Introduction: The Best Known Deliverance Story
Why is this night different from all other nights? This question is usually posed by a child as family and friends gather around the table to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover. The table for the ceremonial seder meal is lit by candles. Wine is poured. Prayers are offered, and the matzah–a cracker like flatbread–is ceremonially broken into pieces. The seder plate in front of the child is arranged just so: the matzah, the boiled egg, a bone, a clump of lettuce, a stalk of celery, the charoset (kr – ow -set)–a finely chopped mixture of fruit and nuts–and bowls of salt water. Everything on the plate represents something. Everything on the table has a story. Why is this night so different from all the others? the child asks. What does it all mean? And now it is time for the main event. Time for a grandparent, or an aunt, or a rabbi from the synagogue to tell the story of the exodus from Egypt. Remember how God heard our peoples cry for help…remember “the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (see Deuteronomy 5:6. See also Rachel Held Evans, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, p. 35-36).
The story of the Exodus, the escape of the Israelite people from slavery under the grip of Pharaoh is probably the best known deliverance story in the bible. It is central to the identity of the Jewish people. It is recounted daily in prayers, and celebrated annually at Passover. It “provided the motivation for the later Israel to care for the oppressed, the disadvantaged and the stranger” among them, when they remembered how they were once oppressed (Waldemar Janzen, Believers Church Bible Commentary, 40). It has helped to shape the faith of millions of people over millenia. It inspired the movement to abolish slavery in the nineteenth century, and the civil rights movement in the twentieth. For centuries this story has offered hope to people struggling. Deliverance is one of the most powerful themes in scripture. “God’s preference for the underdog, for defending the defenceless and championing the cause of the suffering, is a biblical theme too common to ignore” (Held Evans, 40). We can trace that “crimson thread of justice” through the bible (Held Evans, p. 41).
The Women Who Save Moses
The Exodus is an epic, legendary story. It is full of danger, and drama. It is underdogs vs the empire. It has supernatural signs–a burning bush, a shepherds rod that can turn into a snake, plagues of frogs and locusts, a river of blood, a harrowing escape by night, an angel of death, a chase across the desert, a desperate stand at the Red Sea, the parting of the waters, and the deliverance at last, to be celebrated in song and dance. The Pharaoh’s horses and chariots drowned in the sea. It is a grand narrative. Story telling at its finest.
Most often when we hear and tell this story, we focus on Moses, the reluctant and unlikely hero who conquers his fear and confronts the Pharaoh with God’s insistent word, “let my people go!” and God who made a way for the Israelite people when there seemed to be no way. But if we start the story with Moses, we miss something significant. Before Moses, before the burning bush, before the plagues, the story starts with 5 women who save Moses (well 2 of them are probably still girls, or teens).
The Decree
The situation for these female characters is horrific. A paranoid, jealous Pharaoh is threatened by the burgeoning population growth of the Hebrew people who were settled at Goshen on the eastern section of the Nile Delta. He raises suspicions about these people and their motives. He sews seeds of mistrust among his own people, and turns these neighbours into objects of fear and dread, into enemies. He and his people become ruthless, imposing forced labor on them, making their life bitter and hard. But he doesn’t stop there. He can’t stop there for his fear and delusions have got the best of him, and he orders the midwives to the Hebrew women to kill any baby boys born to these people, but to let the girls live. It is a chilling and evil command. To ask the very ones who nurture life–who coach, and assist, who are present at the very sacred moment of birth–to ask them to destroy life is a horror beyond comprehension. When the midwives don’t comply he orders all his people, “every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile” (Exodus 1:22). The focus of Pharaoh’s decree is the baby boys. He fears they will eventually pose the greatest threat as potential soldiers who could fight against him. He assumes the girls pose no threat to him. Or perhaps he imagines giving them to his men to increase the Egyptian population. For the women in this story, It is a terrible wilderness from which there seems to be no good options. “Every direction looks like the wrong direction. Every choice carries the potential of a different terrible consequence” (Joanna Haradar, Prone to Wander: A Lenten Journey With Women in the Wilderness, p. 60). But the ruthless decree also reveals Pharaoh’s egomania, his shortsightedness and his foolishness. And five female characters will thwart his evil plan and save a baby boy, Moses, who will eventually grow up to be the one to lead the Israelites out of slavery toward freedom.
