Anguish of Spirit

They were handed seven promises and would not listen. That is how this verse gets preached, and it is not what the sentence says.

Read the reasons, because two are given and neither is unbelief. They hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit, and for cruel bondage. The Hebrew behind anguish of spirit is a shortness of breath, the state of somebody with none left. The second reason is the workload. Chapter five explains how they got there: Pharaoh doubled the labour because Moses opened his mouth, and the foremen turned on him. The LORD look upon you, and judge; because ye have made our savour to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh. Their first experience of a deliverer was that things got worse.

Look at what was in the speech they could not take in. I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm, and with great judgments. And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God. Every clause of it came true. Not one word went in that morning.

Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land, tell old Pharaoh, let my people go. Sung in America by people who were themselves owned, and printed during the Civil War. They read this chapter from the inside and sang the promise back at a situation that had not shifted. A song can hold a thing for you while you cannot hold it yourself.

Nothing in this chapter asks you to manufacture faith you do not have. God does not rebuke them for the shortness of breath; he sends Moses back to Pharaoh and keeps going. If these are the short-breathed weeks, you are welcome to be one of the people who cannot hear it yet. Others are singing it for you, and the promises stood the whole time the bricks were being made.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 253 is New Creatures in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two