Sometimes when I'm reading the Bible I find a particular word used over and over again. I noticed this yesterday (Exodus 7-9) - you may have noticed it too. The word was 'know'. When I looked back at the previous day's reading it occurred there several times too - and again today.
At the beginning of this part of the story, as Moses and Aaron come to request the release of God's people we find Pharaoh declaring "I do not know the Lord and I will not let the people go" (5:2).
But God promises that he will deliver the people and as a result God says, "I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God". (6:7).
Because Pharaoh refuses to let the people go, God is going to bring the plagues on Egypt, to demonstrate his power, and as a result the people of Egypt too will "know that I am the Lord" (7:5).
In these readings Moses tells Pharaoh that there is no one like their God, that he is God of the land, in fact the earth belongs to him (7:17; 8:10, 22; 9:14, 29).
For Christmas I got some iTunes vouchers and used them to buy an 'NIV Word Study Bible with GK & Strong's Numbers' to go with the Olive Tree Bible software that I use. One of the great things about this book is that you can engage with the original languages that the Bible was written in without having spent years and years learning Greek or Hebrew. You can select an English word - easily find out what that is in Hebrew - and then do a search on that Hebrew word. The value of this is that sometimes our English translations use a range of different English words to translate the same Hebrew word.
In this case, this kind of search shows that in 2:25 "So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them" the word translated 'concerned' is the same word that has been translated 'know' in the above examples.
[At this point it is always helpful to check some alternative translations before you try and build a whole Bible study on some limited Hebrew or Greek. One of the things we were warned at college was that the only thing more dangerous than no New Testament Greek was a little New Testament Greek! This is where online tools such as Bible Gateway come in very useful.]
The ESV translates this verse - 'God saw the people of Israel - and God knew'. The ASV (American Standard Version) says - 'And God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them'. The NKJV says - '...and God acknowledged them'.
The people are known by God and God wants them to know him. We too are known by God and can know God ourselves.
Here are a few verses to take those thoughts a bit further:
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