Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” And Joseph made the sons of Israel swear an oath and said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.” So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.

Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died.

Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them……
so they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor.

But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land….

But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.

But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land……

The King of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, when you help the Hebrew women in childbirth….if it is a boy, kill him, but if it is a girl, let her live.
but they wouldn’t do it. so Pharaoh gave this order to all his people:
“Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land…..

Moses life is spared, and he is taken to live in the palace.

and if i were living then, maybe even if i were Moses’ mother, this would have been my plea for oh so many years;

Oh Lord, the God who avenges,
O God who avenges, shine forth.
Rise up, O Judge of the earth;
pay back to the proud what they deserve.
How long will the wicked,
O Lord,
how long will the wicked be jubilant?

They pour out their arrogant words;
all the evildoers are full of boasting.
They crush Your people, O Lord
they oppress Your inheritance.
They slay the widow and the alien;
they murder the fatherless.
They say, “The LORD does not see;
the God of Jacob pays no heed.”

But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land….

Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years.  At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the Lord’s divisions left Egypt.

Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the sons of Israel swear an oath.  He had said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place.”

“Unless the LORD had given me help,
I would soon have dwelt in the silence of death.
When i said, “My foot is slipping,
your love O LORD, held me up.
In the multitude of my anxious thoughts within me,
Your comforts cheer and delight my soul.”

“Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD;
let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation.
For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
In His hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
The sea is His, for He made it,
and His hands formed the dry land.

Come let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker;
for He is our God
and we are the people of His pasture,
the flock under His care.“

i don’t know where you are this day. but i am so very well aware of the oppression at all sides on this great land we traverse. i have been crying out with the Psalmist these days; “How long, oh Lord, how long?”

has this been your plea? are you personally in need of aid, just as much as it seems every entire nation is?

take heart, dear one

for God will surely come to your aid.

to draw deeper in;
Genesis 41:41-49; Genesis 50:22-26; Exodus 1, 12, 13; Psalm 6; Psalm 94 and 95; a search on the phrase; “How Long” in your Bible.