Despite Pharaoh’s tyrannical decrees to oppress and destroy the Hebrew people, his cruel plans are continuously undermined by the quiet, courageous defiance of women. Midwives Shiphrah and Puah use Pharaoh’s own prejudices against him to save newborn boys, while young Miriam and Pharaoh’s own daughter conspire to rescue the infant Moses from the Nile. God's power operates through human compassion and unexpected acts of bravery, proving that systemic cruelty is no match for the defiant strength of everyday people.
She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
Thus the Great Liberator, Lawgiver, is named by Pharoah’s own daughter.
His name we know, and his story knows too…
God hearing the Hebrews cries stuffing the tyrannical power of Pharaoh,
resonating through the ages with American slaves bitterly oppressed by tyrannical masters.
Go down, Moses, way down to Egyptland.
Tell old, Pharoah,
Let my people go.
Moses we know, but what about Shiphrah and Puah?
What about Miriam, his big sister?
Pharoah fears the Hebrews because they thrive, so grow in numbers they outnumber his own people.
He cruelly oppresses them, thinking they will fail to thrive, have fewer children, thus solving the problem of their growing numbers.
But the more his taskmaster oppress them, the more they thrive
….they keep on marrying and having children,
singing and dancing and making music, chasing away the sorrow of bitter toil,
Cruelty is weakness, as we know from our own experience with school-yard bullies; they appear strong, but we know better–their days are numbered
As we know Pharaoh’s days are numbered.
When oppressive toil fails, he then turns to genocide and Epstien-like exploitation, to kill all newborn Hebrew boys but to let only girls live.
Fool that he is, his plans depend on Hebrew MIDWIVES,
Shiphrah and Puah…
Shiphrah whose name translates to Beauty.
And Puah whose name means gurgle, as with the cooing sounds mothers make to sooth a child.
Pharoah tells Beauty and Soothing Comfort
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.”
As if!
Beauty and Soothing Comfort are MIDWIVES, whose lives are devoted to taking care of pregnant women,
who are with them when they give birth,
who teach them how to care for and to nurse their newborns.
Of course they defy Pharoah–how can they not?
When Pharoah calls them to account for themselves Beauty and Soothing Comfort say:
“Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before [we come] to them.”
Vigorous here means that Hebrew women are like animals, not human, needing no help during childbirth..
Hebrew women, they tell him, are like beasts–before we can get to them they drop another baby and are already gone, they say.
They can see how Pharoah sees them, but he cannot see them.
…sees only who he imagines them to be, animals, less than human..
Cruelty depends upon compliance, the seed of its own downfall.
Pharoah can’t see that they make a fool of him; he can’t imagine they would defy him and they know it; cannot imagine they outsmart him, which they certainly do–they see his weakness and use his weakness against him.
Weak fool that his is, he doubles-down:
decreeing that entire population is to fling any Hebrew male child into the Nile to feed the crocodiles
….as if…he can enlist an entire population to do such a thing….
***
All the while, the Hebrew continue to thrive.
One Hebrew couple has their first child, a girl, Miriam.
Next born, a boy.
Because she is wise to Pharoah’s decree, his mother hides him until his cries can no longer be silenced…
Then she fashions a little ark, and sets him afloat into the reeds,
perfectly timed for when the Pharoah’s daughter bathes with her maids.
She sends little Mariam into the reeds to look out for him, ready for when the bathing women hear him crying.
Hearing his cries, Pharoah’s daughter sends her maid out
Not to push it out into the current…
Not, in obedience to her father, to fling the child to the crocodiles,
But to save him.
She knows what she is doing…
She opens the ark and sees the child. He was crying, and she takes pity on him. She says “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children.”
She knows what she is doing.
Though it is his own daughter, Pharoah cannot imagine her or any other Egyptian not obeying his command.
Cruelty is no match for compassion–it is the shape of the human soul, the image of God imprinted within us.
“This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she says
Just then Miriam steps forward….
“Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?”
Such courage. Such bravery.
Pharoah’s cruelty is no match for the courageous bravery of this little girl.
God’s power moves not through the powerful,
but in unexpected, overlooked people…like little Miriam.
“Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?”
Yes, the Pharoah’s daughter replies.
Her yes to little Miriam is a defiant No to her father.
Miriam goes and fetches her mother
who surely nursed her boy before she set him afloat, whose cries were answered by her bodily need to nurse him now.
Do you think it would be possible for the Pharaoh’s daughter NOT, just by looking at her, to know she is the child’s mother?
When the hungry child is put into her arms and reaches up to her to be nursed again could Pharoah’s NOT have known?
A Shiphrah and Puah know, so Pharaoh’s daughter knows,
They and little Miriam and the child’s mother conspire against Pharoah, which he could imagine.
He cannot control them any more than he can control water, like the power of God flows and flows and flows and will flow over him, fool that he is, cruelty ensures his demise.
When we think of the majestic, almighty power of God,
we imagine it as an overpowering force somehow,
parting the Red Sea,
to end human suffering, stop genocide,
But God works through human compassion
Power flowing from human hearts…
Tyrants cannot imagine compassion as power,
believe cruelty secures compliance,
Shirphah and Puah do not comply
Courageous, brave little Miriam secures Moses’s rise and Pharoah’s downfall.
His own daughter defies him, and in time raises Moses in Pharoah’s own household.
Yes, we know the story of Moses leading the Hebrews dry shod across the Red Sea, the Red Seas sweeping away Pharaoh and his charioteers.
But the story begins in small acts of defiance and courage and bravery of unexpected people, of compassion which unites all people against foolish tyrant’s weak cruelty.
Thanks be to God.
Suppose It Matters 