The Pulpit Commentary — Exodus — Volume 1 — Section 184

Vera, 8-13.-The credentials of God's ambassadors to the fr(YIJ}ard. 1. Tm: DEMANDS OF GoD, THOUGH REJECTED, CANNOT DE BANISHED. The rod which Pharnoh refuses to be Bhepherded by, cast down before him, springs into life. To those who refuse obedience to God's Word, that Word will cling and become a living thing. Israel thought to have done with God and to be like the heathen: it was a vain dream. Pharaoh would shake off care, and become like one of whom God had asked nothing: the dream was equally vain. We may deny God, but his words will live and pursue us. II. 'l'HE REJECTED 0UIDANOE WILL DE THE DESTRUCTION OF THE FROWARD, The rod t:i.st from the hand becomes a serpent. 'l'he vain demand for righteousness will at last vecome the sentence of condemnation, and the sin that is clung to, the sting of death. Ill. THE WARNING BECOMES THE LOUDER, THE GREATER THE EFFORT TO DEADEN ITS EFFECT. The rods of the magicians were swallowed up and the rod of God left more terrible than it was before. The Divine retribution will swallow up every comfort and stay which the sinful may summon to sustain them.-U. Vers. 8-13. The first sign to Pharaoh: the rod becomes a serpent. I. NoTICE THE REMARKABLE REQUEST WHICH JEHOVAH INDICATES THAT PHARAOH MAY MAKE. Perhaps we might even say, will make. "When Pharaoh shall speak unto you, saying, Shew a miracle for you." This is a great change from his former attitude, that he should be capable of stooping to such a request. But men who have despotic power sometimes do strange and contradictory things. The freaks of tyrants in the way of a seeming liberality and kindliness are among the curiosities of history. Pharaoh may h:we said to himself, "It will be rare sport to give this monomaniac full scope ; let him with his own failure expose the delusion under which he is suffering; it may be the shortest way out of the difficulty." On the other hand, it is not at all improbable that some news of the signs wrought before Israel had percolated through all the barriers which stand between a palace and the life of the co=on people ; and Pharaoh may have wished to discover how far the rumour was founded in reality. Though when we have said all by way of suggesting secondary causes for the request, we must come in the end to this feeling, that the only sufficient way of accounting for it is to treat it as an impulse from Jehovah himself. Certainly his providence must have much to do with gaining access to Pharaoh and keeping up the co=unications of Moses with him. God can lead Pharaoh, even when he knows not that he is led. Men are wal.ki.ng in the way of God's providence and serving his purposes, even when quite satisfied in the ignorance of their hearts that they are walking in their own way. II. NOTICE THE MIRACLE ITSELF. Doubtless the rod in question was the same which had been a serpent twice already ; so that by this time Moses must have looked upon it with great serenity of confidence. It is now impossible for us to say why the Lord began his manifestations of power to Pharaoh with this rather than with some other sign. Reasons discernible at the time are not discernible now; the light which would have revealed them has long since died away. "\Ve can but see that there was much in the miracle which would have taught valuable lessons to Pharaoh, if only he had received it in the simplicity of one who is really looking for truth and guidance. Ile would have learned not to despise the absence of promise in the external appearance of things. He would have learned that a thing is not ridiculous because it is laughed at. He would have felt, too, that as the innocent and unimposing rod became suddenly a dangerous serpent, so this Moses-humble, unsustained and impotent as he seemed- might also become all at once a destroying force utterly beyond resistance by any Egyptian defence. Nor must we forget that the choice of this particular sign may have been influenced by the fact that the magicians had a favourite and imposing trick of their art which, to the uninstructed eye, resembled it. They seemed to do, by their magic, what Moses really did by Divine power, and so their skill, while it had for one result a renewed defiance of Jehovah on the part of Pharaoh, had another result in this, that it led up to a strengthening of the faith of Moses. He might not be ahle to explain how the magicians did their wonders; but he knew very well that he was no magician himself, and that his rod had been Divinely changed, whatever cause had been at work to change the others. And then, at last, whatever perplexity remained in his mi.nu was swept away when he saw the power of God rising supreme over mere trickery, and the serpent from his rod swallowing up the serpents from the other rods  170 THE BOOK OF EXODUS. [OH, VII, 14-21,