Civil Disobedience - Exodus 1:15-22

1:15-17 - The new Pharoah in Egypt has a couple of problems, first is that there is a large population of foreigners living within Egypt’s borders. Because this minority population is ethnically the same as the previous foreign rulers, there is a lot of bitterness, but also Pharoah’s not sure where their loyalties lie if an enemy threatened Egypt. Interestingly, and not what I would have picked, Pharoah decides to solve this problem by enslaving them and forcing all the men to become brick makers and construction workers. His solution backfires, unsurprisingly, because not only will these slaves absolutely not be loyal to their oppressors, but he didn’t factor in that these enslaved people had been chosen by God to be special. That special election by God to the Hebrews means that in the face of persecution, they thrived, and the population exploded, which is the opposite of what Pharoah wanted to have happen.

Pharoah makes another error in judgment at this point because instead of reassessing his position, he doubles down in villainy, and “spake to the Hebrew midwives… and he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.” Multiple problems with this decision, first, only the Hebrew men were enslaved, so if you kill all the baby boys, within 15-20 years suddenly there would be no more slaves to do the work. Essentially, Pharoah was giving his future work force a death sentence.

Second problem was that by saving the baby girls alive, he allowed them to most efficient way to repopulate. There would only need to be a few men, and all those women would be able to become pregnant and bare a new generation of Hebrews. If he had killed all the girls and saved the boys, then the possibility of future violent revolt would increase, but the ability to quickly and efficiently repopulate would have been significantly reduced. That’s just biology.

The third problem with this decree is that there are very few people willing to murder new born babies in cold blood. In fact, the midwives that Pharoah spoke to were named Shiprah and Puah, and TB suggests that they were most likely the head of the midwife organizations in Egypt at the time, they were the leaders. TB also does a little debate on whether or not they were Hebrew or Egyptian, with convincing arguments for both, but regardless of the fact that Hebrews and Egyptians didn’t like each other, it’s on a completely different level to murder the babies or people who bug you.

These midwives left Pharoah’s meeting with the order to inform the rest of the midwives to kill the Hebrew newborn baby boys, but they “feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive.” This must have been a huge risk, knowing exactly the punishment that disobedience would have brought. And it’s not like they didn’t think that Pharoah would never find out, it wouldn’t take very long for someone important to notice “hey there sure are a lot of baby boys around here, when there are supposed to be none.”

1:18-22 – Sure enough, Pharoah calls the midwives back and asks, “why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive?” Their answer is pretty genius, I think, saying, basically, “the Hebrew women deliver their babies before we get there, so we can’t take the babies from them and kill them.” They even go as far as comparing the heartiness of the Hebrew women and their fast deliveries to “the Egyptian women,” who, it’s implied, take longer to give birth. It’s an interesting strategy, but it works, and “God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty.”

These women are blessed by God for their obedience to His laws, and finally Pharoah bypassed them and went directly to the people and commanded, “every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.” The word “born” is cross-referenced to mean “to the Hebrews,” which indicates that this isn’t a command for all people living in Egypt, but only for the Hebrew children. I don’t know who he’s talking to here though, because if he’s talking to the Hebrews and saying, “kill your own children,” that’s going to be a very hard sell, but if he’s talking to other Egyptians and giving them the charge to kill all male Hebrew babies, then that might be a little bit more effective. Even though convincing women to kill the babies of those they deliver might not have been super effective, giving free reign to large population groups, Egyptian men, is a lot easier, because even though most Egyptian men might decline to murder babies, there would be enough that would be willing and even eager to do it, that it would be relatively effective.