Exodus 1:7-22 And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty… Throughout the Scriptures the circumstances of Israel in Egypt are referred to as typical of the servitude under which the sinner is held. There is more than guilt in wickedness. It would indeed be bad enough, even if that were all, but there is slavery besides. Our Lord Himself says, "Whosoever committeth sin is the slave of sin"; and there are no taskmasters so exacting as a man's own lusts. Look at the drunkard! See how his vile appetite rules him! It makes him barter every comfort he possesses for strong drink. It lays him helpless on the snowy street in the bitter winter's cold. It sends him headlong down the staircase, to the injury of his body and the danger of his life. If a slaveholder were to abuse a slave as the drunkard maltreats himself, humanity would hiss him from his place, and denounce him as a barbarian. And yet the inebriate does it to himself, and tries to sing the while the refrain of the song which ends, "We never, never shall be slaves." The same thing is true of sensuality. Go search the hospitals of this city; look at the wretched victims of their own lusts who fill the wards, and then say if man's inhumanity to himself be not, in some aspects of it, infinitely more terrible than his oppression of his neighbours. Visit our prisons, and see how avarice, fashion, frivolity, and the love of standing well with their companions, have held multitudes in their grip, forcing them — nay, I will not say forcing them, for they sin wilfully — but leading them to dishonesty day by day, until at last the inner servitude gives place to an external imprisonment. The setting of slaves to make bricks without straw is nothing to the drudgery and the danger — as of one standing on the crater's edge — that dishonesty brings upon a man when once it has him in its power. And it is the same with every kind of sin. But this slavery need not be perpetual, for the Great Emancipator has come. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them. |
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