The picture of a tyrant-crafty, energetic, and unsparing.
Scripture contains abundant portraitures, not only of good, but also of bad men, the Holy Spirit seeming to be as desirous of arousing our indignation against vice as our sympathy with virtue. Portraits are given us, as more effectual than precepts or general descriptions, appealing as they do to our feelings and imagination rather than to our intellect. The dramatic exhibition of a Pharaoh, an Ahab, a Sennacherib, a Judas Iscariot, is calculated at once to strike the soul and to remain indelibly impressed upon it. Here we have the portrait of a tyrant, characterised especially by three qualities—
1. Craft or cleverness;
2. Energy; and
3. Mercilessness.
(1) Pharaoh's craft is shown, first in the skilful way in which he "turns the tables" upon Moses and Aaron, stopping their mouths with the charge that they are "letting the people from their labours," and "endamaging the king." (See Ezra 4:13.) Secondly, it is shown in the rapidity and ingenuity of his thought—"More work must be laid upon the Israelites—let them be given no straw." Thirdly, it is shown further on in his attempts to secure the return of the Israelites by the detention of their children (Exodus 10:10) or of their cattle (Exodus 10:24).
(2) Pharaoh's energy appears in the immediate steps that he took to carry his plan out by giving orders for the withholding of the straw without any diminution in the tale of bricks, "the same day" (Exodus 5:6). Finally,