Pharaohs Like Us

When I read through the exodus account in the Bible, I am reminded that Pharaohs are always going to Pharaoh–Egyptian Pharaohs, Russian Pharaohs, American Pharaohs, it doesn’t matter.

In Exodus 5, when Moses and Aaron asked for their people to be released from work for three days so they could go into the wilderness to worship God, their particular Pharaoh scoffed and demanded they produce more with fewer resources. When confronted about this injustice, he called them lazy.

Reading this, I can’t help but think about the holiday travel debacle caused by Southwest Airlines several years ago when its outdated computer systems crashed, stranding thousands of people in airports around the country. Employees shared numerous stories about how this was years in the making, caused by cuts to infrastructure in the business to bolster the bottom line.

I am also reminded of frustrated restaurant owners who couldn’t staff their businesses when COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, placing signs on their doors complaining that “No one wants to work anymore.” Apparently, an entire service-industry workforce, one that disproportionately bore the burden of sickness and death in a pandemic that the wealthy ignored, were lazy for not returning to jobs offering them poverty wages.

Pharaohs are always going to Pharaoh. They can’t help themselves. 

Placing the maintenance of their status over the common good, they’ll create “restructuring plans” or “departments of government efficiency” from their penthouses and private jets. All this will be under the guise of addressing alleged problems caused by “slackers” and “lazy workers,” not of their own doing.

Back in Egypt, a moment of comedy occurred after the seventh plague of thunder and hail. Pharaoh, whose defiance of God caused him to endure water turning into blood, swarms of frogs and gnats and flies, dead livestock, and boils, finally declared, “This time I have sinned; the LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong” (Ex. 9:27).

“This time.” It seems Pharaohs have a difficult time seeing past their immediate discomfort.

But, of course, he didn’t mean it. It took more plagues–locusts, darkness, and the killing of firstborn children–to finally get him to relent.

Pharaoh’s “This time…” reverberated through the centuries when, after witnessing the death of George Floyd in real-time, the Pharaohs of our world ceremonially took a knee with their professional football teams, but only after the owners required their players to stand for the National Anthem.

CEOs began to “allow” diversity, equity, and inclusion programs into their organizations, under close supervision, of course. There were apologies, plans, and alleged “reckonings,” as we all claimed to finally “get it.”

“‘This time’ we have sinned.” But, of course, they didn’t mean it. It will take more plagues to get them to relent.

However, there is hope. God, in whatever way we conceive of God, always releases people from bondage. History always bends toward justice and waits for Pharaohs like us to do the right thing.