Here’s my longer sermon notes from this morning’s Metro Christian Centre service (dated 18th Feb. 2024), kicking off our series through the book of Exodus.
You can also catch up with this via MCC’s YouTube channel (just give us time to get the video uploaded).
‘Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love.’
Gandalf, The Hobbit (a.k.a. There and Back Again)[i]
Exodus has often been referred to as the Easter story of the Old Testament. It’s the formative story to how Israel, in the Old Testament, understand their identity and God’s identity. This God takes people out of bondage in a dark and death-dealing oppressive empire and delivers them into freedom. More than this, God delivers these people so they might know him (Ex. 6:7). The people, in this story, go from forced servitude in an ashen existence, from the bondage of an evil tyrant, into a consensual covenantal life of worship at the end.
Exodus isn’t the whole story, of course, of the Old Testament—the story that rolls out after this is certainly not one of freedom. And, as great a story as Exodus is, it is not the story. In many ways, Exodus foreshadows what God ultimately does for all humanity in Jesus Christ. The writers of the New Testament—the gospel writers, the letter writers like Paul, even the writer of Revelation—all lean on the story of the Exodus to talk about what Jesus has achieved.
As Terence Fretheim states, ‘“Drawing upon virtually every existing interpretative means available to them”, the NT writers use “Exodus texts as a vehicle for interpreting and proclaiming God’s act in Jesus.”’[ii]
God’s purposes in this story, and in humanity’s story, could be summarised in the words, ‘Let my people go’ (Ex. 5:1). The African theologian, Kenneth Ngwa wonderfully put it, ‘Let my people live.’[iii]
God rescues us from death for life.
READ: EXODUS 1:1—2:10 (NIV)
WHERE ASH AND COMPASSION MEET
This week saw Valentine’s Day clash with Ash Wednesday.
I use the word clash, because, from a modern viewpoint, they don’t seem to go together: One is about the commercialism of love and romantic experience; the other, lament.
If we put aside the ‘Hallmark’ idea of Valentines, though, it and Ash Wednesday hum with a similar theme: The activity of life under the shadow of death.
Valentine was a priest, martyred around AD 269, under the reign of the Roman Emperor Claudius II (aka. Claudius Gothicus).
As one story goes, Valentine was executed for disobeying an edict put out by the Emperor. Claudius, in order to boost the number of men he could conscript into his army, had put a ban on all marriages. However, Valentine continued to secretly marry couples.
In another version of the story, Valentine was a priest and a physician who continued to the serve the Christians who were being persecuted by Rome at the time.
Whichever story is true; his life reminds us of the gritty reality of a life of faith in history—and in many parts of the world today. Valentine’s faith in God, like many believers around our world, meant he was committed to life under a regime of death.
On Ash Wednesday, many (not all) Christians around the world are reminded of the words of Genesis 3:19, ‘For Dust you are, and to dust you will return’ (NIV), as ash and oil are mixed together and used to draw a cross upon the forehead.
It is a time when we reflect, not solely on our own mortality, but when we also grieve the state of existence. The world is not as it ought to be. This is not to say that everything is rotten. Scripture affirms that this is God’s creation, filled with goodness and beauty—the stuff that makes us go, ‘wow’. As one ancient songwriter puts it, ‘The heavens proclaim the glory of God.’ (Ps. 19:1).[iv]
However, it’s certainly not all goodness and beauty. Existence is marred, we could say, by pain and suffering, death and oppression, famine, disease and disaster. Sometimes life is bitter and feels like a poor parody of what it should be.
According to Scripture, the roots of this goes back to the Genesis story, where humanity, enthralled by the shrewdness of the serpent, grasps for power. Even though humanity were made in God’s image, they swallow the serpent’s deception, believing God is against them and a threat to their potential. As a consequence, they fear and mistrust God, and hide. The effects of this overspill into all their relationships: in the unfolding story, they learn to blame, to envy, to hate, to kill, to avenge and to oppress.
Even if you do not hold to Genesis’ summary of an explanation, you have to agree that humanity’s inhumanity—our violent grasping for power or our own comfort, our greed, our lack of concern, our prejudices, our fear—has, and still does, deface and incinerate the quality life.
