Exodus 3:7 "Then the Lord said, 'I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings'".

The Jews were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years, so when God says He has seen their affliction, He's talking about 400 years of it! We cannot know why God let them suffer for so long because we cannot see God's plans and purposes, but we do know that eventually God acted in a most miraculous way to free His people, bring justice to the Egyptians, and ultimately lead the Jews to the Promised Land. We learn from these Biblical stories to trust God's goodness and mercy, and wait for His justice.

Even though we don't always understand God's timing, we know that it is always perfect, that He knows just when to rise up and save us. Plus, we learn during our suffering, and sometimes it takes us a very long time to learn what we are meant to learn! While we are learning, though, God is always working in the background, preparing people and events so that His plan will come to fruition.

Looking back on God's plan in the story of Exodus (which is only possible for us because we can look back, it was not possible for the Jews while they were in the story!), we can see that in Egypt, for His plan to unfold, things had to get so bad that one mother would be desperate enough to attempt to save her son's life by sending him in a basket down the river. That baby had to grow up knowing the ways of Egypt and having a relationship with Pharaoh in order for there to be someone who could speak God's truth to Pharaoh's power.

God knew the exact right time to send Moses into the world, but while the time for Moses was being prepared, God continued to see His people's affliction and their enslavement, wrongs that would eventually incur His justice. God often withholds His justice, and even mitigates it if there is repentance, but if there is no repentance, then, as I've written before, it earns interest. We can see that in the plagues of Egypt.

We do not have a day-to-day account of the Jews' experience as slaves in Egypt, we drop in on the story in Exodus, but God has such a day-to-day, even minute-to-minute, account. We may not fully understand why it took 400 years for God to free His people and bring justice on Egypt, but we can certainly see His goodness, mercy, and justice in the part of the story we have been given, and that is enough to learn to trust Him.