The confrontation finally arrives. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the opening line with ceremonial weight: Thus saith the Lord, the God of Israel: Release My people, that they may make unto Me a festival in the wilderness.
Notice the formula. This is the prophetic herald pattern — thus saith the Lord — that will echo through every later prophet from Isaiah to Malachi. Moses and Aaron are not making a personal request of Pharaoh. They are delivering a diplomatic message from one sovereign to another.
The Ask Is Not Full Freedom
The demand is striking for its modesty. Not let my people go forever. Not release them from slavery. Just: let them make a festival in the wilderness. A religious pilgrimage. A brief liturgical absence.
The sages of the Targumic tradition read this with sharpness. God is not genuinely asking for a three-day furlough. He is testing Pharaoh's willingness to concede anything at all. If Pharaoh refuses even a festival, he has revealed that his rule is incompatible with any form of Israel's worship — and the escalation that follows is on his hands, not God's.
The Aramaic word for festival — chaga — evokes the three pilgrimage feasts: Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot. What Moses asks for in miniature (three days in the wilderness) the slaves will receive in full (forty years).
The takeaway: every great deliverance begins with a small request that the oppressor refuses. The Jewish imagination tracks tyranny by watching how rulers respond to modest religious demands. Pharaoh fails the first test. The plagues are what happens when a ruler will not grant his slaves even a pilgrimage.