The Prince of Egypt Christian Review: The God Who Hears the Groaning and Today’s Moses

Welcome, everyone to this The Prince of Egypt Christian Review as we reflect on the cry of the oppressed, the God who remembers His covenant, and our calling to become conduits of deliverance for the hurting souls around us. This piece is a film that does not need to be deliberately interpreted through an indirect Christian worldview.

DreamWorks’ classic animated masterpiece The Prince of Egypt (1998) fully conveys the historical account of Moses recorded in the Old Testament Book of Exodus without adding or taking anything away. While it is filled with countless memorable scenes and splendid music, the part that particularly resonated intensely in my heart—as someone who genuinely loves the musical genre—was the musical number that overwhelmingly opens the film, “Deliver Us.”

The choral singing of the people of Israel kneading mud under the lash of whips and shedding tears of blood to build enormous pyramids and temples delivers a thrill that breaks through the screen. Listening to that desperate melody and lyrics, the cries of Hebrew slaves that echoed through hundreds of years of silence penetrate straight into the heart. And naturally, such a meditation rises from the depths of my heart: “Looking down from heaven and listening to that desperate cry, what on earth was God’s heart like?”

Through this post, I want to share the sigh of pain contained in the opening song “Deliver Us,” the heart of a mother who had to place her baby in a reed basket and send him down the river, and how we, living in a world full of wars and disasters today, should approach the neighbors around us as “little Moseses.”

“Deliver Us”: Hundreds of Years of Groaning and the God Who Hears

The lyrics of the opening song “Deliver Us” are a soul-piercing cry that goes beyond a simple shout:

“Deliver us, hear our call, deliver us. Lord of all, remember us, here in this burning sand. Deliver us, send somebody to deliver us. Deliver us to the promised land.”

The people of Israel had to suffer through endless slave labor, treated worse than animals under Pharaoh’s whip from birth until death. The sweat and tears they shed drenched the Nile River, and their cries pierced the heavens for hundreds of years. The Bible in Exodus 2:23–25 clearly testifies to the situation of that moment:

“During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.”

God never turned a blind eye to the suffering of His people. While the world remains insensitive to the screams of the poor and oppressed, God listened attentively to each and every one of their groans. Israel’s suffering was a heartbreak that tore God’s heart, and God, who faithfully keeps His covenant, never forgot that sigh.

I firmly believe that the God of that time surely heard their cries, and He is certainly the same God who hears our cries today as well.

The Heart of a Mother Who Set a Reed Basket Afloat on the Nile

At the height of the opening, another unforgettable, heartbreaking scene unfolds. Facing Pharaoh’s cruel decree to slaughter every newborn Hebrew boy by throwing him into the Nile River, Moses’ mother Jochebed, unable to hide the child any longer, coats a reed basket with tar and pitch, places the infant Moses inside, and sends him floating down the river.

The sorrowful lullaby she sings alongside her young daughter Miriam while watching the basket drift along the currents brings tears to viewers’ eyes. The mother’s heart, forced to surrender her newborn infant into the cold river, must have been torn with indescribable tears of blood. That was the most desperate act of faith, entirely entrusting the child into the hands of God—the sovereign Lord of life—at the place where all human efforts had reached their end.

And by guiding that reed basket right before Pharaoh’s princess, God initiates an astonishing reversal of salvation, safely raising the spiritual leader who would later redeem the entire nation right in the middle of Pharaoh’s palace. Upon the river of deepest sorrow and abandonment, God’s plan of redemption was already flowing powerfully.

Could you do the same if you were in those shoes? In a similar account, when God told Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, could we offer our own children to God just like Abraham did? I am truly a sinner who cannot follow Abraham’s faith, nor the faith of the mother who had to send Moses away to the river, by even a single fraction.

Hardships in the News Today and People Seeking God

The groaning of the people in Egypt across hundreds of years is by no means an ancient story preserved only in the Bible from thousands of years ago. Watching that scene, the reality of the era we live in today overlapped intensely in my thoughts.

