Exodus 1:8
Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 9 "Look," he said to his
people, "the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with
them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join
our enemies, fight against us and leave the country." 11 So they put slave masters over them
to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store
cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the
more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians
came to dread the Israelites 13
and worked them ruthlessly. 14
They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all
kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians used them
ruthlessly. 15 The king of Egypt
said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 "When you help the Hebrew
women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy,
kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live." 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king
of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them,
"Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?" 19 The midwives answered Pharaoh,
"Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give
birth before the midwives arrive." 20
So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more
numerous. 21 And because the
midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. 22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all
his people: "Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile,
but let every girl live. 2:1 Now
a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw
that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket
for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and
put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. 5 Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to
the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw
the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He
was crying, and she felt sorry for him. "This is one of the Hebrew
babies," she said. 7 Then
his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew
women to nurse the baby for you?" 8
"Yes, go," she answered. And the girl went and got the baby's mother.
9 Pharaoh's daughter said to
her, "Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you." So
the woman took the baby and nursed him. 10
When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her
son. She named him Moses, saying, "I drew him out of the water."
With this
week's "First Families" reading from the Old Testament, a pretty
significant jump forward is made. A primary reason for this is due to the fact that
this is what happens in the text. At the close of Genesis, we're still within
three generations of Abraham. But within the first few verses of Exodus, we can
see the decades peeling away like something out of an old movie. Exodus 1:6
says: Now Joseph and all his brothers
and all that generation died, and then in 1:8 we read: Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. From
what the Bible says in other places, that "Then a new king" statement
did not happen immediately. God had revealed to Abraham way back in Genesis 15
that his descendants would languish and be mistreated in a 'foreign land' for
400 years: Then the LORD said to him,
"Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be
strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and
mistreated there. 14 But I will
punish the nation they serve as slaves (Gen 15:13-14). (See also Acts 7:6,
and Exodus 12:41). The point being, things did not go down the tubes overnight.
By the time Moses comes onto the scene, the Israelites have been in Egypt twice
as long as the United States has been an independent country.
And so, as our study
continues, this is one of the things we have to be aware of. The age of the
patriarchs is a distant memory; it's the stuff of campfire stories and ballads.
The covenant God of the universe showing up and speaking with Father Abraham,
making his will known to Isaac and Rebecca, blessing Jacob with heavenly
visions--all of this is in the past. For twenty generations now, Abraham's
extended family have lived and died, with each generation knowing more pain,
poverty, and maltreatment than the previous one.
As a side note it is
worth more than a little study to ponder the question of why God would allow
"his chosen people" to suffer such injustice and for so long. The
rabbis of every generation have wrestled with this. It is a common 'theodicy'
question. It goes against the grain. The knee-jerk reaction is to think that if
you're 'chosen' by God, then you must be on God's "good side" which
means that God deals you all of life's trump cards. It obviously has not worked
out that way. The great line from "Fiddler on the Roof" comes to
mind: (Tevye speaking to God) "I
know, I know, we are your chosen people. But once in a while, can't you choose
someone else?"
Theodicy questions abound. Why does God keep
them there for so long? Why under such miserable conditions? Even close
personal questions come into the mix, as from the narrative it's easy to
conclude that the very month, week, and even day that baby Moses is saved, other Israelite male babies are
likely killed (an echo that will be revisited in Matthew's gospel when baby
Jesus is spared wicked King Herod's wrath, but many others are slaughtered).
All that can really be known for sure is that REDEMPTION WILL HAPPEN, but God
is not overwhelming evil with divine might; God is not snapping his fingers and
making it all just go away in the blink of an eye. God isn't even making it
rain really hard on all of the bad people in the world while saving the only
good ones in an ark. Instead, he is very slowly, ... very lowly... working
behind the scenes, one person at a time.
This is what we see in
this week's passage. Individuals being inspired to swim against the stream of
evil; Hebrew midwives not following wicked Pharaoh's instructions; a Hebrew
mother subverting the plot by hatching a plan to save her son; even Pharaoh's
own daughter knowingly defying the
law of the land by rescuing the baby.
It's easy for us as
believers these days to get bummed out because we don't see spectacular 'light
shows' of God's divine power and intervention. We would prefer a personal
conversion story like St. Paul's, the ability to dialog with God like Abraham,
and visions like Jacob had. And failing any of that, we're all too quick to
turn our back on God and think he doesn't exist; it's all a bunch of folk-songs
and fairy tales that previous generations found comforting, but we know better
now.
As I consider a
"key verse" from this passage, I can't help but focus in on the very
last verse: 10 When the child grew older, she took him to
Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, "I
drew him out of the water." It has
such a baptismal ring to it....we're
very fortunate this weekend to be having a baptism in church. As already
mentioned, many things had to come together, many things had to happen in order
for Exodus 2:10 to come to pass, but in the story Moses gets his IDENTITY by
virtue of being drawn from out of the
water.
There may only have been one
"Moses" in the historical sense, but from a Christian theology
perspective there are MANY who have received their identity by being drawn from out of the water. The
existence and continuation of Baptism as a sacrament in Christ's church is,
itself, proof that God has no intention of giving up on his creation and that
the work of redemption WILL CONTINUE!
Cheers,
T.M.
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