There’s a lot that makes us go, ‘wow’. But there’s also a lot to grieve in our world.
Reaching all the way back into the Old Testament, ashes have been a powerful way to express this grief, and our complicity in this grief (e.g., Est. 4:1; Job 42:6; Jer. 6:26; Ezek. 27:30; Dan. 9:3). After all, what are ashes but the remains of what was, the residue of what should have been?
It may seem like a sombre thing to do, but far from being gloomy and morbid, it’s a declaration of hope. Because mixed into this ash is oil, symbolic of the Spirit of God. It is a picture that the life of God meets us, through the Cross of Christ, in our ashen state. That God, in Jesus, has been with us, and has brought us life.
Not only has he brought us life, through his death and resurrection, but, with the assurance of his Spirit with us, looking forward, God will lead this world out of its ashen state (2 Cor. 1:21-22; 4:18-5:5; Eph. 1:14). What was achieved in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, will, one day, lead to a world free from pain and sin, sorrow and death (Rom. 8:18-25; 1 Cor. 15:21-28; Rev. 21:3-6).
Peter, in Acts, calls it the ‘restoration of all things’ (Acts. 3:21). The prophet, Isaiah looked forward to a day when God would bestow upon us a crown of beauty instead of ashes, when the oil of joy and gladness will replace our marks of mourning (Isa. 61:3).
For now, though, we live in a world caught between those two realities, a world of ash and oil. Yet, in our waiting, in the power of the Spirit, we seek to embody the Kingdom of God; we partake and join in God’s activity for life in this ashen world.
Whether it’s Valentines or Ash Wednesday, there’s this same message.
What has any of this to do with Exodus?
Well, everything, I suppose.
Exodus is an epic story, full of iconic, action-packed moments, along with some strange and puzzling moments, too. Its story has captured and inspired the imaginations of social reformers, storytellers and cinematic directors for generations. But, for all of its grand scenes to come, Exodus’ beginnings, as witnessed in its opening scenes, are formed from the committed loving acts of compassion that take place in an ashen world.
This great story has humble beginnings, in some humble, yet courageous and faithful people. And, much to my delight, at every turn in this story’s opening, the heroes are women.
It is no understatement to say that without these women, the Exodus, as we know it, would not have happened.
MIDWIVES
Everything starts well in this story. In many ways, the opening of Exodus purposely echoes the opening of Genesis. The people of Jacob’s family have come to Egypt, they were invited and welcomed with open arms into Egypt (Gen. 45:16-20; 47:1-12), and they are being fruitful—they are multiplying and filling the land (Gen. 1:28; Ex. 1:6).
All is good, life is blossoming. It’s like paradise.
But then, as a further echo of Genesis, something shifts. In verse 8, we read:
‘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, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country. So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor …’ (NLT)
It would be hard to guess what is going on in this new king’s head.[v] He sees these Israelite people as a threat to his rule, a threat to his hold on power and potential—even as a threat to national security. He is afraid of them, and he informs his people that these Israelites need to be dealt with shrewdly.
Like the Serpent in the garden, who was shrewd, and who led humanity to fear, the Pharaoh is also shrewd, and is afraid himself, but equally leads others to fear, too (Ex. 1:12).[vi]
Don’t misunderstand—Pharaoh is not Satan. He is not the embodiment of evil. But he is certainly portrayed as embodying a deception that engulfs his worldview and, in turn, his world. He concocts a story—a story with no basis in reality—in order to turn the hearts of his people against a certain ethnicity. It’s a propaganda tactic, inventing an enemy within the midst, which leads to enslavement and terrifying escalating violence.
God’s words to humanity in Genesis 3, of dust and sweat and work, have taken on a harsher reality in this story in the hands of Pharaoh.
And when this agenda of oppression fails—because the people keep multiplying and being faithful to life in the shadow of death—Pharaoh increases the forced labour and with it enacts a call for infanticide: asking that baby Hebrew boys be put to death at birth. In a typical despot sort of way, he’s not getting his hands dirty with any of this, he asks the midwives of the Hebrews to do this.
