Immigration 2

In Exodus, we find that Abram’s descendants have remained in Egypt, in Goshen. Joseph has truly spoken a prophetic word and now his family is prospering and multiplying in a foreign land (Ex. 1:5-13). These descendants of Abram, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph – the Israelites - are so successful that the Egyptians begin to fear them and take measures to control them (Ex. 1:8-14):

Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. "Look," he said to his people, "the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country."


So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly.

We can see in this that the Israelites were made into slaves in order to curtail their population growth and to inhibit their becoming an internal enemy. Additionally, there is the clear message that though the Egyptian pharaoh feared what might happen if the Israelites conspired with enemies against him, he also feared what might happen if they were to leave Egypt (v.10).  They were considered at once liability and asset.

Even to the time of Moses, the most important of all Israelite prophets,  these people were still seen as aliens in a land they had inhabited for nearly 400 years (Ex. 2:14-22). 

Moses himself understood what it meant to be an alien.  After killing an Egyptian,  he fled the land of his birth, Egypt, when Pharaoh sought to kill him for his crime.   He took up living in Midian where, ironically, he was confused for an Egyptian (Ex. 2:19)!

Even when the Israelites were rescued by God from the chains of the Egyptians, they yet ended up spending another 40 years wandering around in the desert, plodding through and living on land that did not belong to them. For hundreds of years they were perpetual aliens completely dependent on the Lord.

Later, the Lord used the Israelites' experience as aliens to teach them how to treat people who became aliens in the land they came to possess by God's grace.
 
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