There are three verses in the book of Exodus that jump out at me every time I read them or think about them. They come at the end of chapter 2. Throughout Exodus 1-2 we read about Pharaoh’s strategy of imposing slavery and using brute force against the Israelites. God has been silent, perhaps even absent from the story so far, except for one brief moment when he gave the courageous Hebrew midwives children of their own (Exodus 1:21). But that was little comfort to suffering Hebrew slaves. Finally, after a long wait—one that traditionally is said to have been 430 years long!—enduring oppression by Pharaoh and suffering deeply we read, “After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them” (Exodus 2:23-25; NRSV).
What comes through to me in these verses in the first instance is the sheer weight of the pain that the Hebrews bring to expression. They groaned, they cried out and they cried for help. Piling up these expressions of suffering and grief, the writer of Exodus expresses the magnitude of the Israelites’ pain. They are being crushed by Pharaoh’s genocidal policies. They despair of any change. They have no hope, no prospect of relief. If you read the verses carefully, the text does not even say that they cried out to God. They simply cried out for help, in the faint hope that someone—anyone!—would hear.
In response to this overwhelming distress and desperate cry, what the text does say is that their cry for help rose up to God. God has ears that listen for cries for help whether they are addressed to God or not. God is attentive to human suffering, no matter how absent God may seem to be. Even when appearances would lead us to conclude that God is indifferent, unaware or simply ignores suffering, the cries of those who are afflicted reach God’s ears.
The biblical text identifies four things that happen in response to the Israelites’ cries for help: God heard, God remembered, God looked upon and God knew. (This last statement more accurately translates the Hebrew original than does the NRSV’s rather anemic translation, “God took notice of them.”) Each verb overflows with meaning as we consider this passage.
First of all, God heard their groaning. Despite all appearances and evidence to the contrary, the text tells us that God actually heard the groans of the Israelites. He was aware of them. The cries of suffering that rise up continually from suffering humanity receive a hearing from God. Even when from our perspective the silence of God seems at least inattentive and at most criminally negligent, God nevertheless hears the groans.
Second, God remembered his covenant with the ancestors of Israel—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Look out now! When God remembers we know that God is about to act. This was true in the story of the flood where the waters continued to rise until we read the fateful words, “God remembered Noah” (Genesis 8:1). From that point on the flood receded and Noah eventually returned to dry land. When God remembers, things happen. In fact, things change. God’s remembrance is the prelude to God’s deliverance.
Third, God looked upon the Israelites. Seeing their suffering is importance. God now is fully engaged with the suffering of the Israelites. Their unfocused groans and cries for help under the burden of their suffering have caught the attention of God.
Finally, God knew. Our first question might be, “What did God know?” But “what” God knew is not important. In the Bible “knowing” involves more than the possession of information; it involves more than facts and figures. Knowing refers to a total engagement with what it known. That’s why this same word is used many times to refer to sexual intercourse. Thus when in Genesis we read that Adam knew Eve and she conceived and bore a son (Genesis 4:1), we learn that “knowing” involves much more than receiving information. When the text says that God knew the suffering of the Hebrews it means that he has entered into the experience of Israel’s suffering. God does not stand afar off, remotely removed from the Hebrews’ cries for help. God is fully engaged. God actually takes that suffering into God’s own heart. As it were, God suffers with them (and with us). God takes our suffering into God’s own heart and shares it with us.
This may sound strange to us if our concept of God teaches us that God stands afar off from our human emotions; that God’s perfection somehow excludes the rough and tumble of human experience. That may be true to some extent; perhaps we should be careful not to drag God down to make God simply another Marvel superhero who has some superhuman qualities but fundamentally shares our human flaws and limitations. But that’s not what the Bible is saying. Rather, this text and several others teach us that God shares our human suffering. That’s one aspect of Jesus’s incarnation and his suffering and death. Willingly, God hears our cries, sees our distress, and knows our suffering. God shares in our suffering--especially through the suffering and death of Jesus.
The Apostle Paul argues in 1 Corinthians that it is in the cross of Jesus that we see God most clearly. It is in the weakness of Jesus as he suffered that we encounter the power of God; it is in the foolishness of the cross that we learn the wisdom of God; and it is in the hatred shown to Jesus by his executioners that we learn of the love of God for us. It is no accident that we often encounter God most forcefully in the midst of a time of suffering. In those days of distress, when our own resources have failed us, we are thrown into the arms of God. Those verses at the end of Exodus 2 drive me to continue to address God in times of distress. And God draws near—whether I feel it, know it, or doubt it entirely. God knows!