7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them.

‘Moses spent forty years serving as a shepherd in Midian (Acts 7:23; Ex.7:7), and during those many days and nights in the field, he no doubt meditated on the things of God and prayed for his people who were suffering in Egypt.’ Warren W. Wiersbe: ‘OT Commentary’, p.150.

As we have seen previously, we have to read these verse in conjunction with 2:23-25. There are four clear things God says here:

  1. “I have seen” (7,9; also 2:23,24). Actually, one can’t help but be struck by the word “indeed”: “I have indeed seen…” (7). It may have looked to some as though He didn’t; but God saw everything. No detail of His people’s suffering escaped His attention and interest;
  2. “I have heard” (7). See also v.9: “And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me…”;
  3. “I am concerned” (7, see 2:25);
  4. “…I have come down…” (8). In these words we hear a distant echo of the greatest rescue mission ever. It was to be achieved many centuries later when ‘He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all.’ The Exodus, mighty deliverance that it was, was but a foretaste of what was to come. It was the ‘overture’ preceding the ‘opera.’

For today, may we be encouraged that this God is still God. He never changes. So He still sees, still hears prayer, still is concerned about what He sees, and still intervenes in response to the cries of His church.