Drawn From the Water—Lectionary Reflection for Pentecost 13A/Proper 16A (Exodus 1-2)
Exodus 1:8-2:10 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
8 Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13 The Egyptians subjected the Israelites to hard servitude 14 and made their lives bitter with hard servitude in mortar and bricks and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.
15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. 18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this and allowed the boys to live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” 20 So God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very strong. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”
2 Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. 2 The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. 3 When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. 4 His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.
5 The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. 10 When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
************
As the
Revised Common Lectionary moves on from the Genesis story to the Book of
Exodus, the message of blessings remains present. God promised Abraham to make
his descendants a blessing to the nations. That descent was always rather
tenuous. But, we moved along from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob and then to his
sons, the most prominent being Joseph, the son who got sold into slavery and then
rose to become the second most powerful figure in the Egyptian Empire, second
only to Pharaoh. Because of his position in the imperial government, he was
able to provide a blessing to his family (Genesis 45). This involved the family
leaving behind their current home in Canaan and setting up housekeeping in
Egypt. As we turn to Exodus, which is where we’ll be for several weeks, the
timeline has jumped about four hundred years. The Book of Exodus begins by
recounting the names of the “sons of Israel” (sons of Jacob) who had come to
Egypt at Joseph’s invitation. During the years that followed the family of
Israel (Jacob) grew strong and filled the land (Ex. 1:1-7). In other words,
this group of immigrants, who were members of Joseph’s family, folks Joseph had
been empowered by Pharaoh to invite to make a home in Egypt, had become a
threat to Pharaoh’s power (or so he had come to believe).
The
first reading from Exodus begins in Exodus 1:8 and continues through Chapter 2,
verse 10. The central figure in the Exodus story that follows (besides God) is
revealed in chapter 2. I should note that God never appears in this opening
segment, and really doesn’t appear until Moses goes into the desert. I titled
the reflection “Drawn from the Water” because the one who would ultimately serve
as God’s agent of rescue so the call to bless the nations could continue will
be drawn from the water by the daughter of the same Pharaoh who feared the
children of Israel. But first, we need to set the stage for the revealing of
Moses, the child drawn from the water.
The
reading from Exodus begins by telling us that “Now a new king arose over Egypt
who did not know Joseph” (Ex. 1:8). That earlier regime that had welcomed the
people of Israel to come and dwell in the land of Egypt was a thing of the past.
Now a new king sat on the throne, and this king had no memory of Joseph nor
loyalty to Joseph’s family and their descendants. This king was not what you
would call a person committed to welcoming immigrants into the land. In fact, this
new king feared that this group of former immigrants which had over time grown
quite large threatened to overwhelm the native Egyptians. Pharaoh feared that
these folks could become so strong they would become more powerful than the
Egyptians themselves. You might call Pharaoh an early adopter of the “Great
Replacement Theory,” a theory being bandied about today by politicians and
anti-immigrant activists across North America and Europe.
I’m not
going to go into detail when it comes to the nature of the Great Replacement Theory,
which is an expression of white nationalism that has become quite popular among
some folks here in North America. Those who have embraced this conspiracy
theory often fear that non-European and non-Christian immigrants will dilute
the white Christian majority, thus undermining the dominance of white
Christians (especially white evangelical Protestants). Of course, anti-immigrant
sentiment is not new in the United States, or for that matter further north in
Canada. But whatever its foundations, perhaps reflecting on the opening
chapters of the Book of Exodus can provide us with a lens to examine the
current cultural/political situation here at home.
As we
turn to the Book of Exodus, having spent significant time in the Book of
Genesis, starting in Genesis 12 with the call of Abraham, a calling that
promised to bring blessings to the nations through his descendants. We watched
as Abraham and Sarah dealt with that calling since they didn’t have children of
their own. Eventually, Isaac was born, but not before Sarah’s Egyptian slave
Hagar bore Abraham a son named Ishmael. After Isaac and Rebekkah were married,
they had two sons, the younger of the two being Jacob. He had twelve sons, one
of whom was named Joseph, through whom an invitation to dwell in the land of Egypt
was extended. At each stage along the way, the descendants of Abraham served as
a blessing to the nations they encountered. However, after some four centuries
in Egypt, a ruler arose who didn’t remember the gifts given to the nation by
Joseph. All he knew was that this nation within a nation was getting too large
and too strong. So, what should he do about this situation?
