On the road to Emmaus, Yeshua met with two of His disciples and, beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. (Luke 24:27). For our Torah studies this year, therefore, week by week we will seek to discover how all of Torah prepared the way for the coming Messiah.
17th January 2026 (28 Tevet)
Va’era (And I appeared): Exodus 6:2-9:35
For hundreds of years, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was silent, but silence does not imply lack of care. When the set time was completed, just as He had appeared to Abraham, so He drew near to Moses and Aaron. His promise was firm and was summarised in the four statements that are remembered each year, when drinking four cups of wine at Pesach:
I have also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan…. Therefore say to the children of Israel: I am the Lord;
I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians,
I will rescue you from their bondage,
and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.
I will take you as My people, and I will be your God….’ (Exodus 6:4-7)
The confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh began. This could be considered simply in a down-to-earth human context: Moses demanded that the Children of Israel should be allowed to leave Egypt to sacrifice to their God and Pharaoh resisted the demand. Yet there was also a consciousness of the spiritual powers. Egypt lived under their own gods and there was experience of supernatural power. Thus, this was also a confrontation between the gods of Egypt and the God of the Hebrews.
Surely the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob could deal with the false gods of Egypt with one word, but He chose instead to go through the process of the plagues. At first, the Egyptian magicians were able to reproduce the same supernatural signs as Moses and Aaron, but then they realised that their power was limited after the third plague:
Now the magicians so worked with their enchantments to bring forth lice, but they could not. So there were lice on man and beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” (Exodus 8:18-19)
The plagues of Egypt are unique in the history of mankind, but there have been other times when God has used physical signs to speak. At the time of Amos, for example, as recorded in Amos 4, Israel suffered a scarcity of food, which was followed by lack of drinking water, then mildew on crops, locusts, then loss of life by the sword. God, through Amos, when judging Israel, made comparisons with Sodom and Gomorrah (verse 11) and the plagues in Egypt (verse 10). The pattern is a series of judgements that increase in intensity when God continues to be resisted. This is the gracious Hand of God, always offering mercy, but requiring human response. This is what Pharaoh experienced.
Yet, he was stubborn and did not fully discern the uncompromising intent of the God of the Hebrews to fulfil what He had promised them.
In various places we read that Pharaoh hardened his heart, and also that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, which can seem to be a paradox. This is understandable in the following way. God knew the character of Pharaoh who, like other Pharaohs, also considered himself to be a god. His entire being was challenged by the God of Abraham through Moses and Aaron. Pride, stubbornness and arrogance would be stimulated by each plague, so God knew it was inevitable that He would provoke Pharaoh’s resistance. Thus God could say that He hardened Pharaoh’s heart by the provocation of the plagues, whilst Pharoah himself reacted with hard-heartedness.
What we are learning here is not only for our understanding of the history of Israel. It is characteristic of fallen mankind to seek after gods of their own design and to set themselves above the One True God of the Hebrews. In our day spiritual forces are rising to persuade human beings that they are themselves gods. It is the same temptation that beset Adam and Eve when the serpent told them that they could be like God (Genesis 3:5)
What happened in Egypt, and even when Israel at last settled in the Promised Land, was not a completion of God’s covenant purposes. The four promises, listed above, were to have a greater fulfilment through Yeshua.
Yeshua, the Son of God, was one with God throughout history, not entering the world as a man until the right time. God’s covenant purposes, in Egypt, before and afterwards, were always a step along the way to the final and greater fulfilment when God would become manifest through the man Yeshua. The eyes of John, one of Yeshua’s Apostles, were opened clearly to this. He wrote as the first words in his Gospel account:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.(John 1:1-3)
John goes on to say that:
…the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. (verse 14)
And:
No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. (verse 18)
We can go over and over these words, indeed the whole of John 1, followed by the entire Gospel account, and still not fully rationalise in our human minds the entirety of what God has done in coming to earth as a man. Yet we can understand enough to realise that in the very being of God there has been a part of Him that one day would express itself in the form of a man. That intent has been with Him since before Creation and at every stage of the Covenant.
The intent was with Him when He made the four profound promises to the Children of Israel through Moses, and when He confronted Pharaoh and the unseen gods of Egypt.
