Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 9 “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, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”
The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”
So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”
Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket[a] for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.
Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”
“Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.” - Exodus 1:8-2:10
To what extents must God go to overcome the selfishness that pervades our hearts and fights to retain the privilege we have? When I was in 5th grade, the GATE teacher had us play a game where we traded fake coins of differing values. The goal of the game was the trade such that we would win by essentially cheating the other players-convincing them to give us 5 for 4, 20 for 18, etc. To initiate a trade, players would grasp hands, discuss and then exchange coins. At the end of each timed round, our scores were written up on the black board and we were ranked. At some point, the top 4 or 5 scoring players got together and were allowed to introduce a new rule. The leaders essentially could write rules that made them richer, unbalancing the trade ratios, preventing defensive techniques used by those lower ranked, and more.
I was good at cheating players. But it bothered me, and after a few rounds, when the first of the rule-making councils was convened and I was part of it because my name was in the top 5, I refused to join because I felt it was wrong, even though I had participated in it. As the rules created by the council were more draconian, a strange thing happened: the disenfranchised players asked me for help, to change the rules for better or at least block the worst. They would seek me out for trades, deliberately "losing" to me so I would get back on the rule making council again. I became "rich" now, not because I was cheating, but because the losers in the game wanted me to win. And I, in turn, challenged rules and redistributed the money to them.
The game ended unsatisfactorily, at least to me. Those who were losing eventually ran out of money. We couldn't stop the system that reinforced the rich who made the rules. OUr teacher stopped the game.
In these verses, we see a group of people who would go on to re-write the rules to reinforce their position against others who were prospering. Corrupt the midwives. Harder jobs. Later, no straw for the job. During this time, Moses moved from the losing camp over to the winning camp. But the winning camp never sat well with him. God allowed him to grown up in wealth, with two sets of loving parents (his own and Pharaoh's) but that position was not for self-indulgence, but for doing God's bidding. It took a change of heart and position for him to hear God's plan and identify fully with those oppressed. Even his background was not enough. It still needed God's hand, the same hand that had been guiding him since he was saved by his mother and sister as a baby: God's.
Whatever position we have is not for our benefit. Do not resist the impulse to use what God has given you to relieve those around you. You will not be enough, but God will.
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