Look at the news we encounter every day. Refugees weeping after losing their homes and families amid the endless fire of war, and people despairing because they cannot secure a single daily meal due to famine and economic collapse, are bursting forth from every corner of the world.

Amid those scenes of severe anguish, some people will reach out their hands toward God, others will cry out seeking Allah of Islam, others will seek whatever gods they believe in, and still others will lament, questioning where God is. Even if the names and images of the gods each person calls upon differ, the common essence running beneath their depths is the desperate cry—just like the slaves of Egypt in the past—flinging toward an absolute Being in extreme despair: “Deliver us.”

This does not mean we should look at the people of Israel in the Bible and learn a secular diligence to “live even more tenaciously in our jobs just like they did in Egyptian labor.” It means that looking at those countless sighs and groans bursting from all over the world, we must look at the suffering souls of today’s world with the same eyes of grieving compassion with which God looked upon the afflictions of His people.

“When You Believe”: The Faith That Trusts in God Who Works Even in Despair

In the reality of that pain, there is another immortal, classic song that lifts us back up. It is a song that is truly grace-filled right next to “Deliver Us”—”When You Believe,” sung by Moses’ sister Miriam and his wife Tzipporah together with the people of Israel.

Facing the journey of the Exodus, when they tremble in fear blocked by the massive Red Sea ahead and pursued by Pharaoh’s advancing army from behind, they sing that miracles happen when there is faith:

“There can be miracles when you believe Though hope is frail, it’s hard to kill Who knows what miracles you can achieve When you believe, somehow you will”

What grace-filled lyrics these are! The genuine spiritual insight this song gives is that God’s work of salvation does not start from human calculations or the improvement of circumstances, but begins precisely from the very moment we start to fully trust and believe in God even in the midst of despair.

Even though the news we face daily is filled with accounts of war, famine, and endless hardships, and things appear dismal to the point where the road ahead is invisible, God, the sovereign Ruler of history, has never let go of His hands. We must firmly believe that God unchangingly loves this suffering world even at this very moment, and just as He prepared Moses in the past, He continues to call and use other people of faith to brighten the darkness of today. Rather than growing discouraged because the situation looks bleak, what we need is the faith to move forward trusting the faithful God who is still at work in unseen places.

Comparative Analysis: Pharaoh’s Worldly Empire vs. God’s Redemptive History

Not a Grand Hero, but a “Little Moses” Who Saves One Person Around Us

God used a prepared man—Moses—to deliver the people of Israel who were crying out in their pain. By calling the frail Moses, who had laid down all his personal strength and pride while living as a shepherd in the wilderness for forty years, God accomplished a mighty work of salvation.

Then, how should we who live today receive this history? God does not demand that every single one of us become a grand leader who leads millions of people and rescues an entire nation like Moses. Of course, because those whom God uses in such ways have their respective callings, each person has distinct assignments to carry out on this earth.

Look around us right now. In our families, there are family members weeping inside while carrying heavy burdens unknown to others; friends despairing over anxiety about the future and practical failures; and fellow believers in our church communities groaning secretly because of loneliness and wounds. They, too, are precious individual souls whom God loves to the point of laying down His life, and God’s people who are quietly crying out toward heaven at this very moment: “Deliver me.”

It is completely fine even if we cannot perform miracles like parting the Red Sea. Quietly approaching their side to hold their hands, genuinely listening to their sighs and pain, and conveying God’s warm gaze and love—that small step is precisely the sacred mission of Moses that God has entrusted to us today.

With what kind of heart will we step toward that crying person around us today? I earnestly hope that we can become living conduits who embrace God’s heart and help restore that single, precious soul.

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Explore More Screen Devotions:

• 🎬 Movies: Explore Other Faith-Based Film Reflections
• 🌍 Documentaries: Biblical Perspectives on Real-World Issues

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Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.