The Pharaohs that Enslave Us

Have you ever noticed how success can quietly become a cage? A promotion arrives, and with it a longer list of demands. A ministry flourishes, and suddenly you cannot rest. Your family grows, your responsibilities multiply, your gifts are recognized, and somewhere along the way you begin to sense that the very blessings you prayed for have started to master you.

The bricks you once laid with joy have become quotas. The work you once offered as gift has become tribute. You look up one day and realize you are building something enormous, and you cannot quite remember when you agreed to be its slave.

This is where the book of Exodus begins.

"Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.’ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh." (Exodus 1:8-11)

Notice the sequence. The Israelites had multiplied. They had grown. They had become fruitful, just as God commanded in Genesis. And it is precisely their fruitfulness that draws the eye of Pharaoh. Their flourishing is what makes them not only a threat, but useful, and thus the Pharoah has an idea. He can make them slaves, break their spirit (so they are no longer a threat), and make them useful to serve his own agenda.

Origen, reading this passage in the third century, saw something more than history.

He saw a pattern of the soul.

In his homilies on Exodus, he taught that the story of Israel’s bondage is not merely a chronicle of ancient suffering but a mirror held up to every believer.

The Pharaohs of Egypt still rise. They rise inside us, and they rise around us, and they have a particular habit of appearing precisely when we begin to bear fruit.

This is not to deny the historical reality of the Exodus. It all happened. It was all real.

But Scripture, as the Fathers understood, is a living word, and its stories are not exhausted by their first fulfillment. As Saint Paul himself wrote of Israel’s wilderness journey: "These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come" (1 Corinthians 10:11).

It also recognizes that the same patters of the enemy, and of how God battles against the enemy in our souls, are reflected in repeated patters across history.

So let us ask the uncomfortable question: what Pharaohs have risen up in your life?

 

The Pharaoh Who Does Not Know Joseph

The text is careful to tell us that this new king “did not know Joseph.”

Joseph had saved not only Israel, but also Egypt. Joseph had interpreted dreams, stored grain, delivered a nation from famine. But this new king has forgotten all of that.

He looks at the descendants of Joseph and sees only a threat, only a resource, only a labor force.

There is a spiritual principle hidden here.

The Pharaohs that rise in our lives are those parts of us, or those forces around us, that have forgotten the gift.

They do not remember that our abundance came from God. They do not remember Joseph, that quiet figure of Christ, who fed us in our famine. They see only what can be extracted, only what can be leveraged, only what can be put to work.

Think of how this happens in the interior life.

God gives you a grace of prayer. You begin to experience real consolation, real fruit. And then, almost imperceptibly, a new king arises in your soul who does not know Joseph.

This king does not remember that prayer was a gift. He begins to measure it. He begins to demand it. He turns the sweet hour of communion into a duty, a performance, a brick to be laid in the great tower of your spiritual reputation. The prayer that once set you free begins to enslave you.

Or think of the natural gifts God has given you. Your intelligence, your creativity, your capacity to love, your ability to work hard. These were meant to be offered back to Him in freedom.

But how easily a Pharaoh rises up who does not know their true origin, and begins to use them for his own glory, his own supply cities, his own monuments.

Anyone who has made progress in the spiritual life knows that it is precisely when we grow in virtue that other forces begin to exert pressure on us. You start to overcome that old sin that has plagued you for years? Well, you'd better believe more temptations will start to come precisely because you're making progress.

Why?

Because the Pharoah that would enslave us, be it our flesh, or the Enemy, sees the growth of virtue, the growth in holiness, our progress in prayer, a threat to its dominance.

So the attacks come. The bondage comes. Because it is only when the enemy is threatened that he begins to lash out.

 

Pithom and Rameses

The Israelites built “supply cities, Pithom and Rameses.” Storehouses. Places to hoard what Pharaoh could not use immediately but wanted to keep in reserve.

These were monuments to accumulation, to the anxiety of the powerful who never have enough.

What are your Pithom and Rameses? What are you building that God never asked you to build?

Consider how much of modern life is spent constructing these storehouses.

We build reputations we must then maintain. We build lifestyles we must then fund. We build expectations we must then meet. We build images of ourselves we must then defend. Each brick seems small. Each brick seems necessary. But taken together, they form cities that were never meant to be ours, cities that serve a king who does not love us.

