Exodus - Lesson 3

Dr. Carmen Imes 
Exodus 
OT605-03 
Israel's History 
Lesson Transcript

Okay, at long last we are ready to dive into the text of Exodus itself. I'm so excited to read this these texts with you because they are so powerful and so full of fascinating things to see. So we're beginning in Exodus chapter one and I have in front of me the NIV but I'm going to be making comments about different possible ways of translating it.

The first chapter is the story of the proliferation and oppression of the Israelites. We get a little bit of backstory as we begin. The book of Exodus actually begins with the word and in Hebrew which connects it to the story of Genesis and opens up for us a new chapter in that same story.

And we're told these are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. The descendants of Jacob numbered 70 in all. Joseph was already in Egypt.

This is a recap for us of what we read at the end of Genesis, the names of the sons of Jacob, their sojourn into Egypt because of the famine. It's a way of saying this is that same story and we're picking it up in the next chapter. We're told then about these people and what has happened to them as time has elapsed in Egypt.

And I think it's significant that in verse 5 we're told there were 70 of them because the next verse, verse 6, tells us there are a lot more than 70. It says, Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died. So we have very compressed time here, fast-forwarding.

But the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful. They multiplied greatly, increased in numbers, and became so numerous that the land was filled with them. This language should sound familiar if you're familiar with the early chapters of Genesis because we have a lot of creation echoes.

Genesis 1-26 had told, God had told the first humans, be fruitful and multiply, fill the land and subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living creature that roams upon the land. And now we have the repetition of those same key terms. The children of Israel were fruitful.

They swarmed even. They increased and became very, very numerous and the land was filled with them. So we're seeing a fulfillment, an initial fulfillment of God's creation blessing to the humans to be fruitful and multiply.

But we have a problem because in Genesis, God had told the people to be fruitful and multiply and subdue the earth, to rule over creation. But in Exodus, we have people who have multiplied. They've become numerous, but they're being subdued.

They're being oppressed. I'm struck by God's instructions in Genesis 1-26-28 to humans that in those instructions, both male and female are made in God's image and they're given this job to do to rule over creation, but it never says rule over each other. In Genesis, there's this vision of partnership, of working side by side to do the work that God has created humans to do.

And we don't see any kind of a hierarchy in Genesis 1 between humans, that one is not dominating the other. And that's exactly what seems to have gone wrong in Exodus 1. We have the proliferation of Hebrews, but they're being subdued instead of subduing the earth. They're being subdued by Pharaoh.

And we're told about him in verse 8. It says, then a new king to whom Joseph meant nothing came to power in Egypt. Look, he said to his people, the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them, or they will become even more numerous.

And if war breaks out, we'll join our enemies and fight against us and leave the country. So Pharaoh is concerned and he wants to subdue them. This phrase in verse 10, we must deal shrewdly with them, is a really interesting echo of the Joseph story because it's the word to be wise in Hebrew.

And we're told that Joseph was wise and it's his wisdom that helped him move up the chain and become second in command. And now Pharaoh says, let's be wise with them or they will become even more numerous. He's worried that they will leave.

So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor. And they built Pithom and Ramses as store cities for Pharaoh. And that word for oppressed is the same word that we mentioned back in Genesis that describes what Sarah did to Hagar, the Egyptian.

She mistreated her. And now the Hebrews are being mistreated by the Egyptians. So they built Pithom and Ramses as store cities for Pharaoh, but the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread.

So the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar. And with all kinds of work in the fields, in all their harsh labor, the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.

The language in this verse, verse 14, is very monotonous. 12 to 14 is the same. You can almost feel the plodding of the work.

They worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar. And with all kinds of work in the fields and harsh labor, they worked them ruthlessly.

You can hear the sort of trudging through their work. So maybe you've been curious in the past about what the Egyptians were actually building. I had an opportunity to hear a lecture one time by James Hoffmeier, a renowned evangelical Egyptologist.

And I asked him, why don't we see anything about the pyramids in the Bible? Is it possible that the Hebrews were building the pyramids? And he said, that's a great question. But the pyramids are actually far away from where the Hebrews lived. And we have no evidence that they were involved in building the pyramids.

But they were involved in brick making and building storage cities. So the store cities that are mentioned here in verse 11, we can learn a bit more about. The word for storage cities here is miskanot, which sounds remarkably like the next thing that they're going to be involved in building at the end of the book of Exodus, which is the mishkan.

So miskanot and mishkan. There's a kind of nice rhyming between the building of the tabernacle and the building of these storage cities. And this mirrors what I told you we were going to be seeing in the book, that they go from serving Pharaoh to serving Yahweh.

Here they're serving Pharaoh by building storage cities. And best as I can tell, these were likely warehouses that housed supplies for Pharaoh's funerary cult. So an Egyptian Pharaoh thought of himself as divine, and he was actually worshipped by the people, especially after his death.

