Exodus 5:2 Second Temple Literature: Allegorical Interpretation, On Drunkenness, On Dreams & On the Posterity

[12] For this reason Moses also, when he is being established as one standing open before God, avoids Pharaoh, the symbol of dispersion, for he boasts saying that he knows not the Lord (Exod. 5:2). “Moses,” we read, “withdrew from Pharaoh’s presence and settled in the land of Midian” (Exod. 2:15), or in the examination of the things of nature, “and sat on the well,” waiting to see what draught God would send to quench the thirst of his soul in its longing for that which is good.

[19] Such was he who said, “who is He that I should obey Him,” and again, “I know not the Lord” (Exod. 5:2). In the first of these utterances he asserts that there is no God; in the second that even if there is a God he is not known to us, and this conclusion presupposes the assumption that there is no divine providence. For if there were such a thing as providence, God too would be known.

[77] Such are they who honour the father and what is his, but disregard the mother and what is hers. But the son who is at enmity with both his parents is shewn to us by Moses, when he represents him as saying, “I know not the Lord and I do not send Israel forth” (Exod. 5:2). Such a one, we may expect, will oppose both what right reason rules to be our duty to God and what training and education establish for our dealings with the world of creation; and thus he will work universal confusion.