Saint John of the Cross spoke of these attachments we forge, even in our spiritual lives. He observed that it does not matter whether a bird is tied by a heavy chain or a slender thread; either way it cannot fly (Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book 1, Chapter 11).

The Pharaoh does not need to enslave you with something obviously evil. A small ambition, a subtle vanity, a quiet fear of being forgotten, will do just as well. These are the threads that bind us to the brickyard.

 

When Virtues Become Tools of Pride

Here is where the allegory grows especially sharp. The Pharaoh in the soul is a shrewd master. He does not usually enslave us with our vices; he enslaves us with our virtues.

Your generosity becomes a way to be seen. Your discipline becomes a source of contempt for others. Your knowledge of Scripture becomes a weapon in arguments. Your very humility becomes something you take pride in.

The straw is gathered, the bricks are formed, and the tower rises higher, but the tower has your name on it now, not God’s.

This is the terrible cunning of the fallen self. It can co-opt anything. It can take the very disciplines meant to free us and turn them into occasions of bondage. The desert fathers knew this well. They fled to the wilderness to escape the world, and they discovered that the world had come with them, hidden in their own hearts.

"For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Romans 7:19)

Paul’s cry is not the cry of a man defeated by obvious sin. It is the cry of a man who has discovered that even his good is entangled, even his righteousness needs rescuing. The Pharaoh has followed him into his very sanctuary.

 

The Groaning That God Hears

But the story does not end with the brickyard. The Exodus does not end in Egypt. And this is the heart of the good news hidden in the allegory.

"The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them." (Exodus 2:23-25)

Four verbs in rapid succession: God heard, God remembered, God looked, God took notice.

This is what happens when the soul finally admits its bondage. The moment the Israelites stopped pretending that Egypt was home, the moment they let their groaning become a cry, the moment they acknowledged that the bricks were not their calling, God moved.

He was, of course, already moving. Moses was already growing up in Pharaoh’s house. The deliverer was already being prepared. But the cry unlocks something in the economy of salvation. The cry is not what earns the rescue, but it is what receives it.

Have you cried out? Have you named your Pharaoh yet? Have you told the Lord which supply city you are exhausted from building?

 

Practical Steps Toward Freedom

The allegorical reading of Exodus is not meant to remain in the realm of ideas. It is meant to send us on our own journey out of Egypt. Here are some concrete ways to begin.

Name your Pharaoh. Take a quiet hour this week and ask the Lord to show you what has risen up to enslave you. Is it a fear? A resentment? A specific relationship? An ambition? A need to be seen? Do not generalize. Name the specific king who does not know Joseph in your life right now.

Identify the bricks. What are you making, day after day, that God did not ask you to make? Look at your calendar, your commitments, your worries. Which of these serve the Lord, and which serve a Pharaoh you have forgotten you agreed to serve?

Recover the memory of Joseph. Spend time recalling the actual gifts God has given you. Write them down if it helps. Return to the graces that came before the demands. Sometimes freedom begins with simply remembering that our abundance is a gift, not a resource to be exploited by the anxious king within us.

Let the groaning become a cry. Do not suppress the weariness. Do not spiritualize it away. Bring it to God as it is. He hears what rises from bondage more clearly than what rises from performance.

Consent to be led out. The Exodus is not a self-improvement project. Israel did not escape Egypt by working harder in the brickyard. They escaped because God brought them out with an outstretched arm. Freedom is received, not achieved. Your part is consent, trust, and the willingness to walk into a wilderness where the food will be strange and the way will be uncertain.

The Pharaohs will keep rising. That is the sober truth of the spiritual life. But the God who heard Israel’s cry still hears. The Passover has already been kept in the Blood of the Lamb. The Red Sea has already been opened in the waters of Baptism. The wilderness is not empty; it is the place where God feeds His people with bread from heaven and speaks to them face to face.

The question is not whether you will encounter Pharaoh. The question is whether, when you hear his voice demanding another brick, you will remember that you belong to a different King, one who does not build supply cities on your back, but who has already prepared a place for you in a land flowing with milk and honey.

P.S. If you like this idea, this song really brings it home. CHECK IT OUT>>