individuals or groups cannot normally know why their particular suffering is so severe or has gone on as long as it has.31 The second challenge (v. 10) involves Moses’ past: how could one who tried and failed to help his fellow Israelites on an individual scale forty years before (2:11–14) now, in his late years, be God’s choice as deliverer of the whole nation? Verse 7 summarizes the plight of the Israelites in their forced labor with four terms: “misery … crying out … slave drivers … suffering.”32