IF It Is a Boy, Kill Him!

 Exodus 1: 8- 2:10

Charles J. Tomlin, April 25th, 2021

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership

Series: The Roots of God’s Justice 3/20

 

Exodus 1:8–2:11 (NRSV): 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 became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick 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 boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, 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 boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl 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 she took him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

 

 

Dear People of God, when Pharaoh told these midwives ‘to kill the boys’: it says that because ‘they feared God they did not do as the King of Egypt commanded’ (v.17) and ‘they let the boys live’.    

Certainly, this kind of defiance against authority goes against the normal way we think of we should respect authority, doesn’t it? 

In fact, psychiatry labels ODD, or “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” as a type of human dysfunction.   In most levels of ‘polite society’ the preference has been compliance rather than defiance.   The defiant person has been considered the ‘problem’ person, or the ‘trouble-maker’, while the compliant and conforming person are considered well-adjusted and most preferred.   Then most defiant and deviant are to  be institutionalized, imprisoned or sent away to fend for themselves.

 

WHY HAVE YOU DONE THIS? (18)

However, there are also exceptions too.   There are some people who don’t and won’t fit in, because they shouldn’t.  These defiant and deviant persons have had the courage to intentionally defy and disobey a way, rule, or a power that is unfair or unjust.  

In this opening in Exodus, two midwives, one named Shiphrah and the other, Puah, act in defiance of Pharaoh’s command.   Most interestingly, these women don’t do this because they are fearless, but because they ‘fear God’ more than they fear Pharaoh.   They have a certain ‘courage’ of their convictions about about God’s justice that they dare not give in the unjust order by a tyrant King.

As we consider how God requires us to do justice, the courage of these midwives points us to dare to defy human injustice too.   We see this same kind of daring deviance in the life of Jesus too,  when He began deliberately broke Sabbath law because it had become a way to overlook the needs of the poor, the oppressed, the sick, and the needy.   As the Christian movement took off in the book of Acts,  the first Christians intentionally continued to defy authority and preached Jesus explaining how they had to ‘obey God rather than men’ (Acts 5:29).    Without a spirit of defiance for what was right and just, there would have been no Jesus, no Christianity, and if you know your American history, there would have been no America either.  They didn’t call it the ‘Revolution’ for nothing.  

Of course, the most challenging question is when or how should authority be resisted or opposed.   While Jesus and early Christianity were disobey for specific the purpose of being obedient to God,  the normal way of being Christian is to show respect for authorities and powers who represent God’s own rule and authority in the world..  “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities,”  Paul wrote to the Romans,  ‘for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.’  In addition to this, Paul adds even more seriously, “Whoever resists authority, resists what God has appointed”  and they will, he says, ‘incur judgment’ (Rom. 13: 1-2). 

This kind of ‘respect’ for authority sounds as if it’s the Bible’s last word on the subject, until you turn over to Revelation 13, where Christians are suffering under the authority of the Beast who would demand not only allegiance, but also their worship.  Fearing great religious persecution in Rome because the beast who ‘makes war on the saints’ John must recommend the exact opposite of Paul saying, ‘if you must be taken captive, into captivity you go; if you must be killed with the sword, with the sword you must be killed.  This calls for the endurance of the saints’ (Rev. 13:10), John says.   

What John means is not only defiance, but faith may also call for the ultimate sacrifice of certain death.  Certainly, the example we have in Jesus Christ is not that of an Lord who came into the world riding on a Magic Carpet, but a Lord who came into Jerusalem riding humbly on a donkey to willingly die on a cross.   Jesus died defying the way of injustice in Israel and his love still confronts the injustice of this world with the call for humble obedience to God’s righteousness that opposes the haughty, destructive and unjust ways of human power and sin.   And because the world is still very much unrighteous, unjust and sinful, even as mostly compliant Christians, are sometimes required to take a path of defiance toward injustice today too.

Did you see the movie with that exact title, “Defiance”?   The James Bond actor, Daniel Craig starred in an 2008 war film based on the book of the same title.  It told the story of Jewish opposition forces, led by two Polish Jewish brothers who, after their parents were killed, hid in the deep forests of Belarus and recruited other Jewish men to attack Nazi’s Einsatzgruppen sweeping across eastern Europe in WWII.   Up against impossible odds, they led attack after attack on the Nazi’s.  Even though the Soviets refused to help them, the survivors of these unorganized Jewish forces defied the evil powers, rescued others and created a hidden village of some 1,200 people who survived to the very end of the war.

