If someone asked you to commit a crime, would you? Probably not, right?
What if it was a government leader? Then would you? Still no?
What if that government leader threatened you with consequences if you didn't commit the crime? Maybe now you’d do it?
Those difficult questions are the context of the story that we're studying in this devotional. With this post I start a new devotional series through the book of Exodus. In Exodus chapter 1 someone has to make an exceedingly difficult choice: obey a government leader and commit evil, or disobey the government leader and perhaps face the consequences. What we'll find is that their difficult choice gives us the opportunity to learn an important principle for living as God wants us to live. Watch the devotional video here, or keep reading.
Travel with me backwards in time. First we travel 2023 years backwards through the entirety of what is now known as the Common Era (CE, formerly known as AD). Then we enter the period now known as Before the Common Era (BCE, formerly known as BC), continuing another 1600 years backwards, across the Atlantic Ocean into what is today called the Middle East. We travel to Northern Africa, to be precise, to the country of Egypt. As we swoop down, we can see astounding construction projects underway. Huge pyramids, a sphinx, palatial buildings with giant statues. We can also see that it is slaves building the projects, whipped into obedience by masters.
This is the historical context of the book of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, which we begin to study in this devotional. Exodus is a Greek word, which might surprise you because the original book of Exodus was written in Hebrew. The Hebrew name of the book is Shemoth, which means “these are the names.” An odd title for a book, isn’t it? Until we read the first few words of the book of Exodus, “these are the names.” In Hebrew the book is simply titled by its first few words. We call it Exodus because that word much better summarizes the content of the book. Exodus, in English as in Greek, means “a movement outward, an exit.” When the translators of the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, gave it that name, it stuck. The story of the book of Exodus is the story of the Israelite nation moving out from slavery in Egypt toward freedom in the Promised Land of Canaan.
But we need to back up a bit and remember how the nation of Israel got in this awful situation. Here’s a super-brief summary of the book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. In Genesis, God creates the world, and people rebel, so he floods the world, saving only faithful Noah and his family. They begin to repopulate the earth, and God reaches out to one of Noah’s descendants, Abram, calling Abram to move to the land of Canaan. Though Abram and his wife Sarai are old, way past child-bearing years, God covenants with them to make their family into a great nation through whom he will bless the whole world, if they will follow him.
It seems inconceivable (pun not intended), but Abram and Sarai obey. Along the way they commit a series of blunders, yet God keeps his promise, changes their names to Abraham and Sarah, and gives them a son, Isaac. Isaac eventually marries Rebekah, and they have twin sons, Esau and Jacob. Jacob, the younger, sneakily steals the birthright and blessing that was customarily due Esau, because Esau was the elder. God’s covenant with Abraham, which had first passed to Isaac, now passes to Jacob. In a dream, God restores Jacob and gives him the new name, Israel.
Like his grandfather, Israel himself has lots of hi-jinks, multiple wives, and yet God blesses him with twelve sons. His favorite son, Joseph, is a pariah among his brothers, and they sell him into slavery. Joseph is eventually purchased by a powerful Egyptian. Through many years of faithful service and a supernatural ability to interpret dreams, Joseph rises to become second in command of all Egypt.
When famine hits the region hard, Joseph’s brothers travel to Egypt because, through Joseph’s wisdom and God’s blessing, Egypt is stocked with food. People from all over come to Egypt to purchase grain. Joseph stuns his brothers, revealing himself to them, inviting them to move their father and the whole family to plenty and security Egypt. The family moves to Egypt and begins to prosper under the leadership of Joseph. That brings us to Exodus.
The traditional view states that Israel’s great leader, Moses, who we will meet later in this devotional, wrote the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. A more contemporary view evaluates the language and structure of the books, believing them more likely authored much later, perhaps during Israel’s time of exile about 1000 years after the events of Exodus. There is also much debate about the veracity of the stories in Exodus. Because we cannot say for sure, this study will primarily focus on the theological content of the stories and laws.
That brings me to one more important point. Exodus tells the story of how God, flowing from the covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, now further ratifies that covenant with their descendants, the Twelve Tribes of Israel. As we learned in a recent sermon series through Ezekiel, and a devotional series through Jeremiah, Israel broke that covenant. God then makes a new covenant with his church mediated through Jesus’ sacrificial gift of love in his birth, life, death and resurrection.
In other words, we Christians, the church, are not bound by the terms of the old covenant, the Mosaic Law. We are bound by the terms of the new covenant, as taught in the documents of the New Testament. We do not have to follow any of the laws we will study. But these laws teach us the heart of God. That’s how we can discern theological principles from the laws, and those theological principle we can and should apply to our lives now. As we study the story of Israel through the events of Exodus, we will be searching for those theological principles. Let’s being the search!