Actually, Pharaoh never seems to get his hands dirty in any of this, he always order others do his bloodthirsty work.[vii]
His rule is not coming across as being great, is it? Pharaoh and his schemes would not be unique in world history—or even the world presently. The world has seen plenty (too many, even) of Pharaoh’s.
Pharoah’s under a delusion of power. But his power is not total.
These midwives say, ‘no’ to his scheme.[viii]
Their courage is astounding and inspiring. This is Pharaoh, king of Egypt, apparently the voice of the gods in this land, and these two, seemingly insignificant and powerless women defy him.
Why? Well, we are told, they feared God.
This doesn’t mean they were more scared of God than they were of Pharaoh. This isn’t the fright of Genesis 3 that causes Adam and Eve to hide from God, but the reverence that causes them to stand with God. They revered God more than they were afraid of Pharaoh. Their first allegiance was to God, not a human ruler.
This, by the way, is the first mention of God in this narrative. So far, it seems like God has been absent—God hasn’t (we’ll come back to this, later). Nevertheless, without any direct intervention—no burning shrub or seas separating—God has a dramatic effect on the outcome.
Apart from their names, we don’t know much about Shiphrah and Puah.[ix] They could be Israelites; they may not be Israelites. They could be two women that represent an army of midwives who disobeyed the “great and powerful” Pharaoh.
We don’t even know how much they knew about the God they revered. The writer uses the generic term for God (Elohim), with no prefix or suffix, unlike Hagar’s ‘God who sees’ (Gen. 16:13), or the popular Old Testament title of ‘God Almighty’ (Elohim El Shaddai). However, it is apparent they understood that this God stood for the sanctity of life.
The midwives know this so well, that they risk their own lives not only refusing Pharaoh’s orders, but they pursue the exact opposite. As one commentator shows, the force of the Hebrew language in verse 16 is more than just letting baby boys live. Rather, “they made sure the boys lived”. They actively protected and cultivated these little, ‘powerless’, lives.[x]
Though God may seem quiet in this story, and we may wrongly believe that God only shows up in the burning bush or the parting of the sea, these women embody what God is like and what God does with power.
Unlike Pharaoh, who decrees death with his power. God decrees life and utilises the ‘powerless’ to shame the powerful (1 Cor. 1:27-29).
If you want to see where God is working in this story, then these midwives are it. Shiphrah and Puah are a powerful testimony to the life-giving, subtle power of God at work in the midst of a death-dealing empire like Pharaoh’s Egypt.
Through little, ‘blue-collared’ people, God topples the schemes of the so-called mighty.
God is the God of the powerless.
Or, as we’ll hear God described often in this story, he is ‘the God of the Hebrews.’ (Ex. 3:18; 5:3; 7:16; 9:1, 13; 10:3).
Like the first use of God, in this story, the midwives’ scene is also the first time the word Hebrew is used. It’s a strange term. It’s not describing an ethnicity, per se. Whenever it is used in scripture, like here, it’s a word that is often used from the mouths of others who wish to differentiate the Israelites from their own ethnic group.
So, for example, the term Hebrew is used typically by Canaanites, Philistines and Egyptians in the text. Potiphar’s wife calls Joseph a “Hebrew” when slurring his reputation and accusing him of sexual assault (Gen. 39:14, 17). The Philistines call the Israelites “Hebrews” when the Israelites are under Philistine control (1 Sam. 4:6, 9; 14:11, 21).[xi]
It was a way of saying ‘immigrant’, ‘foreigner’; not one of us.[xii] More than this, being called a Hebrew carried an insulting overtone. It was a way of saying ‘inferior’, of ‘lower status’—not equal, only good to be trampled over or used.
Yet, God claims those people that others would use or disregard, and says ‘they are mine.’
Jesus, God in flesh, in the New Testament, is exactly the same; bringing the marginalised, the least, the last, the lost, and the littlest around a table with himself. Cultivating life, like the midwives, among people that others would perceive as lifeless or of little value.
Throughout scripture, God often uses unsung and unlikely people, along with circumstances all too easily overlooked and ignored, in order to achieve his purposes.
He is the God of the Hebrews!
