psalms 105:38). But for Pharaoh's obduracy the plagues would not have been sent; and but for the plagues the departing Israelites would not have been looked upon by the Egyptians with the "favour" which led to their going out laden with gifts. Thus Pharaoh's stubbornness, though it led to their sufferings being prolonged, led also to their final triumphant exit, as spoilers, not as spoiled, laden with the good things of Egypt, "jewels of silver and jewels of gold," and rich apparel, the best that the Egyptians had to offer. History presents an infinitude of similar cases, where the greatest advantages have been the result of oppression and wrong. Extreme tyranny constantly leads to the assertion of freedom; anarchy to the firm establishment of law; defeat and ill-usage by a conqueror to the moral recovery of a declining race or nation. Each man's experience will tell him of the good that has arisen to him individually from sickness, from disappointment, from bereavement, from what-seemed at the time wholly evil. God brings good out of evil in a thousand marvellous ways; at one time by turning the hearts of oppressors, at another by raising the tone and spirit of the oppressed; now by letting evil run riot until it produces general disgust, anon by making use of adverse circumstances to train a champion and deliverer. Countless are the evidences that God causes evil to work towards good; uses it as an instrument-evolves his own purposes, in part, by its means, vindicating thus his absolute lordship over all, and showing that evil itself, though it fight against him, cannot thwart him.
HOMILIES BY J. ORR