“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

“Nevertheless Delilah Persisted” based on Judges 16:4-20

February 19, 2017February 15, 2020
by Sara Baron

I’m told that back in the day, and the day wasn’t so
long ago, the town of Hanover NH had a coffee shop called “The
Perfect Woman.” The sign for the shop featured a woman’s
silhouette, without a head, implying that the perfect woman was a
body existing for male pleasure without a voice with which to express
herself. The coffee shop had been named during a time when Dartmouth
had only male students and that reality created a hyper masculine
worldview around those parts. The store name and sign reflected the
values that attracted customers at that time.

Sometimes the Bible has a hyper masculine worldview too,
and one of the most blatant expressions of hyper masculinity is found
in the narrative of Sampson. Sampson’s story is complex, it has
clearly been retold over the years so that Sampson is at the same
time supposed to be one particular man, all the judges in the Hebrew
people’s history, AND the nation Israel itself. There are layers
upon layers of meaning, and most of them express distrust of the
power of women.

In order to start to make sense of any of this, I think
I better start by explaining “what is a judge?” You may remember
the story of the people of God being enslaved in Egypt and then led
to freedom by Moses. After they had wandered around the desert for a
few generations and Moses died, Joshua led the people into the
Promised Land.

Once the people got into the Promised Land they didn’t
have a king and they didn’t always have a unified leader. Instead,
for several centuries, there was a pattern of events. Things would
be going pretty well and then one of the neighboring countries or
tribes would want to take over Israel. A leader would emerge
(assumed to be the leader God wanted) and lead the people in a
military victory over the aggressor. The military leader would
continue to have the respect of the people and offer leadership to
the 12 tribes until his or her death at which point the tribes would
go back to functioning on their own. The next time an aggressor
showed up a new leader would emerge. Those leaders – the military
generals who gained power through winning battles and kept the power
for their lifetimes without creating dynasties – those were called
the judges.

So now you know.

Sampson is the last judge, and that has resulted in his
story also being used to reflect on the era of the judges as well.
It may be worth remembering the stories of the Hebrew Bible were
written down after centuries of oral tradition around the time of the
Babylonian exile. Thus they were written down more than 400 years
after King David and even longer after the judges. They were written
down in a time when the people were trying to answer the question
“why did God allow us to be defeated by the Babylonians?” and the
particular ways that the stories got told were formed by trying to
answer that question. In that way, he’s the nation Israel too.

Sampson is presented as supernaturally strong, I mean
Superman strong. I don’t say this to make any sense of it, just to
help you understand the story.

Sampson is a Nazirite. That meant that he was a holy
man set apart from others by his devotion to God. Generally
Nazirites avoided alcohol and anything unclean (like dead bodies) and
didn’t cut their hair. In the beginning of Sampson’s story his
barren mother is told to avoid alcohol even during her pregnancy to
set him up for the work God had for him. I say that GENERALLY
Nazirites did this stuff because Sampson broke every rule other than
the hair one well before this story. However, the ANGEL who came
down to speak to his BARREN mother about her upcoming conception is
meant to get our attention about the greatness of the man who would
be born as well as to remind us of the matriarchs in Genesis –
creating the symbol of Sampson as the nation itself who was born
because those barren women gave birth. The angel who spoke to his
mother told her that “he would begin the deliverance of Israel from
the hands of the Philistines.” (13:5b)

So, Sampson’s mother is the madonna of any madonna-whore
complex, she is faithful, pure, and subservient. Sampson is really
attracted to non-Israelite women. Women are his downfall. First he
laid eyes on a Philistine woman and decided that he had to marry her.
His faithful parents objected, indicating that if he was going to
lead the Hebrew people it would best if he married a Hebrew wife. He
refused to listen, and he married the Philistine woman.

Why do we care, you ask? Well, we may not. But his
parents did because the Philistines were at the time the aggressors
who were trying to take parts of the Israelite land and engaging them
in battle and having the leader of the Israelites marry one of them
just didn’t seem like it would help.

It didn’t. The story is too weird to summarize well but
the Philistine wife ended up manipulating Sampson by indicating that
if he didn’t do what she wanted he didn’t love her. Then she
betrayed him, so he left her. Then, in order to appease his rage the
Philistine’s killed her and her father.

At some point later Sampson saw a woman he liked so he
slept with her, she was a Philistine prostitute, and the Philistines
tried to kill him while he slept afterward, but he got away because
of his supernatural strength.

Then comes this story. This story fits well into what
we already know about Sampson: he is strong, he is rash, he is
fickle, he is susceptible to the charms of women, and his enemies are
looking for a way to take him down. This fits all three versions of
the Sampson story, as does the perception of Delilah as an evil
seductress. The story of Sampson as a man is the story of a man
whose Achilles heel was his attraction to inappropriate women. The
story of Sampson as the judges is the story of leaders whose moral
character was lax, who could be distracted as easily as by a
beautiful woman. The story of Sampson as Israel itself during the
Exile is the story of a nation of men who choose foreign women and
were ruined by the way those women led them to unfaithfulness to God.

