Scripture: Exodus 1
Sermon: Unremarkable Pilgrims
Topics: Midwives, Resistance, Pilgrims
Preached: November 10, 2002 am Woodlawn
Rev. Mike Abma
Exodus 1
These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: 2Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,3Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.5The total number of people born to Jacob was seventy. Joseph was already in Egypt. 6Then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and that whole generation. 7But the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.
8 Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9He said to his people, ‘Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10Come, 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.’ 11Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labour. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. 12But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, 14and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labour. 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 boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.’ 17But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. 18So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, ‘Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?’ 19The 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.’20So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. 21And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 22Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, ‘Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.’
This is the Word of the Lord
Thanks be to God
INTRODUCTION
The first time I remember running into the names Shiphrah and Puah was during a Bible Knowledge exam at Calvin Seminary. That is an exam you take when you enter Seminary to remind you how much you do NOT know about the Bible. In contained such questions as: is Tekoa a) north, b) south c) east d) west of Jerusalem? The question for Shiphrah and Puah probably read something like, “were they a) midianite kings b) Israelite midwives c) Philistine towns d) names of Balaam and his servant’s donkeys. At the time, I really had no idea whether Shiphrah and Puah were the names of midwives or donkeys. They had never been part of a Sunday School lesson, or a memorable sermon. Shiphrah and Puah were unkown and unremarkable.
And yet, these two women play such a remarkable role in this delightful yet daring first chapter of Exodus. This first chapter has 3 natural sections. Shiphrah and Puah appear in the third, so let’s begin by looking at the first 2.
CONTEXT
The first section, verses 1-7, begins with something of a tie to Genesis. It puts Joseph and all Jacob’s family in Egypt but it also establishes that Joseph’s generation is long gone. Joseph was as far removed from Shiphrah and Puah as John Calvin is removed from us – 350 years. But in that 350 years, the Israelites had multiplied exponentially. Some people will say that in those 350 years God was both absent and silent. Well, he may have been silent, but he certainly was not absent. That the Israelites were so numerous is clearly the beginning of fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham – that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the shore.
But what was a blessing for Israel was considered a curse to the Egyptian authorities. The section, starting at verse 8, introduces a king of Egypt who did not know Joseph and who presumably did not know the God of Joseph. This new king could only see this ethnic population as a threat to homeland security, as a potential threat to national security. What he felt he needed to do was contain them, control them, and eventually cut-down their numbers. His first policy initiative was to draft these Israelites into some huge public-works projects that had Babel-like proportions: the building of the storage cities of Pithom and Ramases. But the policy back-fired. The more the Israelites were oppressed, the more they multiplied. The Egyptians began to see every Israelite as a threat.
So Pharaoh decided to adopt a new policy – a secret policy, a covert strategy. He decided to call in the President and Vice-President of the Midwives Association. Although we are never told the names of the Egyptian Pharaoh, we are told the names of these midwives: Shiphrah and Puah. The text does not actually say they were Hebrew midwives. They could have been Egyptian midwives, but tradition has it they were Hebrew. Pharaoh gives these midwives a deadly assignment. With a King-Herod-like cold bloodedness, he tells them to kill every baby who is born a boy. At first reading, I thought this sounded like an odd strategy. Why kill off your potential workforce? But then I began to see the perverted logic of it. If you killed off a whole generation of male Israelites, all of the Israelite woman-power could be put to the Egyptian empire’s use.
The question was, would Shiphrah and Puah obey?
SHIPHRAH and PUAH’S PREDICAMENT
We may be quick to say, “Of course they wouldn’t. Who could obey such a demonic order?”
But pause a moment to think of who Shiphrah and Puah were and who Pharaoh was. Shiphrah and Puah were Israelite women who became expert midwives because they had helped their sisters, and cousinsS, and friends, deliver babies into this world. But Shiphrah and Puah themselves were childless. And you know that in the Biblical world, for a married woman to be childless was a great burden to bear. Children meant status, prestige, honor. You can only imagine how difficult it was for Shiphrah and Puah to celebrate every new child they helped bring into the world and yet not to be able to have children yourself.
So here were these Israelite midwives in front of one of the most powerful rulers on the planet at that time. To defy him could easily mean death. Their minds could have easily begun to rationalize ….was it so bad….look they didn’t have any children….at least the baby girls could live.
In the journey of life, in the path of pilgrimage, there come times in life that we come to a crossroad. Often in life there are many such crossroads, but in every life we come to a time and a place where a decision that must be made. The decision will test us and in many ways the decision will define us. At the time we may not realize how big a decision it is. At the crossroads we may take one path and as we walk down it everything may confirm it was the right road. But we may take the other path, and once we start down it we will suddenly realize it is the wrong path. Then we need the moral courage to stop and turn around.
