“And the officers of the children of Israel, which Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and demanded, Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task in making brick both yesterday and to day, as heretofore?”
And the Israelite foremen appointed by Pharaoh's slave drivers were beaten and were asked: why didn't you meet your quota of bricks yesterday or today, as before? The foremen — Israelites placed in a middle position between the slave drivers and the workers — absorb punishment that belongs to Pharaoh. They are neither fully powerful nor fully free, complicit enough to be placed in authority and vulnerable enough to be beaten. This structural position, common in systems of managed oppression, creates internal fracture: the foremen will shortly turn on Moses and Aaron rather than on Pharaoh. Oppression that cannot be directed at its source gets redirected to those nearest at hand. Hebrews 11:25 says Moses chose to be mistreated with the people of God. The foremen's beating is the kind of suffering Moses chose — the pain of belonging to a people under unjust power.
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