Midwives Thwart Pharaoh’s Plan
Let’s take a closer look at each of these characters. First the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah. They are identified by name in this story, which is significant, as so many other women and girls are not named in biblical stories. They are in an unthinkable situation, a terrible wilderness, asked to betray their people and their vocation by killing male children. So they take an incredible risk to themselves, and their community by defying the order. We don’t know how long they deliberated and what all they considered. We only know that they simply won’t do it. They respect God and the sacred nature of life more than they fear the Pharaoh’s wrath. Their love for life and for their people wins out.
When they are summoned to meet the Pharaoh, and account for their lack of compliance, they must be terrified, and fear for their lives. But even in the wilderness of their fear they are able to devise an ingenious explanation. They play into the Pharaoh’s ignorance, fear and cultural prejudices about these Israelite people. “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them” (Exodus 1:19), they explain. Now that word “vigorous” is best translated as “brutish” or “animalistic”, or “unrefined” which would play right into Pharaoh’s prejudice toward the Israelite people. “The midwives know that he views the Hebrew people as fundamentally ‘other’” (Haradar, 61). He will buy their story because he believes that Hebrew women sound like animals. And because Shiphrah and Puah’s explanation “involves the intimacies of women’s bodies and childbirth that will make him super uncomfortable” and he will believe their explanation and want to end the conversation quickly (Haradar, 61). Shiphrah and Puah are wise and shrewd, “using the prejudices of the powerful Pharaoh against him” to resist his violent intent (Haradar, 62).
Jochebed Saves Moses
Three more female characters join together to resist the decree that all male babies be drowned in the Nile River. Jochebed (see Exodus 6: 20) is Moses’ mother. She is in the terrible wilderness of having given birth to one of these condemned babies. But rather than resign herself to Pharaoh’s decree, she finds a way to save her son. She manages to hide him for three months. But anyone who heard him could have reported him, or snatched him and drowned him. How could she know who was trustworthy? Finally she creates a reed basket boat, a mini-ark, and lays the baby in it, floating the basket among the reeds (Exodus 2:3). She places her daughter Miriam in hiding to watch over the basket and what will happen next.
Most often, when we read this story we assume that Jochebed releases her baby to the river, in the desperate hope that someone downstream will find him and rescue him. And we assume that it is just by some random chance that Pharaoh’s daughter is the one to discover him. But Joanna Haradar invites us to consider that Jochebed orchestrates the whole situation from the very beginning. She develops a relationship with Pharaoh’s daughter, perhaps from meetings at the river. When trust develops, they form an alliance and a plan. She will place the baby in the basket at the very spot where the princess frequently bathes, safely held among the reeds. The princess will “discover” the baby, and take pity on him. Miriam will appear from among the reeds, and offer a “solution.” Haradar believes “Jochebed deserves more credit than she’s often given in this story…for the amazing way she navigates her wilderness; with a deep trust in God and an unapologetic resistance to the powers of death” (Haradar, 64).
Pharaoh’s Daughter Saves Moses
Let’s turn now to the princess of Egypt. It is interesting that she is not named, even though she is the most privileged character in this story. When she opens the basket and sees the child he is crying, and she takes pity on him and she speaks the truth. “This must be one of the Hebrew’s children” (Exodus 2:6). She recognizes the peril this child is in. His life is in her hands. She could tip the basket over and drown the child on her father’s orders, or send it down the river to be somebody else’s problem somewhere else. But she wades into this baby’s life with a heart of compassion.