Here in
the opening chapter of Exodus, Pharaoh has a conference with his advisors to
determine what to do with this growing people. Pharaoh wants to devise a shrewd
plan lest they side with the empire’s enemies and fight against them. Perhaps
the fear of escape is related to Israel’s possible role in aiding Egypt’s
enemies. The solution is forced labor—that is chattel slavery—to build cities
for the empire. If they’re going to dwell within the borders of the empire,
then they will need to be put to work to build its infrastructure. So, the
Pharaoh had them put to work building two supply cities—Pithon and Rameses (the
latter being named after the reigning Pharaoh). While there is evidence that
the nineteenth dynasty in Egypt did undertake building projects like the one
described here, attempting to date this story is probably a fool’s errand.
While this act of state policy was intended to limit the growth of the group’s
population, it failed to achieve its purpose because, despite the ruthlessness
of this policy, the more the Egyptians oppressed the Israelites, the more they
multiplied. So, as Walter Brueggemann notes that “the narrative unobtrusively
suggests that the power of blessing is at work in this community, and the
empire is helpless either to slow it or preempt it for its own ends” [New Interpreter’s Bible, 1:695].
When
Pharaoh’s plan of oppressive forced labor/slavery did not slow down the growth
of the emerging nation of Israel, he decided to do something even more drastic.
Pharaoh called in the Hebrew midwives, whose names are Shiprah and Puah, and
told them that when a Hebrew woman gave birth if it was a boy, they should take
it and kill it. Now, I thought I might stop here before we move on to note that
the author of Exodus names these two heroic women, who have been charged by the
local ruler to kill all the boy babies born to Hebrew women. They could spare
the girls, but not the boys, whom Pharaoh saw as more of a threat to him. Now
Shiprah and Puah face a dilemma. Do they obey Pharaoh and kill the baby boys,
or do they follow the ways of God and refuse to take this action? The fact that
the two women are named should be a clue that they chose God over Pharaoh.
These women are also shrewd. Remember that Pharaoh wanted to come up with a
shrewd plan to stifle the growth of the Israelite people, but these women are
even shrewder than Pharaoh.
So, when the midwives, who feared God more than Pharaoh, didn’t follow
Pharaoh’s instructions, thereby saving the boys, the king summoned them and
asked why they hadn’t killed the boys. They told Pharaoh that the Hebrew women
aren’t like Egyptian women. They’re much more vigorous, so when it comes to giving
birth, they have the babies before the midwives could arrive. This was an act
of civil disobedience or rebellion. We’re not told how Pharaoh responded to
their defiance, but we’re told that God blessed them and the people of Israel,
who kept on having babies. God even gave the midwives children because of their
obedience to the ways of God. Of course, Pharaoh wasn’t one to give up easily.
If the midwives couldn’t be trusted to kill the boys born to Hebrew women, then
he would call upon all of the people of Egypt, commanding them to throw every
baby boy born to the Hebrews in the river to drown, though the girls could
live. Apparently, Pharaoh didn’t think women could be a threat. Little did he
know!
