Fear is a primary theme in the account of Israel in Egypt.

Exodus 1 and 2 give background so that we can see the conditions and we are also introduced to one of the most important men in the history of Israel and also the author of the book: Moses.

The children of Israel become a threat to the new Pharaoh. Fear begins to take root.

After the death of Joseph there arose a new Pharaoh. I’m not exactly positive where this fits in history. If you have insights to that, I would love to hear your perspective. You can email me. My email address is [email protected]

Look what the Scriptures say about this new situation. Exodus 1:6-11

Who Was This Pharaoh?

Some people have suggested that this new Pharaoh was one that took over the country from the south art of Egypt and for that reason did not know or perhaps did not respect Joseph’s memory. It seems difficult to think that a new Pharaoh would not know who Joseph was, and perhaps that makes the theory of an uprising more believable. But like I said, I am not an archaeologist. If you know something about this, please shoot me an email.

What really matters here though is that there is a perceived threat. Fear is an important element in this section. Israel’s children have been multiplying rapidly and they were beginning to outnumber the people of Egypt.

Even though Joseph brought his family to Egypt, they were given the land of Goshen because it was fertile land and great for shepherding. But the Egyptians looked down on shepherding as a profession and so they always kept them at arm’s length.

The Fear Was Based in Some Reality

This is an important idea and it’s why it was safe for Joseph to bring his family there. There was no danger of intermarrying and being grafted into the kingdom of Egypt. And if that had happened it would have been much more complicated for God to fulfill the promises He made to Abraham in the book of Genesis.

But God saw to it that the people did not intermarry and mingle with the Egyptians. This had both positive and negative effects. And in Exodus we are seeing the negative effects of a people who cannot assimilate into the country in which they are living.

When distrust and fear entered the scene, the politicians looked for ways to control the growth of the population so that the Israelites would not overrun them. As the new Pharaoh put it, “Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of our land.”

So the authorities placed taskmasters over the people of Israel to force them to work harder. Notice it says that they wanted to “afflict them” with their burdens. This seems to imply that Pharaoh had already give them plenty to do and he simply decided to make their tasks more demanding. Why? So they would not have the time or energy to continue to reproduce. The oppression was not simply oppression for the sake of oppression. It had an aim, and that aim was population control through physical labor.

This is a familiar scene. Politically minded people have often found excuses for oppressing parts of society, and fear has always been a very useful instrument. And it may be a surprise to learn that at least some governments DO seek to control population growth through this and other means.

Governments Can React in Fear