“A Choice of Three”based on Exodus 1:22-2:10

July 30, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

All
the way back in October, we talked about the Hebrew midwives of
Exodus chapter 1, Puah and
Shiphrah. Those two subversive women had pulled out all the stops.
The Pharaoh told them to kill Hebrew boy babies at birth. Puah and
Shiprah disobeyed direct orders from the Pharaoh and used his biases
against the Hebrew people to justify it. Their courage and wisdom had
saved the boys! But only for a moment, after they refused to follow
unjust orders, the orders changed.

And
that’s where today’s story starts. Pharaoh is said to be worried
that the Hebrews are going to overtake the Egyptians (a common way
that oppressors justify inhumane treatment). Since the midwives
won’t kill the baby boys at birth, he orders that all Hebrew baby
boys be thrown into the Nile at birth. As I mentioned when
discussing the midwives, “It took me entirely too long to figure
out why the boys were to be killed. I was thinking of males as
especially strong laborers in the fields, and wondered why you’d want
to have fewer of them. If you wanted fewer descendants, I thought,
why not kill the girls who have the babies and leave the workers?
Our Bible Study participants responded that the death of the male
babies meant that the females would be sexually available to the
Egyptians, and they’d presume that as half-Egyptian – the next
generation would be more pliable and ‘better.’ The participants in
the Bible Study figured this out by considering American slave
history.”¹

This
story is an old story. Order than even the version we have.
Scholars say this story about the birth of Moses is an adaptation of
a story that was already ancient in his time. Sargon
of Akkad, believed to live in the 23^rd
or 24^th
century before the common era, was a ruler of the Akkadian
Empire. According to Wikipedia (which is sometimes much pithier in
explaining things than any other format), “A Neo-Assyrian text
from the 7th century BC purporting to be Sargon’s autobiography
asserts that the great king was the illegitimate son of a priestess.
Only the beginning of the text (the first two columns) are known,
from the fragments of three manuscripts. The first fragments were
discovered as early as 1850.”²
So this story was ALSO written down many centuries after it
happened, which means we can’t be certain what it sounded like in the
time of Moses, but it is the best piece of comparison available. The
text is found the book “The Ancient Near East” and reads:

“Sargon,
the mighty king, king of Agade, am I.
My
mother was a changeling, my father I knew not.
The
brother(s) of my father loved the hills.
My
city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the banks of the
Euphrates.
My
changeling mother conceived me, in secret she bore me.
She
set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid.
She
cast me into the river which rose not (over) me,
The
river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of
water.
Akki,
the drawer of water lifted me out as he dipped his e[w]er.
Akki,
the drawer of water, [took me] as his son (and) reared me.
Akki,
the drawer of water, appointed me as his gardener,
While
I was a gardener, Ishtar granted
me (her) love,”³

It
seems likely that the myth of Sargon’s birth was adapted to explain
the birth of Moses. The similarities are pretty obvious, including
naming that Moses came from a family of Levites, the holy tribe from
which later priests would emerge, while Sargon was the son of a holy
priestess. The whole thrown in a river part is obviously similar,
as is the emphasis on “drawing out” the child from the water,
and raising him as the son of the one who drew him out. The Sargon
story explicitly states that he was loved by a powerful goddess, the
Moses story is the opening to a long narrative about being specially
chosen by YHWH.

However,
when we have likely source material, the interesting part is not the
similarities, it is the differences. The differences here are
astounding. Of course, the Moses story feels more complete, for one
thing. It is since the stone on which the Sargon birth story is
written is incomplete. But we also have a reason for Moses being
put in the river (the decree of Pharaoh), and a masterful turn at
the end that the one who decreed that baby Hebrew boys be put in the
river is the one in whose household the baby is raised. The format
of the story that we have now was polished over many years into an
excellently crafted final form.

Also,
the Sargon birth story has a more limited role for human women: his
mother gives birth and puts him in the basket. The Moses birth
story is an intricate weaving of the actions and intentions of THREE
women, and of whom could easily be “the” subversive woman of the
today’s story. Moses’s mother is not just the woman who birthed
him. She is the one who notices he is an especially fine baby, and
decides to try to save him. She keeps him hidden at home for three
months. And then she carefully crafts the waterproof basket she
lays him in. To this point the story is similar enough to Sargon’s,
but at the same time, the story seems to want us to believe that God
takes care of where the basket floats off to, and wants us to deduce
that God put the basket in the sight-line of the Egyptian princess.
Personally, I think that loving mother who risked her own life for
her son and carefully crafted the basket ALSO would have tried to
make sure the basket went to a good place, but I do think the faith
tradition tells it so we think of it as God’s hand at work. On a
related note, I think this proactive mother might have instructed
her daughter to watch over it!

