Proper 16 / Pentecost 14 / OT 21
Devotional
Water From the Well
Lectionary Devotional For Cycle A
Object:
... Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.
-- Exodus 1:9-10
There has always been a fear of the immigrants, especially when they stick together and remain identifiable. The pattern of the treatment of the Hebrew immigrants in this story becomes a familiar pattern. Pharaoh could easily identify them as "the Israelite people" reflecting the fact that they had refused to be assimilated. Because they did not fit into the dominant culture, Pharaoh began to question their loyalty. "... In the event of war, [they will] join our enemies." They began to discriminate against them (deal shrewdly with them) and in guilt assumed that the Israelites would be disloyal to them. They began to develop laws that made use of their services but made their lives more difficult: "Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor." Then they developed a rationale for treating their lives more cheaply than the life of an Egyptian. "When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women ... if it is a boy, kill him...." They were shocked to discover that members of the Egyptian society became advocates for the Hebrews out of a sense of common decency. "But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them...."
The Bible delights in revealing how God uses the least powerful in society to transform unjust situations. In this case there is a common thread of the work of women from all levels of society resisting the evil that was operating. First, it was the midwives who refused to practice infanticide. Second, a mother refused to give up her child and placed him in a basket on the Nile. Third, "by chance," the baby was found by the one person close enough to Pharaoh to defy his policy of infanticide. To complete the irony, Moses' sister convinced Pharaoh's daughter that she could find a woman (actually the baby's mother) to care for him on her behalf. And it was this child, preserved by this chain of women, that would eventually lead God's people to the very freedom that Pharaoh had sought to prevent.
-- Exodus 1:9-10
There has always been a fear of the immigrants, especially when they stick together and remain identifiable. The pattern of the treatment of the Hebrew immigrants in this story becomes a familiar pattern. Pharaoh could easily identify them as "the Israelite people" reflecting the fact that they had refused to be assimilated. Because they did not fit into the dominant culture, Pharaoh began to question their loyalty. "... In the event of war, [they will] join our enemies." They began to discriminate against them (deal shrewdly with them) and in guilt assumed that the Israelites would be disloyal to them. They began to develop laws that made use of their services but made their lives more difficult: "Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor." Then they developed a rationale for treating their lives more cheaply than the life of an Egyptian. "When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women ... if it is a boy, kill him...." They were shocked to discover that members of the Egyptian society became advocates for the Hebrews out of a sense of common decency. "But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them...."
The Bible delights in revealing how God uses the least powerful in society to transform unjust situations. In this case there is a common thread of the work of women from all levels of society resisting the evil that was operating. First, it was the midwives who refused to practice infanticide. Second, a mother refused to give up her child and placed him in a basket on the Nile. Third, "by chance," the baby was found by the one person close enough to Pharaoh to defy his policy of infanticide. To complete the irony, Moses' sister convinced Pharaoh's daughter that she could find a woman (actually the baby's mother) to care for him on her behalf. And it was this child, preserved by this chain of women, that would eventually lead God's people to the very freedom that Pharaoh had sought to prevent.
