God alone is the seat of absolute sovereignty. To serve Pharaoh without rest or remuneration is slavery, the most abysmal form of human degradation. To serve God is to enhance human dignity. The experience of bondage in Egypt, a system of human exploitation without bounds, prepared Israel to offer the world a conception of human authority drastically restricted. For the Torah, absolute power is the prerogative of God alone, before whom all human beings are equal.
Theocracy blunts the arrogance of human power.
The only form of kingship tolerated is that of a constitutional monarch, who is to be a lifelong student of God's law, and to rule without the trappings of power such as great wealth, many wives and a plethora of horses. Nor was he above criticism. The prophets dared repeatedly to excoriate his acts of excess and injustice. The kind of supreme and sacred power personified by Pharaoh was anathema to the Torah. Suspicious of every instance of concentrated power in human hands, the Torah slightly deprecates the portrait of Moses.