Like God, Shiphrah and Puah are midwives, birth-helpers (in the original language), life-cultivators of the lowly and the little.
ETH·NO
It’s worth saying at this point, that although God identifies with the powerless, the story of Exodus is not anti-Egyptian.
This is not God versus Egypt, or even God versus Pharaoh for being a king. Exodus is not seeking to promote hostility or prejudice towards Egyptians. If it was, it would be a mirror image of Pharaoh’s own diabolical agenda.
The problem Exodus critiques is Pharaoh’s use power, because ‘power that dehumanizes is an abuse of power.’[xiii] As one commentator notes, ‘The world portrayed in this text is a world where the powerful engage in oppressive and ruthless ways to make the lives of the powerless bitter and miserable.’[xiv]
Pharaoh is death-dealing and self-preserving with his power. And to some extent, he’s a victim of the gods he worships and the ideologies he holds. The power he holds is destroying him as much as he is destroying others, and it will prove to be his downfall.[xv]
As we will see, as this story unfolds, God is in a battle with Egypt’s gods (Ex. 12:12; 15:11; 18:11). Or, as Paul would word it in the New Testament, the battle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers (Eph. 6:12). The story is not against people of different ethnicity.
When we come to the time of the great escape in this story, as Israel flees Egypt, we are told that many people who were not Israelites went with them (Ex. 12:38). The community that arrives at Sinai is not one people group, but a mixed crowd, an ‘ethnic salad.’[xvi] There’s no reason to suspect that Egyptians were not a part of that mixture of people.
The laws and regulations that develop out of the Exodus were shaped by this experience of oppression. Israel know what oppression is like, and so the law’s intent was meant to motivate a sensitivity towards others who would suffer exploitation.[xvii] The Israelites are instructed to love the foreigners residing among them, even the Egyptian (Ex. 22:21; 23:9; Deut. 10:18-19; 23:7).[xviii]
If we read this account closely, the writers take great care to show us that they are not anti-Egyptian. Egyptians play key roles in their rescue and preservation. The few Egyptian characters mentioned in this story, along with other non-Israelite characters, likely represent a host of Egyptians who were not on board with Pharaoh’s agenda.
There’s a good chance these midwives were actually Egyptian. The language can be translated ‘midwives to the Hebrews’, and it’s unlikely Pharaoh would entrust his scheme to kill Hebrew infants to Hebrew women.
It’s something that often gets debated.
What’s not under debate, though, is the ethnicity of Pharaoh’s daughter.
PHARAOH’S DAUGHTER
We know the story. The midwives’ plan may have worked, but Pharaoh is unrelenting, his vice-like grip tightens. This time, he commands not only Egyptians, or the midwives, but ‘all his people’ (Ex. 1:22), to throw newborn Israelite boys into the Nile River.
It’s a sinister time.
Yet, the Israelites keep pursuing life in the shadow of death. And so, a certain man and a certain woman get married (we’ll discover their names much later in the text), and they multiply. But they can’t hide their child forever.
The mother decides to hide her baby boy in a basket within the reeds of the river, and she puts her daughter on watch.[xix] We may wonder why she chooses to hide her child in the reeds at the river’s edge; was she expecting something like this would happen? Probably not.
When you think about it, with all that’s going on, it wouldn’t be unusual to hear the cries of children at the banks of this river. As strange as it sounds, it’s as safe a place as any. It’s a good plan!
But then, Pharaoh’s daughter arrives. She has decided to bathe in the river, near where the child is hidden. She spots the basket. She’s curious. She wants to know what it is. She summons one of her servants to go and get it. And then she opens it, and recognises a Hebrew child.
Imagine being the sister watching this scene! If this was me, my heart would be jumping out of my chest. Is this the end? Will this Egyptian, Pharaoh’s own daughter, toss this child into the water?
No. She draws him out of it. She pays for him to be weaned (putting him under her protection). And then, at the end of this passage, she adopts him (when he’s around 3 yrs old), gives him the name Moses, and raises him as her own child.
We’ll hopefully come back to that name in a few weeks, and note how odd it is that this Egyptian Princess names Moses, and not his own Israelite parents, and how Moses keeps this Egyptian name.