Delilah is the symbol of temptation and seduction as
well as greed. Her name means, “flirtatious”¹
while the name of her town means “choice vine.”²
It is intentional symbolism. She represents all of humanities fear
of the power of sexual attraction and the way it make us lose our
head. More specifically she represents the mystery of womanhood and
the fear that some men have about women and their different ways of
being. Delilah could easily step in as the negative female character
in just about any simplistic movie or book. She’s the one the hero
is attracted to, she’s the one who brings him down, she’s the
original femme fatale.

That is, unless you look at the story from her
perspective. Sampson had taken a walk one day, seen a
woman, and married her. That woman had no say in it. His wife had
attempted to do right by her people, and had gotten killed for it –
along with her father. Delilah, similarly, did not have any say in
entering a relationship with Sampson. The text says “he fell in
love with” her. It does not say, nor imply that the love was
reciprocated. It does not suggest that they got married. It
certainly seems that they were intimate, but he was so important that
he got what he wanted and normal limits didn’t apply.

Delilah would have known all this. She knew that it was
dangerous to have Sampson in love with her, that it could end as soon
as it began, and that no one was going to help her if that happened.
We have no way of knowing if he was kind to her, but we also have no
reason to assume he was. He isn’t presented as a man with a lot of
empathetic or listening skills. Most of what is said about him
suggests he may have been abusive.

We also don’t know Delilah’s ethnicity. She is said to
come from a town that is on the border, just inside Israel. If she
was from there she may be an Israelite nor she may be a Canaanite.
But since the Philistines come to her, and since every other woman
Sampson is said to have been attracted to is Philistine, I think it
is likely that she was a Philistine. Now, we can’t KNOW this, but
2/3 three choices mean that Sampson was not the leader of her people,
and I’m willing to take that seriously. While the way the text is
usually read blames Delilah for selling out her man/leader for money,
it may well be that she was trying to save her people as well as her
own skin. If she was a Philistine then what she did was patriotic!
She saved her people. If she was a Canaanite, there was no reason
why she should have been loyal to the Israelite leader who had taken
over their land. And if she was an Israelite (which I think makes
the least sense in the story) she at least had incentive to try to
end his life before hers got abruptly ended for her like his first
wife.

Delilah decided to seek the information she needed. We
don’t know if the money induced her or simply gave her courage, but
she tried. She tried a bunch of times and he seems to be playing
with her. He certainly seems to know what she’s up to, which is why
it makes no sense that he answers her.
However, she plays the one card she has. This is the key to this
story. It is verse 15, “Then
she said to him, ‘How can you say, “I love you”, when your
heart is not with me? You have mocked me three times now and have not
told me what makes your strength so great.’ “ She throws
his claim of love back in his face, claiming that if he won’t tell
her his secret than he doesn’t really love her. This was EXACTLY the
way his first wife got a secret out of him. Apparently he found this
argument particularly convincing.

He
told her. She did it. It worked. He was captured, humiliated, and
enslaved. SHE lived. If her people were the Philistines or the
Canaanites, then her people were better off as well. She used her
power, which in this case was something she didn’t even want to begin
with. The power she had was that this man said he loved her (or
maybe did love her) and she manipulated that to survive.

The
thing is that we often don’t have the upper hand in life. Sometimes
it is like this: being a woman walking down the street in the village
and then suddenly, by force, being the mistress of the strong-man
leader everyone fears. Sometimes we have that little power. But we
always have SOME power. Delilah had a little tiny bit of power and
used it. We have choices we can make and we have the capacity to use
our words, our actions, our relationships, our trust, and our energy
to whatever end we find worthwhile. Sometimes, like Delilah, that’s
in survival. When we’re lucky, and we’re surviving already, we can
use it to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms
the present themselves (#baptismalvows) Sometimes we get to resists
evil, injustice or oppression – big or small.

The
power we have, as small and insignificant as it may seem, can take
down the strongest human or the most feared enemy. Like Delilah
though, it takes persistence. A little power goes a lot further when
it is used persistently, and even FURTHER when it is used with
other’s little bits of power – persistently. Come to think of it,
especially this far into the Subversive Women sermon Series, maybe
there is something to being afraid of women. However, it isn’t our
mystery nor our seduction. It is that we, too, are humans who want
to survive and take care of those we love. And if you get in our
way, we will persistently defy you and subvert you. Thanks be to God
for people of all genders using their power for good. Amen

Sermon
Talk Back

To
get into the mindset of the story, who are other “femme fatale”
characters, and can any of their stories be inverted by taking their
perspective seriously?
What
does conventional masculinity find frightening about femininity?
How
could Sampson be so easily manipulated?
What
stories can you think of when people with VERY little power used it
to overthrow oppression?
Where
is God in this story?
Does
the enmity between ancient Israel and the Philistines serve to teach
us anything today?
How
can we have that much courage and persistence without having our own
backs against the wall, fighting for our lives?

And
how can we do that while also living whole and balanced lives while
we’re at it?

Where
else might we have taken this story?

1Dennis
T. Olsen “The Book of Judges” in the New Interpreter’s Study
Bible Vol II (Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1998) p. 858

2Herbert
Wolf, “Judges” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary Vol 3
(Zondervan: Grand Rapids, MI, 1992), p. 475