Exodus 3:18, commentary and pictures

This verse sets out Moses's first work in the call to deliver Israel, to be accomplished through Moses as a humble shepherd whom God would empower. His first step was to assemble the elders of Israel. Those elders were the most noble and righteous among the people, who had long grieved because of their bondage. He was to tell them that the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob had appeared to him, that God had visited them and would bring them up out of the affliction of Egypt to a land flowing with milk and honey.

The elders would hearken to his voice. Then Moses, together with the elders, was to come to the king of Egypt and say that the LORD God of the Hebrews had met with them, and to ask leave to go three days' journey into the wilderness to sacrifice to the LORD their God, making the demand in God's name as a message from God. The king to whom they were to come was not the one who had sought Moses's death but a successor, since Pharaoh was the name of nearly all Egyptian kings. The demand was not to be enforced by warfare led by Moses as a general, as Moses expected, nor to exalt human pride, but to magnify and display God before Israel and before the Egyptians as the living God who has power to save and to destroy.

It was foreknown that Pharaoh would resist and would not let Israel go. He refused to recognize the Lord's authority. God would use that refusal as the occasion to manifest His signs and wonders before the Egyptians and before His people, to convince Pharaoh that the great I AM had sent Moses to command Israel's release so that they might serve God. After those wonders Pharaoh would let Israel go. Moses's work of breaking Israel's bondage prefigured Christ's first advent, when Christ would break Satan's power and deliver those held captive by him.