           When injustice raises it’s ugly head in this world, it calls for intentional and  ‘oppositional’ defiance from God’s people, rather obedient compliance.   Just like this courageous defiance shown by Shiphrah and Puah are remembered in our Bible.  We are told their names because they did what was right and just, but  Pharaoh is never named and even to this day.  After 3,500 years scholars still argue over which Pharaoh this could have been.  All we know is that he was the Pharaoh who had the ‘wool pulled over his eyes’ by these righteous women, not once, but twice.  For when he realized his plan to ‘kill the males’ wasn’t working, he confronted these Midwives, who invented a new story to fool him once again.    

 

 

 

TO OPPRESS THEM...(11)

Of course, we’ve answered the question of ‘what’ these midwives did, but ‘why’ did they do it?    Why did these midwives defiantly display what Jews today still call ‘ometz lev’,  ‘civic courage’ which for them, could have meant death? 

            Our text sets the stage for their just defiance by telling us of all the unfair, unjust deeds that were taking place under this new Pharaoh, who ‘didn’t know Joseph’ (v.8).   According to the book of Genesis, the Hebrews came to Egypt due to a terrible drought in Israel.   They were able to seek refuge and became refugees in Egypt because Joseph, one of Israel’s most gifted sons, had incredibly rose up to become the secretary of Economics.   But now, Joseph is long gone, and this new Pharaoh, has no clue who Joseph was, and sees an economic and security advantage to making the Hebrews ‘second class citizens’ by making slaves out of them.  The Hebrew refugees had so greatly increased in number that this Pharaoh became intimidated by them, and chose to ‘oppress them with forced labor’ (1:11). 

           This isn’t an unfamiliar story in world history, or American history either.   Whether for ‘economic’ reasons,  and sometimes out of ‘fear’ too,  human beings have demonized, ‘oppressed’ and made slaves to be keep outsiders subservient.   We don’t like to face this kind dark side of the human story, but we need to remember, because this is the part of the saving story of the Bible and the story of Jesus Christ too.  The good news of the gospel comes straight out of this dark side of the human story to us, whether we are the perpetrators or the persecuted in the story.  

The identity of Jesus comes right out of this kind of God’s story. When Jesus read from the Isaiah scroll to announce his call to ministry to his own hometown, he read straight from a passage, identifying himself as the new Moses, the one ‘whom the Spirit’ has come upon ‘to bring good news to the oppressed’..., to ‘set at liberty the captives’, and to proclaim the Lord’s favor on those who suffer injustice, announcing God’s ‘vengance’ upon those who are on the wrong side of history (Isaiah 61:1ff).  

           We seem to forget, way too easily too, that the story of the Bible is not a story about heroes who were popular, famous, and much beloved, but the Bible is the story of God’s chosen people and prophets who were courageous enough to defy wayward earthly powers and often ended up in a life or death struggle sometimes surviving, sometimes thriving, but sometimes dead too, but were on the right side of history; which was on the side of God’s saving story.  

The midwives in Exodus were on the right side history.  So was Moses’ mother, who chose to have a child, even when many didn’t take the risk.  Pharaoh’s daughter was on the right side of history too, because she defied her father’s command and let the child live.  Miriam, Moses’ sister, was also on the Right side of God’s story, because she had the audacity to approach Pharaoh’s daughter to secretly ask that Moses’ own mother serve as a ‘wet nurse’ for the child. 

           Later, as the story of Moses continues in chapter 4, in the very unexpected and strange story about how Moses refused to have his own son circumcised and then God threatened to kill him, Moses’ wife Zipporah, took a knife and circumcise the child herself, courageously intervening and rescuing Moses,, this time from God’s own anger.   Over and over, in these early pages of the Bible, it’s the women who had the ‘courage to challenge authority and defy conventional expectations, answering the higher call of conscious so that God’s highest purposes are served.  