But for now, I want you to see how staggering this is.
If it helps, change the setting of the story: Imagine history was different, and that Hitler had a daughter, and that this daughter went around rescuing Jewish children. Can you see what’s at stake?
Like the midwives, Pharaoh’s daughter shows tremendous courage; she would have known that this was an act of disobedience to her father’s will. But she does it anyway.
Why? Does she know that God is going to do something special with this child? Does she have any idea that the same child she has drawn from the water, and who she names in such a way that it echoes the Hebrew phrase for ‘drawing out of water’ (moshe), will one day lead the Israelites, along with others, through the waters and out of Egypt? Probably not.
Why does she do it? Verse 6 of chapter 2 tells us: ‘The little boy was crying, and she felt sorry for him.’ (NLT).
To pull her response back to the Hebrew language: ‘she heard his cries and was moved by compassion.’
Without the compassion of Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses might not have lived. Because of this, she is highly honoured in Jewish history.[xx]
‘She heard his cries and was moved by compassion.’
You may not recognise those words, yet. But the same words describing the concerned reaction of the princess, who hears the cries of Moses and responds, are the exact same words that will be said of God at the end of this same chapter (Ex. 2:24-25).[xxi]
Can you see how profound this is? It raises all sorts of fascinating questions.
But, for now, ponder this: When we see, later in this chapter, Moses being driven by a sense of justice, as he sees the plight of the Israelites, and intervenes on an Egyptian guard beating a Hebrew slave; or when he steps in to rescue the midianite daughters of Jethro from some greedy shepherds (Ex. 2:11-17), who do you think he learnt this from? He has a sense of justice that transcends boundaries of nationality and kinship; he has a deep concern for life, especially for the weaker; he has an intolerance for abuse.[xxii] I’m going to suggest his adopted mother instilled these values in him.
It certainly wasn’t from his adopted Grandfather!
She may be Pharaoh’s daughter, but she doesn’t have Pharaoh’s heart. Like the midwives, she has the heart of the God of the Hebrews.
‘Moved with compassion’, this is the heart of God. When Matthew writes his gospel, and he describes Jesus’, God incarnate dwelling among us, reaction when seeing the crowds who followed him, Matthew uses the exact same wording (Matt 9:36).
Like the midwives, if we want to know what God is up to in this story, then, as unlikely as it may seem, Pharaoh’s daughter gives us a window in.[xxiii]
OIL IN ASH
Throughout these opening scenes, women play a vital role in the preservation of life. The midwives, Pharaoh’s daughter—along with Moses’ mother and sister—are all involved in saving life under the shadow of death. Those who eventually walked through the waters owe their lives to these women.
They are all, in their own ways, a picture of oil in the midst of ash. They all display what God is up to in the midst of the mess they’re in . Again, God’s not big and noisy in this passage. Many people have commented on how silent God appears to be in this early section of the story, wondering if God is unconcerned at this point. And yet, if we look and listen, God is with them.
Many years before this story, God had made a promise to Jacob. He said, ’I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again’ (Gen 46:4, NIV, italics mine)
God was with them in their ashen life in Egypt.
For us, too, God is with us—even when it feels like life is an ash heap, even when it all feels silent.
We know this because of the Cross of Jesus. God knows our suffering, because Jesus Christ, God incarnate, suffered.
As the Dutch priest, Henri Nouwen expressed it, ‘God is not a distant God, a God to be feared and avoided, a God of revenge, but a God who is moved by our pains and participates in the fullness of human struggle … God is a compassionate God, who has chosen to be God-with-us (Immanuel).’[xxiv]
God is the oil in our ash.
I suppose, what I am trying to say is, don’t overlook the little things. God is working even in the silence, in the small and the unassuming.
It’s an important reminder, too, for us to keep working for life. These small acts of faithfulness and compassion, by the midwives and Pharaoh’s daughter facilitate everything God will do in the story that follows. In the same way, our small acts of faithfulness and compassion are never useless. In the power of the Spirit, they are oil in ash—they are life-giving, life-supporting, and life-preserving acts in a world marred with death and sorrow.