Exodus 1, verses 1-10, lists the names of the twelve sons of Israel who moved to Egypt, describing how they grew into a nation, until the generation of Joseph and his brothers passed away. Perhaps most importantly to this story, eventually a new king came to power, a king who did not know Joseph. As we learn in verse 14, the Egyptian title for king is “Pharaoh.” All this new Pharaoh can see is a potential threat if the Israelites continue growing in number.
The Pharaoh’s solution? Slavery. In verses 11-14, the Egyptians oppress the Israelites into forced labor, and over time the Israelites built cities for the king. Interestingly, we learn that that more the Egyptians oppress the Israelites, the more the Israelites multiply. The Pharaoh’s solution is not working like he intended.
Pharaoh decides an even more extreme solution is required. Infanticide. In verses 15-22, Pharaoh commands the Hebrew midwives to kill all newborn Hebrew baby boys. The Hebrew midwives fear God, refusing to obey Pharaoh and then they lie to him about it. As a result, the Israelites continued to multiply. Now Pharaoh doubles down, saying to all his people that they need to participate in the Hebrew infanticide, making sure that all Israelite baby boys are thrown into the Nile River.
The narrative continues in chapter 2, moving from the wide angle of Pharaoh’s interaction with the nation of Israel, to a focus on one Israelite family. A man from the Israelite tribe of Levi (one of Israel/Jacob’s 12 sons) marries a Levite woman, and she becomes pregnant. Of course, it’s a boy. The woman hides the baby for the first three months of his life, keeping him out of the watchful eye of any Egyptians. But she knows that won’t last. She puts the baby in a waterproof basket and floats it on the Nile River, asking her daughter, the infant’s older sister, to watch over the baby. She floated the basket near the place where Pharaoh’s daughter bathed. Pharaoh’s daughter saw the basket, and she felt sorry for the baby, even though she fully knew the baby was a Hebrew boy.
Just then the baby’s sister revealed herself, and she volunteered to get the baby’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter allowed the mother to nurse the baby, and even paid her to do so! Imagine that, mothers. Getting paid to nurse your own baby. Eventually, when he was old enough, the boy moved back into Pharaoh’s daughter’s home, and she named him “Moses.”
In this extraordinary situation, the baby who should have been killed was saved. Both the Hebrew midwives and Pharaoh’s own daughter disobeyed him. God honored their disobedience, and the boy was saved.
Can we say that disobedience is the theological principle in this story? No. Instead we read in chapter 1, verse 17 that the Hebrew wives feared God. The word “fear” carries the idea of honor. God honors those who honor him. This idea of reciprocal honor does not mean that God makes things perfect and easy for those who honor him. In the story of the Israelites, we need to remember that the context is brutal slavery and infanticide.
What is so astounding is that in the middle of that horror, still the Hebrew midwives feared God. They could easily have given up hope, assuming that the God of their long-gone ancestors was fake or had abandoned them. The era of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was a distant memory. Maybe the stories of God’s covenant with those patriarchs was also a distant memory. Maybe it made more sense to start worshiping the gods of the Egyptians who clearly had the wealth and power in the area.
But no, the Hebrew midwives were faithful to Yahweh, the covenantal God of their ancestral family. They chose an act of civil disobedience because the Pharaoh was asking them to cross a line into murder. They Hebrew midwives said No. They honored God, feared God, and protected the baby boys. The Hebrew midwives took a massive risk in their civil disobedience. If found out, they could have lost their lives. In my view, their lie to Pharaoh, that the Hebrew women gave birth so fast the midwives couldn’t get there in time to kill the babies, is very weak. Why didn’t Pharaoh just say, “So what? Go kill all the baby boys now!”? We don’t know. Likely there was more cultural dynamics at play. Perhaps Pharaoh, a politician, didn’t want to be known as a baby killer. He surely had good reason to continue to grow the male population of slaves for his building projects. We don’t know why Pharaoh doesn’t seem to follow through. We also don’t know that he didn’t.
What we do know is that the Hebrew midwives honored God, and God honors them. I hope you and I won’t ever be asked to kill babies for our government. This is not voluntary abortion, by the way. This was forced infanticide. So we would not be interpreting this story correctly if we tried to make a connection to the contemporary abortion debate in our country. There is no doubt, however, that God is a God of life.
Instead, it seems to me that it is best to focus on the theological principle of fearing God. What does it mean for us to fear God in the days, hours and minutes of our lives? At work. At school. At home. With our finances. With our time. Fearing God means that we want to honor God in all things. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 10:31, “So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God.” To fear God we might need more than an intention to do so. We will likely need accountability. Gather with a small group of people regularly who ask each other, “How are you doing fearing God?”