The first public assembly ends not in riot but in worship. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan preserves the triple movement: the people believed, and heard that the Lord had remembered the sons of Israel, and that their bondage was manifest before Him; and they bowed themselves and worshipped.
Notice what the people respond to. Not the signs (the serpent-rod, the leprous hand, the water-blood). The Targum places the emphasis on the message, not the miracles. The slaves believe because they heard — because Aaron and Moses announced that God had remembered them.
The Theology of Divine Memory
The word remembered — zakhar — is load-bearing in the Exodus narrative. God had already remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jakob (Exodus 2:24). Now the slaves learn that the remembering has turned into action. The Targum adds a poignant clause: their bondage was manifest before Him. Every whip, every quota, every dead child — all of it visible in the heavenly court.
The sages of the Targumic tradition will later teach that divine memory is not passive recollection. When Scripture says God remembered, it means God is about to act. The slaves understand this intuitively, and their response is not celebration but prostration.
The takeaway: liberation begins when the oppressed learn they have not been forgotten. The Jewish imagination places worship — they bowed themselves and worshipped — at the very start of the Exodus, before a single plague has fallen, because the most radical act of a slave is to bow, voluntarily, to a God no taskmaster can reach.