           We see more stories like this all through Israel’s story.   Rahab, the Arab ‘lady of the evening’ saved Israel’s spies and redeemed her own life too by defying her own military.  Ruth, went against modest expectations to claim for herself a kinsman redeemer.  Then, there’s also Esther, who even dared to defy a King to save her own people.  Then, of course, we also read about David’s and his men too, who respected, but went against King Saul’s wishes when he lost his ability to lead.   In the same way,  most all the Hebrew prophets defied and went against Kings and popular expectations to speak for God’s justice, rather than allow injustice to continue unabated throughout the land.  There was often a love-hate relationship in Israel’s history with annoying, but true and saving message of her justice-seeking prophets.

           The often uncomfortable relationship between Israel and her prophets reminds me of a Presbyterian minister who was pastor of a neighboring church when I served in Greensboro.  We got to know one another through community work.  One day we were talking in his study, and I remember him talking about how he was challenging his people to respond to social needs in the community.  I jokingly commented that I thought most of his people were wealthy republicans.  

He answered, ‘they are.  I’m probably the only Democrat in the entire church and when I thunder about their social responsibility to their community, they come out the door and thank me for preaching the true word of God’s justice and keeping them honest.’ 

When I heard that I responded, ‘Wow,  you actually have the liberty to preach the gospel truth and your congregation expects God’s truth to challenge and disturb them.  We used to be able to do that in Baptist churches too, but now it seems, you have to preach what the people want to hear, not what they need to hear.           

 

SHE TOOK PITY ON HIM (2:8)

           What we most need to hear about this righteous of defiance, is that it isn’t a call for defiance for the sake of defiance, but this defiance is a call to justice that is being inspired for the sake of displaying God’s compassion and mercy.   Isn’t this exactly why the Midwives refused to allow the Hebrew ‘male children’ to be killed?  Isn’t it also why Pharaoh’s daughter defied her own father?  She heard the baby crying in the basket floating in the bulrushes and she ‘took pity on him’.  

           This is exactly what took place in back in 1982,  when a famous Israeli General’s son, Colonel Eli Geva, defied and announced to his superiors that he would not lead an attack on Beirut against the Palestinians.   He told them that every time he looked into his binoculars and prepared to attack, all he could see was children.  For his defiance Colonel Geva was dismissed and dishonorably discharged by Israel’s military.  His defiance became an intentional act of Civil Disobedience against a move that was unjust. 

Geva was following a path of non-violent resistance to power that in the modern world had been paved by the American Writer Henry David Thoreau,  who asserted that sometimes you have to choose to do what is ‘right’ over what is in the law, and when people rightly prepare for it, the best government can be no government, since no citizen should have to resign conscience to a legislator.’   While you can take Thoreau wrongly and live without regard for law and others, in reality Thoreau went into the woods to resist unjust human laws, appealing to the greatest law placed within the human spirit, the law of compassion and justice for all.  

           It was this higher law of compassion and justice for all that caused Mahatma Ghandi to peacefully defy British rule to free India, just as it was the higher law of compassion and justice that cause Nelson Mandela to resist the injustice of Apartheid in South Africa.   In my own lifetime too, and closer here at home, it was the higher law of compassion and justice that led Martin Luther King Jr. to defy and march against the injustice of segregation here in the deep south.   I recall visiting Washington DC., late in the summer of 1968 the very week Resurrection City of the Civil Rights Movement was being dismantled and asking my uncle pastor what all the fuss was about.  I didn’t get any kind of explanation or serious response.   

           Although Dr. King never got to visit that Resurrection city, he was on the right side of history because he stood up to defy the injustice of his world, sometimes even defying the wishes of his own fellow-ministers and pastors.   In a letter Dr. King wrote from a Birmingham Jail,  when black ministers and leaders asked him not to Birmingham, after he was arrested, he wrote from jail that there are two types of laws in the world, ‘just and unjust’.  Then he went on to explain his reasons for defying both Jim Crow and even their advice to stay away.  ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’    

As the Hungarian Jewish thinker has written, ‘true courage is to never let your actions be influenced by your fears’.  To that courageous spirit I would add what that writer learned later, we must also let our courage be guided by God’s love for all people.   Isn’t this compassionate sense of justice we see in those two Midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, that God still longs to see in all of us?  Amen.