Israel, that he would let the people of Israel go and celebrate a festival in the wilderness in honour of their God. When we consider that every nation presented sacrifices to its deities, and celebrated festivals in their honour, and that they had all their own modes of worship, which were supposed to be appointed by the gods themselves, so that a god could not be worshipped acceptably in every place; the demand presented to Pharaoh on the part of the God of the Israelites, that he would let His people go into the wilderness and sacrifice to Him, appears so natural and reasonable, that Pharaoh could not have refused their request, if there had been a single trace of the fear of God in his heart. But what was his answer? “Who is Jehovah, that I should listen to His voice, to let Israel go? I know not Jehovah.” There was a certain truth in these last words. The God of Israel had not yet made Himself known to him. But this was no justification. Although as a heathen he might naturally measure the power of the God by the existing condition of His people, and infer from the impotence of the Israelites that their God must be also weak, he would not have dared to refuse the petition of the Israelites, to be allowed to sacrifice to their God or celebrate a sacrificial festival, if he had had any faith in gods at all.
Verse 3
The messengers founded their request upon the fact that the God of the Hebrews had met them (נקרא, vid., Exo 3:18), and referred to the punishment which the neglect of the sacrificial festival demanded by God might bring upon the nation. פּן־יפגּענוּ: “lest He strike us (attack us) with pestilence or sword.” פּגע: to strike, hit against any one, either by accident or with a hostile intent; ordinarily construed with בּ, also with an accusative, 1Sa 10:5, and chosen here probably with reference to נקרא = נקרה. “Pestilence or sword:” these are mentioned as expressive of a violent death, and as the means employed by the deities, according to the ordinary belief of the nations, to punish the neglect of their worship. The expression “God of the Hebrews,” for “God of Israel” (Exo 5:1), is not chosen as being “more intelligible to the king, because the Israelites were called Hebrews by foreigners, more especially by the Egyptians (Exo 1:16; Exo 2:6),” as Knobel supposes, but to convince Pharaoh of the necessity for their going into the desert to keep the festival demanded by their God. In Egypt they might sacrifice to the gods of Egypt, but not to the God of the
