“And they said unto them, The Lord look upon you, and judge; because ye have made our savour to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to slay us.”
The foremen said to Moses and Aaron: may the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us. The accusation is furious and understandable: the people God is trying to free are blaming their liberators for making things worse. Moses asked for three days off and the result is no straw and beatings. The foremen's cry — may the Lord judge you — is a covenant appeal; they are calling on the God who was just invoked to adjudicate this situation. The pattern will recur throughout the wilderness narrative: Israel blaming Moses and Aaron whenever the conditions of liberation prove harder than the conditions of slavery. Numbers 14:4 records the same impulse taken to its limit. Suffering people do not always recognize their deliverer; sometimes they redirect their pain at the one nearest them.
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