He would make sure to supply, he would have built a temple in his own honor and store storehouses or warehouses full of supplies so that he could continue to be worshipped long after he died. So if he was wealthy enough and he built this well enough, then he would be, he would ensure that people would continue to worship him, even if the next Pharaoh couldn't give a rip about him. This Pharaoh would continue to be worshipped.

So it's very likely that the Hebrews are actually building these storage facilities to store up grain and wine and oil and whatever is needed in the worship of Pharaoh. And so these aren't just any old building. They're actually contributing to the worship and the deification of Egyptian Pharaohs, which is fascinating to me.

And God is calling them out of this and saying, no, I want you to build a house for me, and I want you to worship me. So that's probably what's going on here. The drawing that you see on the slide is a painting.

It's a drawing of a painting from the tomb of Rechmeir, Rechmeir, which is at Thebes. So again, this is 400 miles away from where the Hebrews are, but it depicts Semitic slaves who are making bricks. And you can see the entire process from getting water, making mud, trampling the mud.

They would use brick molds to put the mud into and then dump the mud out of the mold in the sun in rows to bake in the sun. There are still places around Egypt where sun-dried mud bricks are used in building. And you can see that these men are working as a team.

They're each doing different parts of the process. Some of them have certain kind of measuring implements. You can see a guy down on one knee who's measuring a stack of bricks because there were certain quotas that they had to fulfill.

We have some records that have been found in Egypt of brick quotas for slaves to make. So Israel is participating in this long tradition of the Egyptians having enslaved foreigners to do this building work. We already read in verse 10 when Pharaoh said, come, we must deal shrewdly with them.

It's interesting that Pharaoh, as he is speaking to his people about oppressing the Israelites, he uses language that actually echoes the Tower of Babel story. God has already demonstrated in Genesis his commitment to opposing the proud, and yet Pharaoh repeats this arrogance that we hear of the brick makers in Genesis 11 who are trying to build a city and a tower to try to establish their own fame and avoid being scattered. And here Pharaoh is trying to oppress the Israelites so that they will build for him so that they won't fight and leave.

So he's trying to prevent their leaving, which is again the reverse of what God is doing in Genesis 11. So in response, we have the sense as attentive readers, if we're familiar with Genesis, we have the sense that God is not going to support Pharaoh's desire to build this empire on the backs of slaves and to keep them from leaving. Pharaoh's fear is clearly expressed in this chapter.

Pharaoh is afraid because the Israelites outnumber him and outnumber the Egyptians, and he realizes that if they realize this, they could join their enemies and fight against Egypt. So he has to psychologically break them down so that they don't organize and revolt. So his first plan is to give them such harsh labor to work them so ruthlessly that they'll stop multiplying.

And yet it doesn't work. We're told that the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread. And so then he goes to plan B, starting in verse 15.

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, when you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him. But if it's a girl, let her live. The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do.

They let the boys live. This is such a fun part of the story. I don't know what Pharaoh is thinking, that he's going to kill the boys and keep the girls.

If he's thinking the boys would be the ones to become warriors and to fight against him, and so the girls would be less threatening. If he ended up with lots and lots of Hebrew women and there weren't enough men to marry them, maybe he's hoping to take them for himself or for his own people. But in this story, Pharaoh's plan works against him because beginning here, it's the women who undermine Pharaoh's authority over and over again.

They're the ones who defy Pharaoh and don't carry out his bidding. So he tells the midwives to kill the babies and instead they let them live. In verse 18, we're told, then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live? And their response is so brilliant.

They answer Pharaoh, Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women. They are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive. The word for vigorous is the word that sounds like animal, like they're hayot.

And the irony is that Pharaoh has been treating the Hebrews like they're animals. He's been working them like animals and now they're strong as animals so they don't need midwives. So Pharaoh's policies are working against him.

So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. So there's lots of speculation about these midwives and their role.

Their names do seem to be Hebrew names. Some have wondered if these are Egyptian midwives and that's why he tries to use them to do his bidding. People have also wondered how could only two midwives have done all of this, all of the childbirth for all of the Hebrews.

And it's not entirely clear. It could be that these two women are representative, like they're the head midwives and they're giving instructions to all the midwives who work under them. We don't know for sure.

But they don't fear Pharaoh. They fear Yahweh more than they fear Pharaoh. And so they do what they know is going to be pleasing to God.

And so he blesses them for that. We talked in an earlier session about how Pharaoh is not named in this story. We're not told which Pharaoh this is.

We're just hearing his title. But we do hear the names of these two women, Shifra and Pua. And I think this is deliberate on the part of the narrator.

He wants us to remember these women and remember their courage. At the same time, he wants to downplay Pharaoh and his authority. And here's a quote from another Exodus commentary, this one by Laurel Dystra.

