John Calvin Commentary Exodus 5

And afterwards Moses and Aaron went in. Moses here begins to explain how many and how great were the proofs of God’s power displayed in the deliverance of His people. For, since the pride, the madness, and the obstinacy of the king were indomitable, every door was closed, until broken down miraculously and by various means.

It was, indeed, possible for God to overwhelm him at once, by a single nod, so that he should even fall down dead at the very sight of Moses. But, as we have already briefly stated and He will Himself soon declare:

1. In the first place, He chose more clearly to reveal His power; for if Pharaoh had either yielded voluntarily or had been overcome without effort, the glory of the victory would not have been so illustrious.
2. In the second place, He wished this monument to exist of His unique love towards His chosen people; for by contending so persistently and so powerfully against the obstinacy of this most powerful king, He gave no doubtful proof of His love towards His Church.
3. In the third place, He wished to accustom His servants in all ages to patience, so that they would not lose heart if He does not immediately answer their prayers and constantly relieve them from their distresses.
4. In the fourth place, He wished to show that, against all the strivings and devices of Satan, against the madness of the ungodly, and all worldly hindrances, His hand must always prevail, and to leave us no room to doubt that whatever we see opposing us will in the end be overcome by Him.
5. In the fifth place, By detecting the illusions of Satan and the magicians, He would make His Church more cautious, so that she might carefully watch against such devices and that her faith might continue invincible against all the machinations of error.
6. Finally, He would convince Pharaoh and the Egyptians that their folly was not to be excused by any pretense of ignorance; and, at the same time, by this example, He would show us how horrible a darkness possesses the minds of the reprobate when He has deprived them of the light of His Spirit.

These things must be attentively observed in the course of the narrative, if we desire to benefit from it.

Since it is difficult to obtain access to kings, who do not deign to admit to their presence any of the common people, Moses and Aaron must have been endowed with no ordinary confidence when they boldly approached Pharaoh. For it was a disagreeable message, and one very likely to give offense, that he should permit the people to take a three days’ journey beyond the borders of Egypt. A suspicion must undoubtedly arise that, if dismissed in this way, they would no longer remain his subjects, and that thus a part of the land would be emptied of its inhabitants.

Still, Moses and Aaron did not fear to deliver God’s command, in which there was this additional annoyance to the proud and sensitive ears of the king: namely, that they attributed the glory of Deity to the God of Israel alone. For, by calling Him Jehovah, they implied that the gods worshipped in Egypt were false and invented by human imagination.

We have said elsewhere that there was no deceit in the pretext that God called His people into the wilderness to hold a feast, although He did not reveal His counsel to the tyrant. For it was truly His pleasure that a sacrifice of thanksgiving should be offered to Him on Mount Sinai, and that they should thus be separated from the defiled nation with which they were intermingled. Assuredly, He wished to arouse the tyrant’s anger by shamefully condemning the whole of Egypt as incapable of pure worship. For He was under no obligation to declare openly their deliverance; but, so that He might draw out from the mind of the tyrant the venom of his impiety, He asked for nothing connected with the benefit of His people, but merely demanded the worship that was due to Him. The word which Moses uses means properly "to hold a feast" but also embraces whatever is connected with it; and, therefore, by synecdoche, it is understood here, as well as in other passages, for the solemn worship of God.⁶⁶

And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord? It is scarcely believable that such madness could exist in a mortal, to deliberately scorn God and thus, so to speak, fly in the face of heaven!⁶⁷ But we must observe that the tyrant, being devoted to idolatry, insulted the God of Israel in this way to display his great piety towards his false gods. For his mockery, in scornfully using the name of Jehovah, must be understood in relation to the words of Moses, as if to say, "Why do you bring against me this unknown phantom under the title of the eternal God, as though we had no god of our own?"

Thus Pilate, when Christ said, “To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth,” asks ironically, and not without mockery, “What is truth?”⁶⁸ (John 18:37–38). In short, Pharaoh did not consider himself to be dishonoring the Deity when he rejected this false (prodigiosum) God, as he thought him to be. Yet his error did not serve to justify him, since it arose from insane audacity and contempt of God.

Granted, he was unwilling for anyone to devalue his idols, and he thus imagined himself to be performing a religious duty; still, it was an act of very great impiety to so carelessly reject the name of the true God, and even to assail it with mockery. We may observe a similar madness in all idolaters. Being intoxicated by their errors, they boldly mock God and do not condescend to make inquiries about Him.

The cry of the Papists nowadays is that we are imposing a new God on the world. Applauding themselves in their wildest ravings, they do not hesitate to condemn our whole doctrine as impious—not because they are persuaded that they themselves are worshipping God correctly, but because they are willfully blind, so that they may evade with impunity the sacred majesty of God, stupefy their consciences, and preserve for themselves their death-like sleep. They seem to themselves to be clever and witty when they are mocking the novelty of our doctrine, though its truth would be clear enough if they would only open their eyes.

The Epicureans, too (of which destructive sect the world is now full), although they rant and rave against God, still always take refuge in some cloud under which their detestable madness may be concealed. For they pretend that amidst such a multitude of opinions, it is hardly possible to discern who God is, or what He commands. Still, however, this is their constant object, namely, that they may have nothing to do with God and yet may conceal by jests the shame of their impiety, as if they were free to reject what they are willfully ignorant of.

But after Pharaoh had indirectly derided the message of Moses as a ridiculous matter, he more openly and more contemptuously expresses his pride, implying that he does not care for that God with whose name Moses and Aaron would frighten him.