“Dr. Wilda Gafney makes a strong case for Pharaoh’s daughter as an ally of the oppressed Hebrew people” (Haradar, 66). How could that happen? Is it possible that the princess lived in her own sort of wilderness, like a bird in a gilded cage? A precious, kept, princess of a ruthless, paranoid father. What if she is shocked and appalled by the decree issued by her father? What if she is brave enough to dare to subvert her father’s orders? What if it is just too “suspiciously convenient that a young Hebrew woman shows up at just that moment with the perfect person to serve as nurse to the baby pulled from the reeds. And how blissfully unsuspecting the princess seems as she readily accepts the offer” (Haradar 67). Biblical scholar Shana Green agrees that “Pharaoh’s daughter and Jochebed schemed together to arrange for Moses’ survival” (Haradar, 67). It certainly explains how some of the details of this story conveniently unfold.
The Girl in the Reeds
And then there is Miriam, the youngest of the female characters. The girl in the reeds. She is the big sister, charged with keeping watch over her baby brother in the basket. But she too demonstrates strength and ingenuity beyond what would have been expected of her. She is the one who steps forward bravely when the princess finds the baby. She offers to find a nurse for the child from the Hebrew women, which is of course the baby’s mother. She plays her part and enables the desperate, audacious plan to succeed. Whether it was pre-planned or not, she still needs to play her part, convincingly.
Deliverance Continues
So what do we make of this dramatic deliverance story? First of all this is a story where “God makes a way where there seems to be no way. It’s the steady refrain of our narrative heritage” (Held Evans, 50). And this is our story too. “For centuries the Bible’s stories of deliverance have offered comfort to the suffering and a challenge to the privileged” (Held Evans, 43). We can connect the Bible’s stories of deliverance with our own experiences. “Every time we retell stories of God’s faithfulness in the past…we are reminded that if God can make a way for Moses and the Hebrew slaves…then maybe God can make a way for [us] too” (Held Evans, 47-48). And “sometimes God knows the kind of deliverance [we]need most is deliverance from [our] own comfort” (Held Evans, 42). “Deliverance is as much a transformation of the heart” as it is about saving the body from something (Held Evans, 47).
We should also acknowledge that every deliverance story can have a shadow side. In the case of the Exodus, the deliverance story eventually became a conquest story, ushering in a pattern of oppression and freedom that will repeat itself many times over their history (see Held Evans, 54).
Second, biblical scholars also remind us that “deliverance…is not a onetime deal” (Held Evans, 53). It is like a recurring musical theme. It echoes and reverberates, and returns in a slightly different form. Deliverance stories are part of how God works. God liberates, and sticks around to walk with people through every detail of their life. Rachel Held Evans writes, “God’s grand story of deliverance–the deliverance of all people from the bandage of sin (by which I mean our individual and collective bondage to violence, power, fear, hate, greed and so on)–continues” (Held Evans, p. 55), reaching its climax in Jesus who comes to fulfill the law.
Furthermore, we are reminded that Scripture, even though it emerged from a unique context, and was written with a particular audience in mind, it is the living word. “It remains animated and active” (Held Evans, 40). It can also “speak fresh life into new…contexts” (Held Evans, 40). It can transcend its original context and cast light into a new one. In that way it can help us to see patterns of oppression and liberation in our own world. When we engage scripture in unexpected places, one writer calls this “dislocated exegesis,” and she argues that where we read changes how we read (Held Evans, 43). How would this deliverance story sound if we read it in downtown Kitchener beside the encampment for people who are unhoused? How would it sound on Parliament Hill? How would it sound in Gaza? How would it sound at a shelter for victims of sexual abuse?
The Unlikely Choice
More than anything, though, I think this deliverance story asks us to look in unexpected places–to look along the margins, to observe the people we assume are weak and powerless, to look in the reeds. The theme of the unlikely choice is an important thread to follow in the biblical story. As in this Exodus story, God often works through those who seem the most unlikely, ill prepared or inadequate for the task. The Exodus is not a story of “human skill, power, or heroism but [rather] God’s empowering [which] enables God’s unlikely agents to fulfill their tasks” (Janzen, 51). We don’t need to have all the tools of power. We just need to be willing to partner with God when the invitation arises. And God often surprises us with the way things turn out. “In Scripture, and in life, the road to deliverance nearly always takes a detour. Rarely do the people of God reach any kind of promised land without a journey or two through the wilderness” (Held Evans, 48).