She says, the biblical text names numerous politically insignificant individuals, slaves, mothers, and midwives, but the god kings of Egypt are unnamed and the father is virtually indistinguishable from the son, the two pharaohs. The account of the Exodus with its nameless pharaohs is a deliberate counter story to the empire's unchallenged self-description. I love how she put that.

And so Pharaoh introduces plan C. Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people. He's going public with his infanticide now. Every Hebrew boy that is born, you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.

Again, he hasn't learned his lesson. These women have defied him. And he hasn't caught on yet that it's the women who are going to be his biggest problem going forward.

So before we turn the page to chapter two, I want to circle back around to this childbirth scene because there's some really interesting Egyptianisms going on here that you might be curious about. So first of all, what's going on? It says when you're helping, verse 16, when you're helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool. The Hebrew here is the word avnaim, which means two stones.

There's been lots of speculation about what this actually is. Is it a stool of two stone kind of stool that a woman would squat on to give birth? Or is this actually a reference to the baby's genitalia or to the mother's genitalia that the midwife is seeing? So if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him is the instruction. So when you're helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the avnaim, so the idea is two stones.

This is talking about the male body parts that the midwives are seeing. And if you see that it's male, then kill him. Or is this you're looking at the woman's body parts as she's giving birth and that's when you're making the determination? Any of these things is possible that this is a kind of birthing equipment, that this is body parts.

What I find most likely the explanation that's made the most sense to me is that avnaim or stones are actually ritual bricks used for birthing in Egyptian context. And this illustration is taken from an academic article about the process of birthing in Egypt. And it seems like this idea actually combines the birthing stool, birthing equipment ideas.

So you can see in in the first part of this image, you have four bricks on the ground laid out like a like a platform. And they're inscribed around the outside, we've actually found some of these bricks and they're inscribed with images of the goddess of childbirth, goddess of protection, and that they would they would have done some kind of ritual related to childbirth because childbirth is a very sacred time where a woman is especially vulnerable. And so women became then practitioners of this childbirth experience and they would have been ritually trained.

Again, we're talking about Egyptian context here, this is not something the Israelites practiced later to our knowledge. But in an Egyptian context, these bricks then would have been stacked up so that a woman could put one foot on each stack and squat and be in a squatting position to give birth. And then after she gave birth, the bricks would be rearranged again as a platform and something soft put on it and the baby would be laid there and special pronouncements or proclamations would be made over the baby.

So this three-part process of preparing for birth, then giving birth, and then dedicating the baby might be related to what Pharaoh is talking about here. When you see, when you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the Av Naim, if you see it's a boy, kill him. So after the child comes out, he'd be laid on these bricks and you could see, oh it's a boy.

And that's the moment at which instead of speaking life-giving words to this infant, instead you should put him to death. That's the the implication. And so this little view of the childbirth moment in Egypt might help shed some light on what's going on in that passage.

What's very clear when you're reading this verse in Hebrew is that Pharaoh is stumbling all over himself. It's a very choppy verse. He doesn't, it feels like he's just gotten out of his comfort zone and he's talking about something he doesn't know a lot about because there wouldn't have been men in the delivery room.

And so this sentence is very choppy in Hebrew. When you're helping the women, you know, when you're doing that thing with the bricks, you know, if you see, you know, just let, kill the boys and let the girls live. It's really fascinating to see him kind of stutter his way through it.

But that is the, that's a taste of what's going on in this first chapter. We get, the scene is being set for the deliverance of the Hebrew people, but we're seeing just how bad things have become. Not only are they being worked really hard, but the Egyptians are dreading them.

Verse 12 says they, there's disgust that's been paired with the work that they're forcing them to do. These are not just laborers, but they're laborers that the Egyptians are disgusted by. This is where we see racism, an ancient form of racism, weaving into the kind of oppression.

This is not just some people oppressing other people, but the ethnicity of the Hebrews is odious to the Egyptians. We saw this back in Genesis. If you'll recall, when Joseph is telling Pharaoh, Hey, my dad and my brothers and all their families are going to come live here.

And Pharaoh says, Oh, where do they want to live? Give them the best of the land. And Joseph explains, well, they're shepherds and shepherds are, are repulsive to Egyptians. And so they'll want to be kind of off on their own so that the Egyptians aren't bothered by them.

So we already had a hint in the Joseph story that the Egyptians would be repulsed by the Hebrews, that they wouldn't mix well. And here we see that playing out with this Pharaoh who is not only working them ruthlessly, but, but dreading them and not, not even tolerating their presence. It's a very insidious form of disgust that again, is at odds with the creation echoes that we see in this chapter where God makes every human being in, in his image and says, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.

So they're multiplying, but the Egyptians don't like them. And that sets us up for the deliverance story of Moses, which begins in chapter two. We'll dive into that next.