Lately, we have been going over the people of the Bible and the lessons God gave them and what we can learn from them in turn. So far, we’ve taken a look at Pharaoh 1 (of 3), Miriam, and Moses last week. Today, we will be looking deeper at Pharaoh 2.
There aren’t very many lines in the Bible about this pharaoh. One is in Exodus chapter 2 verse 15, which says, “When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.”
So, when Moses killed a guard to protect an Israelite, and then found two Israelites fighting the next day, Pharaoh found out and tried to have Moses killed. At face value, this seems like a sensible thing for any ruler to do; if someone kills one of your guards, then he would be considered a criminal.
But let’s go back up to chapter 2, verse 11 and 12, which say, “Now it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens. And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So, he looked this way and that way, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.”
There are several things we can learn about the kind of ruler Pharaoh 2 was from this verse. Moses went out among the Israelites and “looked at their burdens.” This Pharaoh not only still enslaved them, but did so harshly where they were burdened. Moses saw this and seemed to sympathize with their struggles and sorrows. More than that, this Pharaoh didn’t stop his guards from beating on innocent slaves. When Moses saw, he killed the guard. Granted, one could say that doing so wasn’t right, but it at least put a stop to the beating of an innocent person.
So, from this, we can see that Pharaoh 2 was just as indifferent to the Israelites and the way they were being treated as his predecessor.
And he obviously cares more for even guards guilty of hurting innocent people than he does someone like Moses who had good intentions of trying to stop an evil act.
We don’t know this particular Pharaoh. Did he do evil things? Probably, but we can’t know that for sure. Maybe he was a decent guy—hard to believe that, considering the things the slaves had to endure. But the one thing we know for certain is that Pharaoh 2 was indifferent to the suffering around him.
Are you?
How many of us just sit here and stay silent when there is injustice happening all around us? We stay quiet because we are afraid of offending people, afraid of backlash and cancel culture, and social media, and what others will think of us. But the truth is that we are guilty by sitting back and letting injustice happen.
In this world, it’s time we Believers in Christ stand up and fight against injustice happening—as the nuclear family is being stripped away and told it isn’t important anymore, as innocent babies are murdered left and right for personal gain, as people are being fired from their jobs for a right they have, as Christians are persecuted in countries around the world, as people starve and all kinds of evil takes place every day.
Yet we sit here and do nothing.
The time for sitting back is over. Don’t be like Pharaoh 2, who is indifferent to the struggles around him. I’m not suggesting we murder people, like Moses did, but stand up for good and stand against evil and injustice that you see happening around you—in your community, your workplace, your neighborhood, your portion of social media, wherever you are.
Stand!
