From the Pastor’s desk

God hearing the groaning of the Israelites is but one of the things mentioned in 2:24 about God. In rapid succession, the writer adds other actions of God that redounded to the benefit of the Israelites that have implications for us as well. God heard their groaning, God remembered his covenant, God looked on (saw) the Israelites and God was concerned about their condition.

The groaning of the Israelites in their misery under the Egyptians caused God to “remember” His covenant with Abraham. We should not understand remember to mean that God had somehow forgotten His people or that he was unaware or unconcerned about their plight because nothing escapes an omniscient (all-knowing) God. What the Hebrew word suggests is that God now recalls the covenant that He had made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob with the additional meaning of taking appropriate action; in this case to bring deliverance to His oppressed people in Egypt and to take them to the land which He had promised to the patriarchs. In other words, to say “God remembered his covenant” is to say “God decided to honor the terms of his covenant at this time.”