The
story doesn’t tell us if babies in waterproof baskets were often
floating down the Nile, but the constraints of the story (that is,
the command from the one in charge to put baby boys in the river)
seem to make it likely. It seems like the other women would have
taught her how to weave the basket and how much tar to use. It even
seems likely that for the first 3 months Moses’s mother pretended
she’d had a girl and everyone just played along. I don’t think the
story really believes that Moses was the only baby whose mother
tried to save him, even though the story is designed to help us
believe that Moses was specially cared for by God.

Whether
instructed to or not, Moses’s sister (maybe Miriam) stays at hand
and watches where the basket goes. I imagine her to be at a very
good age for this: young enough not to be noticed by grown ups and
to be free to play as she wished, yet old enough to understand the
importance and be able to convincingly play her role. And she
played her role to perfection! Nothing like this is in Sargon’s
story.

Meanwhile,
in Moses’s story one of the princesses has gone down to the river to
bath, attended by handmaidens. She sees the basket, she sends a
maid to get it, she opens it. She sees a crying baby, and has
compassion for him. I’m told the Hebrew word for compassion
connotes the womb, so this may have some connotations of “and her
womb leapt.” She knew what was happening, what her father’s
decree had been, and she decides to ignore its intentions. She uses
the power she has to adopt him, bring him into the palace, make him
a part of the Pharaoh’s family. She has money that she controls in
order to pay for a wetnurse. We spent some time in Bible study
wondering if she was her father’s favorite, or if there were so many
princesses that no one really noticed her, if she was defiant, if
she was above the law, or if she had special circumstances. By her
presence in the palace, I think it is likely she was unmarried, and
that may well imply she was quite young as well. However, there are
other explanations that might also suffice. Her story is mostly
missing, but her actions are direct and subvert the law of the land.
That’s unique to this story.

Moses’s
sister steps back in with the most brilliant possible solution,
asking the princess if she’d like the baby nursed by a woman of his
own community. Then she brings her brother back to their mother to
be nursed! In fact, it makes me wonder if the whole family moved
into the palace. (maybe, maybe not). But Moses gets fed by
mother’s milk and fed by his family’s story and identity at the same
time. He also gets the privilege of being in the royal family and
the knowledge of how the political system works. The way this story
is used to explain Moses’s identity and compassion for his people
AND his insider knowledge of the Pharaoh and his political system is
a unique part of the Hebrew story – as is the attention to nursing
the baby and the brilliant move by the women of his family to keep
caring for him while also making money to care for their own needs.
All of this is in the portion of the story the Hebrews adapted.

In
fact, given the way the story is adapted, and given the dominance of
human women in it, I’ve started to wonder if it is implied that they
are all working together. Perhaps many people thought the Pharaoh’s
decree was immoral and were working together to subvert it. Maybe
these women had devised this all as a plan, and made it flow so
seamlessly because it was well-rehearsed. Maybe they thought that
the care of babies was more important than decrees of politics. Or
maybe it doesn’t go this far, but maybe there was just a lot of
winking involved when it really happened, and that princess knew
EXACTLY who she was hiring to feed “her” baby.

This
is, after all, a story about saving the baby who would save the
Hebrew people. It is also a story of interdependence. No one of
the three women in it could have pulled off saving Moses alone. The
choice of heroine is any one of the three, but perhaps it isn’t much
of a choice when they all need each other and Moses needs all of
them. The story the Hebrew people tell also says that they needed
Moses, and his cross-cultural competencies, to be free. That means
they needed all three of these women – including the Egyptian one
– to be free from Egyptian oppression.

So,
the Hebrews took an old myth and reworked it in genius ways. They
added several heroines, more intrigue, and a broader context. The
premise that the Hebrew people benefited from the skills Moses had
as someone stuck in-between worlds strikes me as interesting. I
hear a lot about the struggles of being in-between: particularly for
people who have two or more racial identities, or for those who live
between the values of different countries due to immigration in
their family’s recent past, or even those whose social class changes
over their life times. Many people are in-between and it is often
very uncomfortable. Is also a position that enables translations
between groups to be possible, and it can be a position of
incredible power when circumstances emerge in particular ways.

