Holly Bible - KJV with Concise Commentaries by Z Selam - HTML preview
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degradation to him to be keeping sheep in Midian, but better so than making brick in Egypt. The consideration of our brethren's afflictions would help to reconcile us to our own.
2 The preface to their deliverance at last.
(1.) They cried, Ex 2:23. Now, at last, they began to think of God under their troubles, and to return to him from the idols they had served, Eze 20:8. Hitherto they had fretted at the instruments of their trouble, but God was not in all their thoughts. Thus hypocrites in heart heap up wrath; they cry not when he binds them, Job 36:13. But before God unbound them he put it into their hearts to cry unto him, as it is explained, Nu 20:16. Note, It is a good sign that God is coming towards us with deliverance when he inclines and enables us to cry to him for it.
(2.) God heard, Ex 2:24, 25. The name of God is here emphatically prefixed to four different expressions of a kind intention towards them.
[1.] God heard their groaning; that is, he made it to appear that he took notice of their complaints. The groans of the oppressed cry aloud in the ears of the righteous God, to whom vengeance belongs, especially the groans of God's spiritual Israel; he knows the burdens they groan under and the blessings they groan after, and that the blessed Spirit, by these groanings, makes intercession in them.
[2.] God remembered his covenant, which he seemed to have forgotten, but of which he is ever mindful. This God had an eye to, and not to any merit of theirs, in what he did for them. See Le 26:42.
(3.) God looked upon the children of Israel. Moses looked upon them and pitied them (Ex 2:11); but now God looked upon them and helped them.