Therefore, God dealt well with the midwives

The story of the Hebrew midwives is an extraordinary tale of courage and faith. Shiprah and Puah lived at a time when increasing hardship was being imposed on the Hebrews. They were flourishing despite the culture of slavery they had found themselves under. However, they had come to Egypt in a time of hardship. God had never intended them to stay and things were becoming increasingly uncomfortable for them. The time was approaching for them to move on. The labour pangs were starting and God had granted the midwives a front row seat to the birthing process. 

In the eyes of the Egytians, the Hebrews had become too numerous and too strong. The people of Joseph, and the Hebrew God who had saved them in time of famine, were now considered a threat. The famines were long forgotten and they feared a coup. The midwives were ordered by the Pharaoh to kill all of the male babies at birth. The fact that he spoke to them directly suggests that midwives were considered a respected group of people, and Egytian birth practices and traditions seems to support this. Nonetheless, despite having the favour of the Pharaoh, they chose the favour of God.

Pharaoh would have been a man accustomed to being obeyed, after all he summoned them and ordered them to murder all the male babies without a doubt in his mind that they would obey, if not out of respect for his leadership, then out of fear. However he did not account for one important fact. Shiprah and Puah feared God. 

My theory about these midwives is that they observed, on a day to day basis, the creative power of God and this drove them to Godly fear. They would also have been brought up in the traditions of their people, a people who aligned themselves with one God, their identity in Him rather than a place. Birth is creation unfolding in front of your eyes. Creation points you to God in awe and leads you to worship. There is little so extraordinary as seeing the birth of a baby but it also takes courage to stand with women as they roar their way through the birthing process. Oh yes, Shiprah and Puah were courageous women. They saw the line that is tiptoed every day between life and death at birth and had done so since the beginning when they were given as a gift to the descendants of Eve to help her in childbirth - God gave Eve over to pain in childbearing but did not leave her to suffer alone. Midwives perhaps more than most are aware of the awesomeness of God. They had been entrusted by God with a sacred duty. To murder the male babies would have been in direct opposition to everything they held to be important. These midwives' quick thinking and courage was rewarded by provision and multiplication in their own households (Ex 1:21).

Shiprah and Puah teach us so much about the fear of God and what this really means for us. These pre-ten commandment, pre-sermon on the mount Hebrew midwives had an understanding of the power of God. They teach us that people who fear God are obedient (Deut 13:4, Psalm 112:1), they are worshipers (Psalm 22:23), and they are confident in the protection of God (Psalm 33:18). 

 



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day Three 16 days - Exploited

Exploitation: "the action or fact of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their work" The exploitation of women and girls represents the ultimate outcome of multiple layers of inequality. Women and girls are more likely to be in poverty, less likely to have an education, more likely to have suffered abuse at the hands of family members. Girls who have no access to school but need to work end up with no autonomy over workplace so are more vulnerable to being exploited by 'recruiters'. They are therefore disproportionately represented in modern slavery - 99% of victims of sexual exploitation are women and girls. One of the reasons modern slavery continues to proliferate is the gendered power imbalance which is upheld by patriarchal structures globally. Culture, some religious beliefs, laws, societal norms and gender roles all contribute to this power imbalance and this is clearly demonstrated in human trafficking where women are dehumanised to the extent t...
Read more

Thoughts on Elders - pronouns and tradition

Let me first start by saying that the only skin I have in this particular game is that I love to pick away at threads where I feel that patriarchal systems have sought to supress and 'keep women in their place' through an interpretation of the scriptures. I don't personally want to be an elder, nor do I think I necessarily fulfil all the requirements regardless. I do however believe that the church family and wider church is poorer for this prohibition and that is my motivation for this whole blog really.  That off my chest, for this post I wanted to put down in writing some of my thoughts on this so far. Also, they are just that, my thoughts so far and for this post I've landed on 'pronouns' and 'tradition'. I've come on a journey from a complementarian stance to a mutualist/egalitarian stance and I hope I am still learning and developing all the time. I've talked to MANY people about this and funnily enough it was a recent discussion about the ...
Read more

Thoughts on Elders - "For Adam was formed first, then Eve"

I'm back with more (personal!) thoughts on Elders. This time about 1 Tim 2:13 "For Adam was formed first, then Eve". See my previous post here focusing on 'Pronouns and Traditions'  based on 1 Tim 3:1-12. I think for some who have a complementarian stance, the linguistics of the passage in 1 Tim 3:1-12 are not so relevant an argument, it's more about what they see as the original principles of male headship, ergo male only elders. So if you truly believe that male headship is correct, then of course the linguistics of chapter 3 are irrelevant because you'd only see the explicit language as confirming the male bias. So headship. First up two things, I think it's interesting that male headship is not mentioned until Ephesians 5:23 (when Paul first used the term 'kephale'). I also think it's interesting that Jesus didn't mention headship at all and when he did talk about marriage, he said it in the context of the Eden blueprint of a husban...
Read more