WHO ARE THE BAD GUYS?

Blogging Exodus chapter 1

Exodus is the story of the liberation of ancient descendants of Israel from bondage in Egypt.  Exodus 12:40-41 says that the children of Israel spent 430 years in Egypt.  Exodus chapter 1 says that they spent the latter majority of that time under conditions that may sound familiar to some of you.

At some point, the majority Egyptians began to look hostilely at the minorities living in their own communities.    “Why are we paying 20% taxes while THOSE PEOPLE get to eat free in Goshen? Why are we spending all of this money and taking care of THOSE PEOPLE in Goshen.” Joseph’s descendants, the tribes Mannasseh and Ephraim, were descended from Egyptian nobility.  But in the eyes of the nation they were all welfare babies. 

A new Pharaoh, a new federal administration in Egypt, took control of the government, and the new administration set about MANUFACTURING A CRISIS BY TARGETING A MINORITY COMMUNITY.  The new Pharaoh argued that the Israelites were getting too uppity, too successful; they were having so many babies that if the “real” Egyptians didn’t do something, “those people” would take over the country.

Exodus 1:  ⁹ And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we;

So, the national government of Egypt deliberately created unfair and discriminatory laws targeting their Hebrew residents.

¹⁰ come, let us deal shrewdly with them,

Without any evidence, the Egyptians accused the Jews of disloyalty, of being a threat to national security.

10b . . . lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land.”

They created a new Jim Crow, or perhaps the Bible’s original Jim Crow laws to exploit their labor without paying them a fair wage.

¹¹ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and Raamses.

But, despite the whips, despite the indignities, despite every effort by the most powerful nation on the planet to destroy a targeted minority, that minority increased in number and they increased in prosperity. 

 ¹² But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.

And that really scared the Egyptians. 

  12 b . . . And they were in dread of the children of Israel.

They decided that it was time to “Take Our Country Back,” by putting those uppity minorities “in their place.”

 ¹³ So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor.

¹⁴ And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor.

The national leaders of Egypt went so far as to pass laws and policies for government agents whose official job was to protect Hebrew babies and serve Hebrew mothers.  But the new laws directed those agents to  target minority males with deadly force. 

¹⁵ Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of one was Shiphrah and the name of the other Puah; ¹⁶ and he said, “When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.” 

The nation’s set out to break up the Hebrew family by devaluing the lives of their males while simultaneously promoting Hebrew women as the heads of their families and devaluing those same women through every cultural forum.   It’s almost like somebody at the top said:

if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.” 

They confronted  the MIDWIVES who failed to kill off the  Hebrew boys as fast as Pharaoh wanted.

But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive. ¹⁸ So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, and saved the male children alive?” Exodus 1:17-18)

Pharaoh passed a new set of laws to facilitate the murder of Hebrew males.

 So Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born you shall cast into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive.”   

They authorized and encouraged all ethnically  Egyptian citizens to “stand their ground” and take the lives of young, Hebrew males.

For 3 months, Moses’  family hid him because they knew that the police, or the neighborhood watch, or some random Egyptian citizen could kill the boy, be acquitted, and raise thousands on  

Under the pressure created by their nation Moses’ parents broke and abandoned their baby boy. 

 But when she could no longer hide him, she took an ark of bulrushes for him, daubed it with asphalt and pitch, put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river’s bank (Exodus 2:3).

They left him to die of exposure, or be attacked by an animal, or float off down the river and drown.  Moses’ parents loved him, but the only right they had to exercise was the right to choose death for their child.   

Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river. And her . . . . she saw the ark among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it. And when she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby wept. So she had compassion on him, and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children” (Exodus 2:5-6).

It’s interesting that an Egyptian whose people would have thought nothing of Moses’ body floating in the river (or lying in the street) if he’d been killed by an Egyptian felt compassion for the poor boy being a victim of Hebrew-on-Hebrew crime.  It’s interesting that she whose wealth and power were secured by the blood of young Hebrew males was moved to action (one might say “activism”) when a Hebrew woman chose to end her own child’s life.

I’m not saying one is any better than the other.  I’m just saying that it is interesting. 

Our leaders have revised and repackaged history to fit their present agendas.  The king has forgotten Joseph.

Our cultural leaders are so afraid of “those people,”  so envious of the idea that “those people” will take over “our” country that they imagine, exaggerate, and invent national security threats

while ignoring the actual blood on their own hands.

We have formed so imperfect a union that we only care about the murder of children ----- depending on who killed them.

We like to think of America as the Promised Land, but spiritually and culturally speaking, America’s not Israel.  

We’re Egypt. 

--Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama. He writes a blog called A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

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