The
liberation of the Hebrews is a meta-narrative of the Torah, and a
story with resonance well beyond the Hebrew people. It was a
primary narrative for African American slave communities in this
country, and is often source of hope for oppressed communities
seeking liberation. I love that it took collaboration, rule
breaking, deep compassion, and connections between unexpected
partners to make it all happen. May we keep noticing the strange
ways God is up to making liberation happen – including by
connecting unexpected partners and using people who stand in
in-between places! Amen

1 Sermon
10-6- 2017.

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargon_of_Akkad#cite_ref-46
accessed July 20, 2017

3 J.B.
Pritchard’s The
Ancient Near East,
Volume I, page 85.

—

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

July 30, 2017

Sermons

“Allowing the Boys to Live” based on Exodus 1:8-22

October 9, 2016February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

Throughout the Hebrew Bible, the people are reminded that they were once slaves in Egypt. It is used to explain the Sabbath, or maybe just to explain why servants get to have Sabbath too in Ancient Israelite society. It is used in the commandments to take care of the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner as well. Basically, the people are reminded time and time again to have compassion for the vulnerable because they were once a vulnerable population.

However, there aren’t many stories about the people being enslaved in Egypt, this is one of the few. The ones that exist all revolve around Moses, and this story is the prelude to the story of Moses’ birth. It is very difficult to tell if there is any authentic memory underneath this story, because it is an old enough story that there really shouldn’t be and yet there are such epically profound truths in it about what it means to be an oppressed people and what subversiveness looks like from within oppression that it feels more true than most stories in the Bible. This story may not be a factual accounting of a particular incident in history, but because it contains so many larger truths, I’m going to treat it as if it is, and let it speak for itself.

According to the end of Genesis, the descendants of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob had all moved down to Egypt during a famine after Joseph had become the right hand person to the Pharaoh. Joseph had urged them to come down, where he could ensure that they would have sufficient food and land to be safe. The story explained that Joseph had interpreted the Pharaoh’s dream and predicted 7 years of excellent harvests followed by 7 years of famine. Pharaoh was so pleased that he elevated Joseph to the 2^nd highest office in the land, and while there Joseph reigned over an agricultural policy that completely impoverished the entire nation and brought their wealth into the Pharaoh’s hands. The people ended up selling their livestock, their land, and then themselves for access to Joseph’s grain stores.

So the same guy who “saved” his family did so while utterly destroying the people of the nation he was – supposedly – serving. The new Pharaoh “didn’t know Joseph” (the Bible suggests this story happened 400 years later, so that would be reasonable). However, it is a bit ironic that the Hebrews were enslaved by the people who one of their forefathers had masterminded enslaving.

Perhaps that suggests that oppression breeds oppression, and oppressors should be careful. In any case, by the premises of this story, by this time the Egyptians were in full fledge oppressor roles and the Hebrews were enslaved by them and oppressed by them.

In our Bible Study we were struck by the similarities between the story in Exodus and the experiences of slaves here in the United States. There is something universal about this story, and it strikes cords through the eons.

Puah and Shiphrah are midwives who are given an immoral order. They are to kill all the baby boys of their people. The names Puah and Shiphrah are classically Hebrew names, and the text reminds us that they’re Hebrew as well as mentioning twice that they are in awe of God. (The “awe” is often translated “fear” but “awe” is a much better translation.) We are not supposed to miss that they’re Hebrew, or that they’re being ordered to kill the boys of their own ethnic group.

It took me entirely too long to figure out why the boys were to be killed. I was thinking of males as especially strong laborers in the fields, and wondered why you’d want to have fewer of them. If you wanted fewer descendants, I thought, why not kill the girls who have the babies and leave the workers? Our Bible Study participants responded that the death of the male babies meant that the females would be sexually available to the Egyptians, and they’d presume that as half-Egyptian – the next generation would be more pliable and “better.” The participants in the Bible Study figured this out by considering American slave history.

We also noticed the language of fear created around the oppressed group, and the dehumanization of them. The Hebrews are called “powerful” and “numerous” and the myth is that they would do harm for the Egyptians, a myth used to justify enslaving them. It is suggested that they could be spies, or fight against Egypt in a war, or abandon their posts of much needed labor. Therefore, the myth of the oppressors says, we must enslave them and double down on the harm we do to them to keep them below us.

Oppression is very powerful, and human oppressors are capable of extensive harm, but there is a resiliency to life itself, and it fights back when life is oppressed. This story says that the more the Hebrews were oppressed the more they multiplied. I think we’re supposed to believe this was God’s hand at work; I think it is more the myth of the Egyptians continuing to justify evil. In any case, both the Hebrews of this story and the African American slaves oppressed in the United States suffered great losses as a community – losses of life and identity, language and culture, dignity and hope. Yet, the communities found ways to fight back, reform, and try again and again. This story suggests that the power to do so came from God, as do many of the songs and stories that remain from the American slave era. God supports the experience of the oppressed in overcoming oppression.

The midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, were unusual women. It doesn’t seem reasonable that only two midwives could have been sufficient for all the births of the Hebrew women, so more likely they were the LEADERS of the midwives. It may even be that they were also midwives to the Egyptian women, as they imply they know the difference between each set of women giving birth. They are BRILLIANT, DEFIANT, and seemingly FEARLESS (although I’d stake a bet that they were terrified even while they kept their cool.)