Like Pharaoh, we might assume that those we perceive to be weaker are helpless and hopeless. Like Pharaoh it might be easy to ignore them, dismiss them or overlook them. But this story reminds us that even those who lack the physical tools of power still have agency. The women in these stories cannot confront power head on–they don’t have the resources, the force, the weapons to face the Empire. But they do have their own wits, creativity, and courage. They use what they have. It is not a perfect solution but it works. They know how to turn the biases of the Pharaoh against him. They subvert his authority and outsmart him. They use the tools of nonviolent resistance, strategic planning and the ability to form alliances. Shana Green notes “the creative ways that…oppressed people, most notably Black women, [often] form alliances … [when they] act for liberation” (Haradar, 67). In the face of death threats these women make a plan to preserve and save life. When the powerful try to destroy them, their act of creation is an act of resistance. The women create something good when others intended evil.
Anna Florence Carter explores how the girl in the reeds, and the Egyptian princess become partners in saving Moses. Miriam in heartbreakingly limited circumstances, undertakes a desperate act to save a child by proposing the baby’s mother as a nurse and caregiver. And the Egyptian princess, away from the court, dares to conspire to save a child her father has condemned. Their wilderness moment occurs down here in the reeds, in this watery, slippery muddy, in-between place that is neither land nor river. This is a place and a situation saturated with fear and uncertainty. And Anna Florence Carter thinks it is particularly significant that it is young people, acting without their parents around who save this baby, and set in motion what will become the most important deliverance story.
She suggests if we would ask the young people they would show us a new way to be. Perhaps they could tell us that we don’t have to read the world the way we are told or taught. We don’t have to read the world the way Pharaohs and kings and presidents see the world. This is how liberation starts. By telling the truth. By interrupting. By doing the unexpected. By claiming freedom to reimagine the world, and it starts with young girls in the reeds (from a sermon entitled, “The Girls in the Reeds” found at YouTube.
It is also worth noting that in the story of the Exodus a child becomes a sign of hope. “The Infancy story of Moses belongs to the biblical theme of new beginnings through the promise, conception, birth and preservation of a child–think Samson, Samuel, Jeremiah, the prophet Isaiah, John the Baptist, Jesus. “With the birth of a child, new possibilities and hopes are born” (Janzen, 51).
The tools of the Empire are big and blunt and harsh. The Empire employs fear and lies, threats and intimidation, coercion and violence in all its forms. The Empire has all sorts of resources and weapons at its disposal. But empires are fleeting. They crack and crumble and fall apart when they get too big and too arrogant, when they benefit a few at the cost of many, when they let fear and paranoia guide their actions, when they ignore the small, when they trample on the disadvantaged, when leaders are too self serving to care about their impact on others. Empires can be disrupted, unsettled, and undone.
I think it is no accident that the greatest delivery story has such humble, non-violent beginnings. Here we find ourselves along the margins, in the reeds, among the small, the overlooked, the ones perceived to be weak and inconsequential. Behind the scenes, in their courage they find subtle, creative ways to interrupt, subvert and undermine the power plays of the Empire, because they insist on honouring and preserving life. They are partners and helpers of God in this sacred task. They have much to teach us.
Every item on the seder plate, at the Passover celebration meal, tells a story. Every item on the seder plate… “is a reminder that Scripture never ceases to speak fresh truth” (Held Evans, 43). In the Passover seder–all Jews everywhere are to see themselves as “the exodus generation” (Peter Enns, How The Bible Actually Works, 88), as those who are making the exodus present. As Christians we share this story as significant. We have been entrusted with one of the most powerful stories ever told…what do we do with it? How do we harness that power?