Exodus 5:4

4 Pharaoh replied, “Moses and Aaron, why are you distracting the people from their tasks? Get back to work!

Exodus 5:4 Meaning and Commentary

Exodus 5:4

And the king of Egypt said to them
For he was not struck dumb, as Artapanus ^F7, afore cited writer, says:

wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works?
as they did when they gathered them together, and wrought signs before them; which Pharaoh it seems had heard of, and had got their names very readily:

get you unto your burdens;
meaning not Moses and Aaron, ordering them to go about their private and family business, but the people they represented, and on whose account they came; and it is highly probable the elders of the people, at least some of them, were with them, to whom these words might be more particularly directed. See ( Exodus 3:18 ) .

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FOOTNOTES:

F7 Ut supra. (Apud Euseb. Praepar. Evangel. l. 9. c. 27. p. 434.)

Exodus 5:4 In-Context

2 “Is that so?” retorted Pharaoh. “And who is the LORD ? Why should I listen to him and let Israel go? I don’t know the LORD, and I will not let Israel go.”

3 But Aaron and Moses persisted. “The God of the Hebrews has met with us,” they declared. “So let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness so we can offer sacrifices to the LORD our God. If we don’t, he will kill us with a plague or with the sword.”

4 Pharaoh replied, “Moses and Aaron, why are you distracting the people from their tasks? Get back to work!

5 Look, there are many of your people in the land, and you are stopping them from their work.”

6 That same day Pharaoh sent this order to the Egyptian slave drivers and the Israelite foremen: