Exodus 1
Exodus 1:1-22 (NLT)
1 These are the names of the sons of Israel (that is, Jacob) who moved to Egypt with their father, each with his family:
2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah,
3 Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin,
4 Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher.
5 In all, Jacob had seventy descendants in Egypt, including Joseph, who was already there.
6 In time, Joseph and all of his brothers died, ending that entire generation.
7 But their descendants, the Israelites, had many children and grandchildren. In fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land.
8 Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done.
9 He said to his people, “Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are.
10 We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don’t, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country.”
11 So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with crushing labor. They forced them to build the cities of Pithom and Rameses as supply centers for the king.
12 But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread, and the more alarmed the Egyptians became.
13 So the Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy.
14 They made their lives bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and make bricks and do all the work in the fields. They were ruthless in all their demands.
15 Then Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, gave this order to the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah:
16 “When you help the Hebrew women as they give birth, watch as they deliver. If the baby is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.”
17 But because the midwives feared God, they refused to obey the king’s orders. They allowed the boys to live, too.
18 So the king of Egypt called for the midwives. “Why have you done this?” he demanded. “Why have you allowed the boys to live?”
19 “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women,” the midwives replied. “They are more vigorous and have their babies so quickly that we cannot get there in time.”
20 So God was good to the midwives, and the Israelites continued to multiply, growing more and more powerful.
21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the Nile River. But you may let the girls live.”
How desperately a declining society grasps onto a perceived “solution” in the removal of children. By enslaving and diminishing their male population, there was an attempt to control a potential threat. This killing of newborns only secured their own demise, though, in the removal of any moral character and its accompanying reasoning capacity. Pharaoh would not be able to make the clearest decisions with regard to his and his country’s preservation with a mind that had become so consumed with lust for oppression and possession of these people he was ok with abusing. Minds incapable of honoring the most innocent and needy among us have no business determining any other decisions affecting a nation. To follow their lead is to rush to extinction.
It’s in the nurturing, caring, and protection of children that all other endeavors are given validity. Jesus, when pressed to restrict child access, insisted they get front row seats because they were the basis for all of His kingdom. It’s how we’re to come to the Father, not as “grown-ups” but as children that are eager to learn and follow the ways of our Father. Rather than looking to diminish their presence and influence, it is through the children that any other efforts will find wisdom and reason, and in giving them priority, all other thought processes will come in line with the Father’s will and blessing.
I can’t help but love these 2 midwives, whose names are forever recorded for having feared the Lord with such reverence that they stood up to the most powerful leader in the then known world. Their regard for God’s ways far surpassed their esteem for this man, Pharoah. God blessed them with what Pharoah sought to extiguish- families, households. Beauty and Splendor stood up to ways of man and were blessed with families.