Now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God.The chronology of this verse interests me. It appears to say that the Israelites did not seem to despair of their enslavement until after the king had died. What happened at this point to make them suddenly cry out? Did the new pharaoh make their work harder? Was this the first king's death since they'd been enslaved, and they were hoping his heir would be kinder to them? Something had to have been different with the new ruler, and I wonder what it was.
Also, why did their cries only now rise to God? Had they not been praying for deliverance before this? Had they forgotten about God altogether, and been subsumed by the Egyptian culture? Or was he just seen as one among the many Gods of the Egyptians, and they finally rotated through asking the rest until they got to him? They appear to remember Joseph, for they later would take his bones with them, but how much of what he did or God's power had been lost to the centuries? These people may have forgotten all about what God had done for Abraham and his descendants, and now they were going to receive new evidence that they were His people.
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