The book of Genesis ended with abundance. “God’s chosen people [were] safely settled in the richest area of Egypt with plenty of food in a time of famine.”[1] Jacob was buried in Canaan. Joseph, the great Savior of his family, was laid to rest after promising that one day his people would return to the Promised Land. All was well. The book of Exodus opens recounting how the descendants of Jacob and Joseph multiplied.
Our narrative today begins with a new king coming to power. This Pharoah did not know Joseph and the story of provision he brought to the land.[2] Without knowing the source of his blessing, the favored family of Jacob and Joseph became an oppressed subgroup within Pharoah’s empire.[3]
A Reading from Exodus 1:8-22. Listen and hear the Word of the Lord:
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.”
Response
One: Holy Wisdom, Holy Word
All: Thanks be to God!
The Israelites were numerous, but they were not free. They weren’t a nation; they were living under the Pharoah’s reign. The Israelites had become too numerous for the Pharoah’s comfort level. This people’s fruitfulness had become Pharoah’s greatest fear because this Pharoah did not know the story of Joseph, who served the God who brought provision to an entire nation.
There is nothing in the text that hints at the Israelites having a rebellious spirit, yet Pharoah’s fear of an uprising became the driving force for a series of oppressive policies. Our narrative begins then as a story of what those in power will do to maintain their rule.
Pharoah’s first move was a flex of his dominion. Pharoah worked the Israelites even harder. They weren’t an immigrant workforce; they were an enslaved people. But the more Pharoah pressed down upon the Israelites, the more they multiplied.
Pharoah ruled with fear and an iron fist, ruthlessly trying to control the people just enough to maintain the current state of affairs. He would gladly choose death to regulate the existing conditions.
Power was maintained with no regard for life. And where there is no regard for life, you can edge closer and closer toward violence until you cannot see your existence apart from it. Systemic oppression was not enough.
Pharoah’s second move was more violent and illogical than his first. His earlier attempts at population control failed, so he simply introduced harsher measures of cruelty. As Pharoah saw the security of his state slipping through his fingers, he called upon two midwives to do his political dirty work. Though you can only legislate fear if your constituents are content to maintain the status quo.
He called upon the midwives, Shiprah and Puah, and decreed away the nationless people who threatened the balance of his kingdom.
Who were these women? Shiprah and Puah, the named women who defied an unnamed Pharoah. By their vocation they were entrusted to bring life; by the Pharoah they were ordered to bring death. But these pesky tricksters were cunning and courageous.
When questioned about their inability to follow Pharoah’s orders, they used Pharoah’s own stereotype of the Hebrew people against him, “They are just too vigorous, those women. They give birth even before we can arrive.”
An oppressive policy upended by two faithful women who feared God, but not the Pharoah. Pharoah’s own fear was played out in his attempt to maintain power. It was a stark contrast to the midwives’ fear of God. In the face of Pharoah’s dangerous paranoia, the midwives defied the despotic decree.
And Divine deliverance of an enslaved people crept onto the scene in an act of rebellious midwifery. The women let the boys live. In the two least powerful people imaginable, the ones sitting at the birthing stool, hearing the cries of the Hebrew women, God’s agency is enacted.
Here, we can start to see a revolutionary picture of where God’s power starts to work in community.
So often we think of God’ sovereignty as the mighty hand of God; the One who intervenes and has the power to alter forces of nature. This, however, is a different picture of our mighty God. It is a more subversive power, creeping in quietly, in the everyday work of the women - protecting the Hebrew baby boys by the power of their loving hands.
These two women are a portrait of God’s sovereignty coming by way of compassion and care. We mustn’t mistake this kind of care for weakness. For even a royal edict could not defeat the resilient strength of compassion emerging into existence by women’s work.
On the opposite end of the power spectrum from the mighty Pharoah, Shiprah and Puah yielded to the power and potential of God. The midwives did more than let the girls live. By the work of their hands, they looked death in the face and continued to usher in life.
They did not settle for the status quo. They did the next right thing. And the next right thing brought an entire people one movement closer to justice and liberation.
There is no status quo in God’s kin-dom, but there is always movement toward justice and liberation for all people.
That means there is also a constant upending of human power. There is always the potentiality of community. There is forever the work of love.
Shiprah and Puah two women who helped to upend Pharoah’s power. Two women who honored the potentiality of community by letting the boys live. Two women who did the work of love in the lowliest, messiest of places – at the birthing stool of the Hebrew women.
The birthing stool is not a phrase we see often in the text. It is found here in Exodus 1:16 and also in Jeremiah 18:3; where it is rendered, “potter’s wheel.”
In Jeremiah, it is, perhaps, translated in this way to point toward design, this thing being made of two stones or discs, just like the form of the birthing stool in Exodus.
But the similarity of function cannot be missed. The birthing stool and the potter’s wheel each bring forth something new.
The prophet Jeremiah observed the potter’s wheel as a metaphor for humanity being the very work of God’s hands. We, who are the beloved of the Divine are shaped, molded and brought into being by the potter.
Even when misshapen, messy, and imperfect, we are beautiful masterpieces of the creative Divine – vessels of beauty and love.
The potter’s wheel and the birthing stool - both messy business that welcome something new into the world.
At the birthing stool we will hear the cries of transition and weep with joy as love emerges! Do we have it in us to kneel humbly down to do this work? Can we allow our hands to be covered in the messiness required?
Do we dare to be as cunning and courageous as Shiprah and Puah?
We are too often satisfied with the status quo that is content to choose death without regard for life. We take a Pharoah stance at the expense of our neighbors. Delusions of grandeur sway us toward ruthlessness. We do not honor life.
We do not honor life when we are violently sacrificing black bodies on our streets and children in our classrooms.
We do not honor life when we legislate death for our trans siblings.
We do not honor life when we offer disabled bodies on the altar of capitalism.
We do not honor life when we regulate the womb but make a way for children to labor in factories and children to marry.
We are content enough in the security of the status quo, even when it edges us closer and closer to violence until we cannot imagine our existence apart from it.
But our mighty God of compassion and care looks death square in the face and ushers in life. Life, even for us: misshapen, messy, and imperfect.
Maybe the next right thing for us is simply finding ourselves amidst the messy work of honoring life. Let them live.
By the work of our hands, hope meets reality. So, may we find ourselves in all the lowliest of spaces – upending power, creating community, and doing the work of love. And may we go with the courage of Shiprah and Puah to do the next right thing in our own act of rebellious midwifery. Amen.
[1] https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2020-08-17/exodus-18-210-2/
[2] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-21/commentary-on-exodus-18-22-21-10
[3] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-21/commentary-on-exodus-18-22-21-10