In Wolfgang Gerlach’s recent book, And The Witnesses Were Silent, he explores what it was like in Germany in the 1920’s and 30’s. In hindsight we can be very critical of what happened. But we need to remember that people then did not know what we now know. People did not see Hitler as the embodiment of evil. What people saw was a political leader proclaiming a return to traditional values. What people saw was a leader standing firm on national security. And so they supported him. They wanted to be patriotic. They wanted to be loyal to their country. They wanted to be supportive of its leadership. But once they started down that road, few dared to stop, to say they made a mistake, and to turn around. By that time, their own lives were on the line. If you weren’t for the government, you were against it.
SHIPHRAH and PUAH’S MORAL POWER
Shiphrah and Puah knew the power of the King of Egypt. And no doubt they trembled in his presence. But they loved God more than they feared Pharaoh. When they were at the crossroads, they took the path they knew they had to take in order to sleep at night, in order to be able to look at themselves in the mirror in the morning. They didn’t kill one or two boys – the ones who seemed small and weak anyway — to try placate Pharaoh. No, they didn’t step one foot in the direction Pharaoh asked them to go. These feisty women dug in their heels and refused to kill any of the babies. And when Pharaoh summoned them to explain their non-compliance, they told a bold-faced lie: the Hebrew women are just like us, strong, vigorous, tough. Their babies are born before we even get there.
This of course reminds me of the question that comes in every Ethics 101 class: if you were hiding Jews during the second world war and the Gestapo knocked on your door asking if you were hiding Jews, would you lie?
Philip Hallie wrote a book about a small enclave of French Protestants in southeastern France who were able to house and help as many as 5000 Jews during the second world war. The book is called, Lest Innocent Blood be Shed and it is all about the village of Le Chambon, and the Pastor and his wife, Andre and Magda Trocme, who initiated and organized the whole rescue effort. What amazed me in reading that book is that long before the first Jewish refugee arrived at their doorstep, they were already resisting the Nazi regime in little ways. You may know that France fell to Germany in June of 1940. Southern France was ruled by what was called the Vichy Government led by Marshal Petain. It was fully cooperative with Germany. When this government ordered all schools to begin the day by saluting the flag with the stiff-armed, palm-down Fascist salute, the school in Le Chambon refused. When this government ordered all the churches to ring their bells on August 1, 1941 in support of Petain and the Vichy government, the church bells in Le Chambon were silent. And so, when the first Jewish refugee came and knocked on Magda Trocme’s kitchen door, Magda did what she knew she had to do, take this woman in and help her. She didn’t think of her safety or her family’s safety, she only thought of how to help this needy woman. And soon, more Jewish refugees started coming, and the Trocme’s organized all the people of Le Chambon to be ready to welcome them, ready to hide them, ready to risk their lives for them – for these complete strangers.
Years later, when asked “how did they dare do this”, they responded that they did not see the Jews as strangers, they saw them as brothers and sisters in need. When asked how they could lie to the authorities, they said they simply had to lie in order to save lives.
Shiphrah and Puah saved lives, and lied to do it. They also put their own lives on the line. But God was gracious. They lived. They not only lived, but God, who makes an appearance at verse 20, blesses each of them with children, with families of their own.
ORDINARY LIVES – EXTRAORDINARY MORALITY
Shiphrah and Puah are the first two in a whole list of women – Moses’s mother, Jochebed, Moses’s sister, Miriam, and even Pharaoh’s daughter — who end up saving lives, specifically the life of Moses.
These are all unremarkable pilgrims who nevertheless do remarkable things.
These are all people who recognize evil for what it is and refuse to cooperate.
We often forget that evil needs our cooperation, it feeds off of our complicity.
Can we become like them?
That, I believe, is more difficult than it may first seem to be.
Think about some of the things we seem to value most lately?
Don’t we talk a lot about safety, security, self-preservation?
Haven’t some of these values come to determine not only the agenda of those in political power, but even of our own personal choices?
These are the concerns that define what is a danger and what is not.
These are the values that define who is a risk and who is not.
But there is a real danger here.
What if self-preservation was the highest value for Shiphrah and Puah – would they have risked their lives doing what they did?
What if self-preservation was the highest value for Harriet Tubman – would she have risked her life saving those trapped in slavery?
What if self-preservation was the highest value for Rosa Parks – wouldn’t she simply have gotten up off of that bus seat in Montgomery Alabama in 1951 instead causing such a fuss?
When we walk down the path of life, we will all come to crossroads, crises, when someone in authority will ask us to do something we are not sure we should do. We can see both sides: one path going in one direction and one path in another. Things may seem foggy, things may seem hazy. We may not be absolutely sure which road to follow.
However, if we close our eyes and blindly obey the authority, we may be on a road that at first seems wider, safer, less difficult, less threatening. But we will be on the wrong road.
The other path will be narrow, difficult, uphill. It will mean not mean blind obedience. It will take keeping our eyes open, wide open, as we strain to the back of the one we are following. This path may very well demand our lives. But then again, we should know that. This is the path that leads to the cross.
Amen
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