Even as
Shiphrah and Puah resisted Pharaoh’s attempt to kill all the newly born boys in
their role of being midwives, one family chose to resist Pharaoh’s decrees in a
rather unique way. When this particular couple from the tribe of Levi, Amram
and Jochebed, had a baby boy (they already had two older children not affected
by the decree: Miriam and Aaron. We learn their names in Exodus 6:20 and Numbers26:59), instead of letting the Egyptians kill the child they hid him. When Jochebed
could no longer safely hide the child, she and her daughter put the baby in a
basket and set him adrift in a spot across from where Pharaoh’s daughter went
to bathe in the Nile. The child’s sister, Miriam, accompanied the basket until
it was discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter. When Pharaoh’s daughter, who according
to Jewish tradition, was named Bithiah, opened the basket and saw the baby, she
felt pity and compassion for the child even though the child, being a Hebrew, was
a foreigner. When Miriam recognized that Pharaoh’s daughter seemed to have
compassion for the child, she approached Bithiah and suggested she could find a
Hebrew nursemaid for the child (that would be Jochebed). Bithiah agreed to
Miriam’s solution, since knowing Pharaoh’s decrees she knew that across the
river would be numerous women, who as Kelley Nikondeha points out, had “full
breasts but empty arms. Any one of them could nurse this boy she now held” [Defiant,
pp. 66-67]. Pharaoh’s daughter also knew Pharaoh’s decree and that as an
Egyptian she was supposed to comply with the order. Nevertheless, “resistance
rose in her as the baby let out another cry. She knew she stood knee-deep in
the rescue operation, in the current of defiance. She looked at the boy, then back
at the girl. ‘Go!” she consented” [Defiant, p. 67]. Thus, Moses was
drawn from the water and set on a course that would continue God’s work of
blessing the people of Israel and its neighbors.
The boy
stayed with his mother until weaned. At that point Pharaoh’s daughter adopted
him as her son, naming him Moses, because she drew him out of the water. So,
although he was born a Hebrew, Moses was now an Egyptian. Since Pharaoh’s daughter
adopted him, he was also Pharaoh’s grandson. This made him a person of
importance in the empire. He could have easily spent the rest of his life
serving the empire with little thought about his own people. But, of course,
that is not how the story turns out.
This
was agreed upon, and then when the child was weaned, he was returned to
Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him as her son, calling him Moses, because she
drew him out of the water. That meant Moses grew up as the grandson of Pharaoh,
a person of importance, even as Joseph had been a person of importance in
Egypt. More importantly, the covenant community continued to live on because of
his position. As the story continues, others will emerge, through whom God will
work so that the covenant people will be saved (through water).
Kelley Nikondeha reminds us that adoption is an important theme in the biblical
story. In her book Adopted: The Sacrament of Belonging in a Fractured World,
a book that came out before her book Defiant: What the Women of ExodusTeach Us about Freedom, she points us to Moses’ adoption by Pharaoh’s
daughter and its implications:
Bithiah received Moses as an unexpected gift. He, in turn received maternal love from her as he grew and matured. His Egyptian mother, who knew him to be Hebrew utterly other and different from herself, offered him daily care and unequivocal acceptance. And his dual identities became a pivotal gift that God empowered for a future act of emancipation. (Adopted, p. 52).
Moses would hear God’s call to lead the people of Israel
because of the solidarity that existed between two women, a relinquishing
mother, and a receiving mother. This is a reminder that God will use responsive
people, even if they live outside the covenanted people. So, by adopting Moses,
and giving him a home in the household of Pharaoh, Bithiah, Pharaoh’s daughter,
joined in the resistance movement that would in time free the people of Israel
from bondage. While her father promulgated an ethnocentric vision of fear of
the foreigner, Bithiah didn’t buy into the myth that Israel would or could
overwhelm the Egyptian people. She didn’t buy Pharaoh’s fear-laden message that
these Israelites would dilute the nation’s identity or conspire with Egypt's
enemies. Bithiah simply saw a child who needed a home, and she offered the
child a home, even if that meant defying Pharaoh. God used that responsiveness
to emancipate God’s people from Pharaoh’s grasp.
In an age where forms of Christian nationalism, white supremacy, and fear of
the other run rampant in our society, this story has much to offer us. It
offers us a lens through which we can view the “foreigner.” Perhaps it’s the child
of the despised “foreigner” who will be used by God to further God’s ultimate
purposes.
Comments