This passage ends with a beginning: “She named him Moses because, she said, “I drew him out of the water. She is a princess, Pharaoh’s own daughter, violating his genocidal decree that every male child be thrown into the Nile. Pharaoh’s purpose is to keep girls for sexual exploitation and domestic slavery, but he is thwarted by women who subvert, and undermine him at every turn, exposing his absurd belief in power that seeks to counter God’s creative power, which like water flows through the compassion of women: unstoppable.

Pharaoh’s plan begins with the hands of taskmasters, who oppress the Hebrews with forced labor to build his city, storehouses for his wealth and places to worship his gods.  But the more the Hebrews are oppressed, the more they thrive. They grow and multiply, a teaming and unstoppable force, so that the taskmasters dread them, and redouble their ruthlessness, making the lives of the people bitter in every way possible. 

When oppression fails, he then turns to cruelty, commanding Hebrew midwives to kill the male infants they deliver.  The two midwives who receive his command represent many, for two midwives would surely be unable to deliver all the babies born to thousands of Hebrew slaves.  

Their names speak the truth of God’s power invested in them. The name Shiphrah translates as “beauty.”  The name Puh’ah means “gurgle,” as the mothering sound made to sooth a child.  For Pharaoh to command Hebrew midwives whose lives are devoted to the beautiful, soothing work of bringing Hebrew children into the world is failed and absurd from the start. 

The power of God is manifest in the midwives use of Pharaoh’s own blindness against him to subvert his will, which is no match for God’s intent to liberate the Hebrews:

But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.  So, the king of Egypt summoned the midwives  and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?  The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them. Ex. 1:17-18

The word translated to vigorous derives from the Hebrew hayot, which in its verb form means “to live,” but in its noun form means “animal.” Thus the midwives are saying the Hebrew woman are not human like Egyptian women, but are like animals when they give birth, using Pharaoh’s own racist views to undermine him.

Pharaoh then assigns his genocidal plans to the whole Egyptian people in his effort to be rid of the Hebrews:

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.’ Ex 1:22

We have no records of whether the Egyptians followed this command. It hardly seems possible, given the failure of the task masters, the subversiveness of the midwives, and the turn soon to come in the story—Pharaoh’s own daughter defying his command and obeying compassion.

Pharaoh’s demise comes by way of a Hebrew marriage, resulting first in the birth of a daughter, and then in the birth of a male child, hidden until he can no longer be kept quiet. His mother fashions a basket, a tevah, the same word used for Noah’s ark, sets him afloat, with his sister, Miriam, to tend him.

The part the Egyptian princess plays is sketchily told, as is the distress of the mother in this momentous risk she undertakes. But if a mother’s care for a child is a universal constant, then we might well imagine that she knew the the place and time the princess bathed, and floated the ark in a carefully timed moment, into the reeds, across which the Hebrews will later escape.

What develops in this moment is God’s power again manifest through human compassion, as with Shiphrah and Pu’ah, subverting the force of death represented by Pharaoh.

Upon discovering the child, the Princess knowingly says, “This must be one of the Hebrew children” (Ex 2:6c). Then, with courage seldom spoke of or preached on, Miriam speaks:

Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you? Ex 2:7

When the Princess says, “yes,” Miriam fetches her mother. This, too, is a rare moment of deep compassion and courage that is seldom spoke of or preached on.

Could it be possible for the Princess not to have seen that the woman who Miriam brought to her was the child’s mother, her breasts full of milk and her countenance, surely, telling her love for the child?

This moment of compassion is the power of God and of life undermining the power of death. Pharaoh’s fate is sealed because the power of death is no match for the power of compassionate love.

It is good to note another part of this story and of God’s power that is too often overlooked. The story of Exodus, beginning with the courageous compassion of these women, is a story of redemption, not for the expiation of sin, but for a people by no fault of their own.

God’s redemption is multifaceted.

There are qualities of the narrative that strongly suggests a multidimensional character of God’s compassion.  The mercy of God is not simply reactive, returning love for love.  It is proactive—securing human need even more profoundly than they who endure that need, and benevolently intruding into their lives unbidden. TIP 454 (italics mine)

It is for us as modern Christians to ask how God is benevolently intruding with redemptive, compassionate power in the world today on behalf of those, like the Hebrews, who are seen as of no-count, as threat to order and decency, and who depend on people of faith and courage to show compassion on them, though it means defying and subverting the powers of death who absurdly believe they can defy the power of God.

Resources
Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses. New York: Norton & Company. 2004.
Brueggemann, Walter. New International Bible. Vol. I. Nashville: Abingdon. 1994.
Charles B. Cousar, et al. Texts for Preaching. Louisville: Westminster John Knox P. 1995.