As Paul would remind his audience, many, many years later, when describing the great hope of the resurrection, when ash gives way to oil:
‘So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.’
1 Corinthians 15:58, NLT
END NOTES:
[i] For the J. R. R Tolkien lovers out there (like myself), sadly this isn’t something Tolkien wrote, though it neatly summarises a powerful theme of his writing. It comes from Peter Jackson’s adaptations of The Hobbit.
[ii] Terence E. Fretheim, The Book of Exodus, Dictionary of the Old Testament: Pentateuch (InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL, 2003), p.257. As quoted in, H. Junia Pokrifka, Exodus: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, New Beacon Bible Commentary (Beacon Hill Press, Kansa City, MO, 2018), p. 25.
[iii] The title of Prof. Kenneth N. Ngwa’s book on Exodus: Let My People Live: An Africana Reading of Exodus (Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, Kentucky, 2022).
[iv] Similar reflections on God’s goodness witnessed in and testified to by creation are also expressed in Psalm 104. These two verses are certainly not lone voices in the text.
[v] This hasn’t stopped people, however. One interesting theory comes from attempts to put a date to when the Exodus story is set. Due to this, something you can read about in most commentaries is the story of the Hyksos. The Hyksos were Semitic, non-Egyptian, rulers of lower Egypt that were driven out of their rule when Athmose I (1550-1525 BC), the founder of the Eighteenth Dynasty, came to the throne of Upper Kingdom and sought to reunite Egypt. Athmose expelled the Hyksos from their rule, driving them out of Egypt. Some, like the 1st century AD Jewish Historian, Josephus, based on the third century BC writing of the Egyptian, Manetho (in Aigyptiaka), declared that the Hyksos people were the Israelites, and that this event was the Exodus event told from a ruling Egyptian perspective. Other, more recent commentators, disagreeing that the Semitic Hyksos rulers were the Israelites, have posited the possibility that their expulsion from power (and Egypt), with the change of Dynasty, could have created an environment where other, non-ruling Semitic peoples in Egypt could have been treated with a hostile perception, as a potential security risk. Thus, Athmose’s expulsion would, therefore, be seen as the start of the enslaving of the non-Egyptian and Semitic minority population. It’s a big debate, and nothing, as all commentators note, is certain. If you wish to read more on Pharaoh Atmose’s dealings with the Hyksos, then John Romer’s, A History of Ancient Egypt, Volume 3: From the Shepherd Kings to the End of the Theban Monarchy (History of Ancient Egypt, 3), is an accessible and stimulating read.
[vi] The words used to describe the shrewdness of the serpent in Genesis 3:1 (עָרוּם/ārûm, φρόνιμος) and the shrewd dealings of Pharoah in Exodus 1:10 (חכם/hāḵam, κατασοφίζομαι) are not the same words, nor do they share a root meaning (as far I, with my rubbish language skills, can discern). However, thematically speaking, the link is there between the stories. Especially if we see the Pharaoh as portraying an ‘anti-god’ figure, as someone who is hostile (knowingly or not) to God’s redemptive plan, as Peter Enns suggests [Peter Enns, Exodus, NIVAC (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 2003), p. 43]
[vii] In Exodus 1:8-11, he shrewdly manipulates the Egyptians to enslave the Israelites. In Exodus 1:15-16, he orders the midwives to kill. And in Exodus 1:22, Pharaoh instructs ‘all his people’ to throw new-born boys into the river.
[viii] Again, another echo of Genesis is here. Albeit, an inverted echo. In Genesis 3, it’s a woman’s (and a man’s!) disobedience that leads to death entering paradise. Here, however, the disobedience of the women defies a deathly warrant in order to defend life. As an equalitarian (to put my cards on the table), I wonder if this story is what Paul is alluding to in 1 Timothy 2:15?
[ix] As a number of commentators note, though we don’t know much, the fact that their names are recorded for posterity, while the “great” Pharaoh’s is not, says a lot about how they were regarded by the future generations.