God knows the nature of the people that He created. Some can have the character of stubbornness, who like Pharaoh become hardened to God’s purposes. This is in evidence when the truth about Yeshua is preached. An individual is able to allow his or her inherent resistance to become manifest to even reject the offer of eternal salvation (the personal fulfilment of God’s promises to Israel), or have the humility of heart to gratefully receive God’s free gift. Yeshua Himself put it this way, describing how even the most wonderful invitation to eternal life can be resisted:
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.(John 3:16-18)
Yeshua also said, not just of individuals but of wider application:
But to what shall I liken this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to their companions, and saying:
‘We played the flute for you,
And you did not dance;
We mourned to you,
And you did not lament.’ (Matthew 11:16-17)
These are metaphors to teach that neither through the wonderous and free invitation of salvation through the atoning sacrifice of Yeshua, nor through personal or earth shaking woes, some people will not turn to the God of Israel through Yeshua. It is a paradox for us, relating somehow to the way that God created mankind with what we call free will. Paul the Apostle put it this way:
But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honour and another for dishonour?
What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles? (Romans 9:20-25)
Here, Paul did not make a theological statement about the nature of God and the people He had created, but causes us to leave such matters to God, recognising that there are those who, like Pharaoh, have the reaction to oppose God’s purposes and harden their hearts, and those who, with humble hearts, gladly receive God’s truth.
This paradox has immense application when we consider the nations of the world responding to God’s covenant purposes, based on His promises, first to Israel and then to those from the Gentile world who are grafted into the same olive tree, by faith. Of Israel He says:
But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob,
And He who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by your name;
You are Mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.
When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned,
Nor shall the flame scorch you.
For I am the Lord your God,
The Holy One of Israel, your Saviour;
I gave Egypt for your ransom,
Ethiopia and Seba in your place.
Since you were precious in My sight,
You have been honoured,
And I have loved you;
Therefore I will give men for you,
And people for your life. (Isaiah 43:1-4)
All this was in God’s mind at the time when Moses confronted Pharaoh, as well as being a truth for all time. The fulfilment of God’s promises was at the expense of the suffering of the people in Egypt. In the latter days, those whose hearts are not hardened will see, like John the Apostle, that Yeshua, the Son of God, is the final and full way that the covenant promises will be fulfilled. The shaking of nations in the Last Days will bring forth a great salvation for many even at the cost of many people, under the Hand of God.
The Book of Revelation describes a world that we are surely entering in our day, which turns, as a whole, away from the one True God and His Son Yeshua. As in Egypt at the time of Moses, we will see an increasing confrontation between the powers of darkness, that come in the form of false gods, and the One True God. The intensity will increase as in Egypt until we come to the great woes of the Last Days described in Revelation Chapter 9.
Just as Pharaoh’s heart could be hardened so it will be for many people who refuse the gift of deliverance, salvation, redemption and, through Yeshua the Messiah, membership of God’s eternal Kingdom – the four covenant promises of Exodus 6. The effect will be even more awesome than at the time of Moses, when God’s people were led out of Egypt and when Egypt was left in ruins. Hard-heartedness against the God of Israel will be provoked, as it was with Pharaoh:
But the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons, and idols of gold, silver, brass, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts. (Revelation 9:20-21)
The difference with the time of Moses is that, now, anyone from the entire world can be saved by faith in Yeshua. We must remember that God still has ongoing promises relating specifically to the people of Israel, but Yeshua’s invitation is widened to encompass people from the entire world, including, of course, the country of Egypt today.
Indeed, the entire world is soon to be likened to Babylon of old. Each of us will be tested. It is a paradox, but true, that pressures will either turn us to God or turn us away from Him. Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. Ours need not be. As the pressures of the world mount on God’s people, it is good to remember Israel in Egypt. For us, however, it will not be “Let my people go”, but “Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins, and lest you receive of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4).
We must stand in faith and not fear. Just as the Israelites were safe from the plagues in Goshen so God will provide protection, at the time of the last great woes, for all who know Yeshua as Messiah. All Scripture points to this great and awesome Day of the Lord.
