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  • From: <tladatsi AT charter.net>
  • To: <brocine AT twcny.rr.com>, <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [b-hebrew] Midwives & the Egyptians Fears
  • Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 23:28:14 -0500

Hello Brian,

I will not get into the *historicity* of Ex 1:1-17 but I
will comment on what I think the author intended to reader/
listener to understand about the story. I would argue that
we need to look at the entire story as whole before you can
look at how the midwives might be interpreted. The key
element of the story is the fear that all Egyptians, and
their king in particular, have for the Israelites. They
fear the growing number of these *resident aliens* and that
they might support a foreign invasion. The Egyptians hit
upon the idea of enslaving the Israelites. This will at a
minimum prevent them from supporting an invasion and
perhaps also prevent their numbers from increasing.
However, although no invasion occurs, the more the
Egyptians oppress the Israelites, the more they increase in
number spread across the land (Ex1:12). Now, the Egyptians
fear not an external invasion but an internal uprising and
revolution by the Israelites. Plan A has backfired with
more than a bit of literary irony.

Some new king hits upon Plan B. He will get these two
midwives to kill the male newborns of the Hebrews. Why use
midwives and not the army? Because the king is afraid of
the Hebrews. He does not wish to move openly against them
unless he absolutely has to. This is to be a *covert*
operation. The midwives are to kill the newborn and make
it look like the males died by accident or were stillborn.
Midwives were skilled professionals and would know how to
make a murder look like a stillbirth. When this plan also
fails, the King demands to know why. Their excuse sounds
like the observations of neutral medical professionals. *
Your Highness, we tried our best, but those darned Hebrew
women were just too much for us.* The Kings had relied
upon the midwives special skills to carry out Plan B but
the midwives used their special skills to thwart the kings
plan (a bit more of that literary irony here). He does not
punish them, they did their honest best to carry out his
orders, he believes. For him to believe this, they would
have to be Egyptian women.

This precipitates Plan C. Here the king orders ALL OF HIS
PEOPLE (LVL ?MW, not just the Hebrews) to throw their
newborn sons into the Nile. Once more he does not openly
attack the Hebrews because he fears rebellion. His order
applies to *all of his people*. So with no small irony,
the Egyptians suffer as much as the Hebrews from Plan C.
The King was not careful in wording his order. He of
course does not actually order their death, just that they
be thrown into the river. This is exactly what Moses mother
does, following the kings orders to the letter, if not the
spirit. The net effect is (ironically) to put Moses, a
Hebrew, into the kings own household as a son which allows
him to effect a Hebrew rebellion which releases the Hebrews
from slavery. Of course it is not the rebellion the King
expected, rather than an armed uprising, it is Yahweh who
raises up.

Each of the Egyptian kings plans has the exact opposite
effect of its intent, working in favor of Yahweh and the
Hebrews.

Since Plan B is a secret operation against the feared
Hebrews, it would make no sense that his secret agents
would be Hebrews. Had the author conceived of the
midwives as Hebrews, the King would have suspected their
cover story of the lively Hebrew women as being false. But
coming from an Egyptian woman, that the King would believe
this cover story makes sense.


Jack Tladatsi




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