[x] Christopher J. H. Wright, The Story of God Bible Commentary: Exodus (Zondervan Academic, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2021), footnote 11, p. 61
[xi] Ibid, p.60
[xii] Ralph K. Hawkins, Discovering Exodus (SPCK, London, 2021), p. 63
[xiii]Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: Exodus: The Book of Redemption (Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union, New Milford, CT, 2020), p. 23
[xiv] H. Junia Pokrifka, Exodus: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, New Beacon Bible Commentary (Beacon Hill Press, Kansa City, MO, 2018), p. 53
[xv] As Jonathan Sacks, ‘Power destroys the powerless and powerful alike, oppressing the one while corrupting the other.’ [Covenant & Conversation: Exodus: The Book of Redemption (Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union, New Milford, CT, 2020), p. 2]
[xvi] Ralph K. Hawkins, Discovering Exodus (SPCK, London, 2021), p. 63
[xvii] As Terence E. Fretheim, ‘Israel is not to parade its past suffering in order to occasion pity or guilt from others. The recalling of the past is to lead to an identification with those who suffer.’ [Exodus. Interpretation (John Knox Press, Louisville, 1991), p. 30]
[xviii] For the discerning, you’ll notice that the command to not hate the Egyptian follows the command to not allow a Moabite to join the assembly of God, ever (Deut. 23:3-6). And yet, we have the wonderful story of Ruth, a key character in Israel’s history, an ancestor of Israel’s greatest King, David, and, furthermore, an ancestor of Jesus.
[xix] There’s another echo of Genesis here, in Hebrew the word for Moses basket is the same word used to describe the Ark Noah built. The word is used in only these two stories, connecting the two. The original Ark was the means by which humankind (and animal kind) was saved in the flood. Moses’ miniature version, in this present story, will contribute to Israel’s deliverance through the waters.
Many scholars have also drawn connections between Moses’ childhood story and other cultural childhood stories, such as King Sargon of Akkad in Mesopotamian legend (ca. 2350-2294 BC), when his mother hid him in a basket on the Euphrates; and also the Egyptian myth of Horus hidden by his mother, Isis, in the Nile reeds from his rival, and uncle, Seth. Though, yes, these stories would have been known, and would have certainly brought local colour to Moses’ story, it does not follow that Moses’ nativity was concocted from them. For one thing, these earlier stories are about figures born into royal lineages, who are then banished into lowly conditions, only to remerge years later to take their rightful place as ruler. As Dr. Ellen Frankel remarks, ‘In the story of Moses, we find the mirror image of this universal tale: Moses is born a slave, spends his childhood in a royal palace, and then reclaims his humble origins.’ [The Five Books of Miriam: A Woman’s Commentary of the Torah (HarperOne, NY, 1998), p. 97]
[xx] In many Jewish and Christian stories, though she is not named in Exodus 2, Pharaoh’s daughter has been given the name Bithiah, sometimes spelt Batyah, which means, ‘daughter of Yahweh’. She may have been a Bat-Pharaoh (daughter of Pharaoh, bat meaning daughhter), but her compassion was recognised by God and God claimed her as his own. Tellingly, 1 Chronicles 4:18 mentions, as part of Judah’s descendants, Bithiah/Batyah; a daughter of Pharaoh who married a man called Mered. Many scholars have speculated that this is the same person as Exodus 2. If so, then, like Moses, Bithiah also renounced the palaces of Egypt and she, or her offspring, left Egypt through the waters with the Israelites.
[xxi] H. Junia Pokrifka, Exodus: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, New Beacon Bible Commentary (Beacon Hill Press, Kansa City, MO, 2018), p. 61. Christopher J. H. Wright, The Story of God Bible Commentary: Exodus (Zondervan Academic, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2021), footnote 11, p. 77
[xxii] See Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus. Interpretation (John Knox Press, Louisville, 1991), p. 45
[xxiii] It just goes to show, that when it comes to people, we can never generalise. Just because this woman is from the same house that ordered this inhumane act, doesn’t mean that she, as an Egyptian, as Pharaoh’s daughter, will be inhumane. And it begs the question, if she, from Pharaoh’s own house is like this, how many more unnamed Egyptians were like her?
[xxiv] Henri J. M. Nouwen, Show Me the Way: Reading for Each Day of Lent (Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, London, 2001), p. 92
TRISTAN SHERWIN 
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