What Does Exodus 5:21 Mean?

And they said to them, "The LORD look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us." The foremen's condemnation of Moses and Aaron is sharp and religiously framed: "the LORD look on you and judge." The appeal to divine judgment against Moses and Aaron is the bitterest possible expression of the foremen's frustration: they are using the same covenant language that Moses used when he first presented the Exodus mission ("the LORD, the God of your fathers has sent me") to condemn the man who claimed to be sent.

The God who was invoked as the authority behind the mission is now invoked to judge the man who brought the mission.

The charge that Moses and Aaron have made Israel "stink in the sight of Pharaoh" uses the Hebrew verb ba'ash, which literally means to cause a bad smell. The idiomatic meaning is to make someone's position intolerable or dangerous. The foremen are accusing Moses of converting Israel's position from a bearable oppression to an unbearable one: before Moses' intervention, at least the straw was provided; now it is not, and the beatings are worse. The intervention that was supposed to lead to liberation has so far led only to deterioration. From the foremen's perspective, Moses has improved nothing and made everything worse.

The "sword in their hand to kill us" accusation is the worst-case framing of the increased oppression: the foremen are saying that Moses's mission has handed Pharaoh a pretext for exterminating Israel. The fear is not irrational given what Pharaoh has already shown himself capable of (the infant drowning decree of chapter 1).

If Pharaoh reads Moses' agitation of the workforce as organized rebellion, the consequences could be lethal. The foremen's anger in verse 21 comes from fear as much as from frustration, and the fear is not unfounded. Their condemnation of Moses is the lament of people who are afraid that the person sent to save them has made their situation more dangerous.