Exodus 5:16 - Homiletics

Sufferings, even at the hand of lawful authorities, not always deserved.

"Thy servants are beaten; but the fault is in thine own people." Punishment often visits the wrong back. Kings commit injuries or follies, and their subjects suffer. Employers are greedy of gain, and their "hands" must work overtime, go without sleep, trench on the Sunday rest. Wholesale tradesmen adulterate goods, and retail traders are blamed and lose custom. Justice itself is often at fault, and punishes the wrong person—sometimes by a mere mistake, as when the wrong man is hanged for a murder; but sometimes also through a defect in the law itself which judges have to administer; as when Christians were delivered to the wild beasts for not sacrificing to the divinity of the emperor, or Protestants were burnt at the stake for denying transubstantiation. It is not to be assumed that the law is always right. The law of any country at any time is only the expression of the will of those who are in authority at the time, and has no more divinity or sacredness about it than they have. Those who transgress the law will, of course, be punished for it; but that fact proves nothing as to their good- or ill-desert. The greatest benefactors of mankind have had to set human law at defiance, and to endure its penalties. Their answer to the authorities who persecute them might constantly be, "Thy servants are beaten, but the fault is in thine own people."