|
In
the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
“Then
the new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power…”
Such ominous words. He goes
on, “Look, the Israelites have
become too numerous for us, we must oppress them so they won’t dare
rebel.”
“They breed so fast!” The
narrator says the land was filled
with Hebrews. Right away
we are presented with two worlds in one space.
Ancient texts record life in Pharaoh’s residence as full of
everything good. Ponds
brimming with fish, and lakes with exotic birds.
Its meadows are lush with grass, trees full with dates and melons
abundant on the sands. At a whim, one could eat anything imaginable.
But Pharaoh was not focused on the luxury surrounding him.
Perched high above in splendor, he is fixated on something much
different… watching happy moms and dads enjoying the fruits of God’s
labor. Yahweh has given these
fortunate parents a bounty in quick time.
God is in the mood to give in abundance.
From where he sits, there is little reason for Pharaoh to be happy.
He broods at the warped reality in his head.
Because the Israelites are abundant, Egypt must be in danger.
“We do not make babies like they do.”
He only sees scarcity. Those
baby boys down there will take
his kingdom away. His
stomach churns. He has
the throne but they have the power.
He’s
a perfect protagonist.
For
Pharaoh is a carnal man, lacking wisdom.
He knows only what eats him up inside.
For “he did not know about Joseph.” The new king did not remember.
So he competed.
“It’s
us or them.” The
question is, why? Genesis
ended so well.
Joseph was an Egyptian hero.
Joseph saved not just one, but both nations. His name
was celebrated. Truth be told,
the Egyptian people indentured themselves to Joseph.
The Egyptian people gladly gave their land and themselves in
exchange for food in
Genesis 47. They cheered
Joseph for saving them. “You have saved our lives!” (47:25)
they proclaimed.
Joseph’s
Pharaoh in Genesis was a grateful king and gave the Hebrews the best land
in northern Egypt. And they
were fruitful and multiplied. Everyone
was happy --
the Egyptians eating their own grain, the Israelites eating grain and
multiplying, and Yahweh was with them all.
And then we turn the page. The
Hebrews kept multiplying! And
apparently the Egyptians had not. The
bonds of friendship were now glares of suspicion.
Gone was any commonality. Any
gratitude for the foreigners….had worn thin.
With armies growing stronger all around him, Pharaoh’s heart grew
weary. He saw numbers, not
souls.
‘So let them make bricks!’ “Why
bricks?” one should ask. The
storyteller is quite clever really. The
bricks bear resemblance to Pharaoh’s heart.
Hard labor for the Hebrews, to make hardened mud for hardened
slave-masters who answered to a hard-hearted Pharaoh.
The irony drips from the pages:
dirty Hebrews doing back-breaking work for a man who looks down on
them from on high, wishing he had what they have.
So what do they really have? What
is it that he sees?
Pharaoh hates his new slaves.
In another ancient text, called the Satire
of the Trades, we are given a description of a brick maker…, “He
is dirtier than…pigs from treading under the mud.
His clothes are stiff with clay; his leather belt is going to
ruin…he is miserable…his sides ache, since he must be outside in a
treacherous wind…His arms are destroyed with technical work…What he
eats is the bread of his fingers, and he washes himself only once
a season. He is simply
wretched through and through…”
This misery is not enough in Pharaoh’s mind.
It is not enough to work them to exhaustion.
He wants their spirits too. His
desperation drives him to the lowest depths of depravity.
He wants their baby sons murdered at first breath.
He is wicked. The
problem with pure evil is that it’s bad, and epic stories rarely like
the bad guy winning in the end.
These midwives, the ones Pharaoh confided in to carry out his horrific
whim, were not evil like him; they feared God.
In what could have been Israel’s darkest hour we see where the
real power lies…The women let the boys live.
The midwives are not afraid of Pharaoh.
Their fear is in the Lord! They
easily outwit the Egyptian king. “The
Hebrew women are
not like Egyptian women. They
are vigorous birthers.”
What? What kind of man accepts
this as legit? Well…a fool
does. God uses simple things
to thwart the plans of simpletons. If
he were smart, Pharaoh would have seen this coming.
But Pharaoh didn’t know his Hebrew…
The two midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, translate, in the Hebrew, as
“beauty” and “fragrant blossom” respectively.
In the midst of so much misery and ugliness, God is near.
There is more to the story than what is on the page.
The root word for Puah is pa’ah…
which can mean “to murmur” or “to gurgle.” Robert Alter mentions
an ancient rabbi named, “Rashi, who suggests [this root is] the sound a
nurturing woman makes to sooth an infant.” (The
Five Books of Moses, 310)
Where
God is, evil cannot prevail. The
very women the hapless king entrusts to his evil plan are, from the
beginning, given to him by God. Secret
agents for Yahweh.
But we knew this, didn’t we? For
we remember our history. We
remember Joseph. And we
remember what Joseph told us on his death bed. (Gen.
50:24)
“God will surely come to your aid.”
For those who do not forget, their gaze is not on what we
don’t have, but what we have always had.
For
their bravery and valor, God gave the midwives families of their own.
The story will end God’s way even when everything points to the
contrary. Life is hard.
It’s full of moments rough and tumble, great and small, moments
when God looks to be elsewhere. But
these are not to be the end of the story.
This story in Exodus is not a single event, but rather one incarnation of
a beautifully re-occurring cycle we read throughout the Bible.
And it is a cycle of which we find ourselves in the midst today.
As hard times seem constant in our lives, so too, are the times the
Lord comes to our aid. He
is the God who loves in abundance. He
is the God who remembers.
But our reading is not over. As
pharaoh’s memory had failed, so does the collective memory of the
Israelites in the wilderness. Not
sitting high above a slave encampment perched around lush gardens and
eating bon bons. They were
knee deep in sand, hungry, thirsty and afraid.
Their hearts began to grumble.
They were only two months removed from crossing the Red Sea and witnessing
their evil slave master die under the mighty hand of God.
Their God led them from slavery to unimaginable freedom. The
God who was leading them now. And
their present hunger pains seemed to have eclipsed all of it.
Stomachs growling…cotton mouthed and dirty all over again, they grumbled
about what they did not have, losing sight of what they did have.
“Egypt was so much better than this.
We ate and we drank…we didn’t even know how good we had it!”
At times, the distinction of who’s good and who’s bad is not so
obvious.
No
matter, this story is not essentially about us.
…And
God remembered his beloved, “I
will rain down bread and birds from heaven for you.”
The Lord heard their grumbling.
The Lord remembered when his people did not.
It might not have ever crossed their minds that they were not much
different from their hated foe, the king of Egypt.
But it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. The same God who
created the heavens and the earth in His abundance is the same God who
created new life in the midst of a wretched existence and is the One who
provided sweet bread and more quail than they could eat in the
middle of the desert. In the
midst of nothing, He made more than they could ever handle.
Because that is who He is. Regardless
of how we are.
And the story continues…in our grumblings and in our distrust and
anxieties…in our failures to remember…God never stops giving to us in
abundance.
Amen.
|