They are given a direct order by the most powerful man in their country to kill the baby boys of their community and they don’t! If it is true that they were the leaders of the midwives, they give counter instructions. In any case, the voices of all the midwives are united in the shared voices of Puah and Shiphrah, and their voices respond to this immoral command with “no.” They just don’t! It makes me wonder how they had been formed as humans, and what empowered them to know better. The text says it was that they knew God, and I hope it is true for all who know God that our relationship with God empowers us to refuse to follow unjust orders, but I’ve seen it go other ways. How is it that knowing the Holy One can form us into people who more deeply believe in the sacredness of life? How is that being present to God helps us overcome our fears of the powers of the world? How were the midwives able to be so brave? I wish I knew, but for now I’ll accept the premise that God can help us overcome our fears and resist the power of oppression.

Did the midwives refuse the Pharaoh because he was Egyptian? Because the order was so atrocious? Because someone had already been training them on resisting oppression? Was it about who gave it, how terrible it was, or about who they were? How were they strong enough to simply refuse? And how were they wise enough NOT to say “no” to the Pharaoh (who would have killed them and replaced them with someone who would do what he said) but instead to simply not to it? I’d love to know, but for now I’ll accept the premise that God helped them overcome the power of the oppressor.

When they get called back to account for the live baby Israelite boys, they have a crafty answer in hand. They give a compliment to the femininity of the Egyptian women while using the fear of the Hebrews and assumptions about them to their benefit. They respond along the lines of “your women are more feminine and fragile while ours are more like animals.” To be precise, they say, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” You see? The answer they give manipulates the Pharaoh by complimenting his ethnic group and denigrating theirs, and it is believable to him. They save their boys. To do it they have to imply terrible things about the lack of humanity of the women they were related to, and they did because it was totally worth it.

Puah and Shiphrah aren’t the only ones in history who have played the assumptions of oppressors against the oppressors to gain freedom for the oppressed, but they did it as well as anyone.

Now, the incredible actions of these subversive women to save the lives of Israelite boys ended with things worse off than they started – sort of. The midwives had been told to kill the babies, the tactics then were supposed to be somewhat hidden and covert. Their actions forced his hand to make the death sentence to baby boys OVERT and visible. He continues to order the death of the baby boys, and he makes everyone responsible for it, since he hadn’t been able to control the midwives. In the short term, that meant more babies died.

But in the long term, it meant that the Hebrews lived. The overt action of the Pharaoh led to more subversive actions – by Moses’ mother and sister – and by Pharaoh’s own daughter. The fear of Pharaoh that led to his orders for murder resulted in Moses being raised in his own house – an Israelite boy who he had ordered killed. When Pharaoh raised the stakes it ended up backfiring on him and he eventually lost all his slaves.

It seems important to take note of how it must have felt to be Puah and Shiphrah in the moment when Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew babies to be thrown into the Nile. It would have felt like failure, right? They took risks with their own lives and likely the lives of those who worked with them to save the babies. They took morality and the love of God more seriously than the power of the Pharaoh/King. They fought with their wits about them for the well-being of their people and they won…

Until the Pharaoh made it worse and raised the stakes. They tried to save those baby boys and allow them to live, and then Pharaoh orders everyone to kill the baby boys and the organizational methods of the midwives can’t protect the babies anymore. Puah and Shiphrah must have been dismayed. Yet, the tactics they used ended up in one generation with the freedom of their people – instead of the death of the males of a generation and the rape of that generation’s women. Yes, things got worse. That’s what happens when you fight back against oppression. The oppressors make things worse first. Which means that when women – and men – are forced to use subversive tactics they have to be prepared for things to get much worse before they get better.

In The United Methodist Church right now, things are getting worse. The many brave people who have refused to follow unjust rules in the church have upset the status quo. Those who are committed to excluding LGBTQ people from full participation in the Body of Christ are furious that they can’t make people follow the rules. As they double-down on exclusion and tightening rules and punishments, they push the UMC toward schism. This weekend in Chicago a group of 1700 people deeply committed to exclusion gathered, and formally launched a para-Church structure they are calling the Wesleyan Covenant Association. Their first demand is that the Church end the resistance to exclusion once and for all. Since we all know that the progressives fighting for inclusion will not be silenced that is not possible. They suggest, that if resistance can’t be silenced that a plan needs to be developed to divide the denomination. Things are getting worse.

That means we are on the road to ending oppression. Thanks be to God for the midwives and all those willing and able to follow their lead. What a joy it is, in God’s holy name, to be part of ending oppression in any form. Amen

–

Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

October 9, 2016