We are in chapter eleven of Exodus with our word for today. צְעָקָה yelling, screaming, call for help, cry out, outcry, cry of wailing. It is used 20 in the Old Testament. We find our word used in the sense of a cry of emotional distress or anguish of a large group of people suffering. Genesis 19:12-13 The two men said to Lot, “Do you have anyone else here—sons-in-law, sons or daughters, or anyone else in the city who belongs to you? Get them out of here, because we are going to destroy this place. The צַעֲקָתָם֙ outcry to the Lord against its people is so great that he has sent us to destroy it.” Exodus 3:7, 9 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them צַעֲקָתָ֤ם crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering… And now the צַעֲקַ֥ת cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. This is how our word is used in our chapter. Exodus 11:6-7 There shall be a צְעָקָ֥ה גְדֹלָ֖ה great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.
Notice the qualifier of this already intense word for grief גְדֹלָ֖ה great yelling. Then look at the contrast which shows just how bad this was. not a dog will growl this would be something that happens all the time dogs growl and make noise. That is what they do. But not this day it was amazingly quite compared to the intense great yelling that was happening in Egypt over the deaths of all their firstborn sons. And one more descriptor that this intense grief will be so bad that it has never happened before or will it ever happen again. This is quite a description of what will happen. This might seem unfair but we also have to think about those 430 years of God’s people crying out to him for help on the other side of things. These things are just too big for us to realistically be in a position to even attempt any kind of fair judgment on things because our perspective is just too narrow. This reminds me of Job’s struggle to understand why God allows things to happen or seems to take too long to act. After Job lays out his challenges to God and his friends who came to comfort him. God shows up and asks him a lot of questions. In fact he asks question after question that fill up four whole chapters. Questions like this one. Job 38:4 Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. The obvious answer is that Job was not there when God was taking care of the countless things that have to happen to run the physical universe. So since God knows what he is doing in running the physical life we can trust him to know what he is doing in the spiritual and relational world that we can’t see. One thing is for sure only God can bring good out of evil in this messed up fallen corrupted place. Once God makes his case we have Job’s conclusion which I will close with. Job 42:1-6 Then Job replied to the Lord: “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted. You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer me.’ My ears had heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
