Unacknowledged Heroes

Exodus 1:15-21

Happy Monday, everyone!  If I asked you to name your favorite Biblical heroines, I’d bet you’d come up with Esther, Mary, Ruth and others … but probably not Shiphrah and Puah.

We’re continuing our Let’s Go! series, which isn’t primarily about changing our location or jobs, but on changing the attitude and perspective with which we go into the tumble and spin of everyday life.  We are where we are because God has steered us into that place; he has ‘posted” you to your location in life as a representative and agent of the Kingdom of God.

Please take a moment now to read this week’s passage, Exodus 1:15-21; if you’d like a “running start,” read all of Exodus 1.

Exodus (this title means “The Way Out”) begins with God’s covenant people happily living life in Egypt. They were “fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them” (verses 6-7. Sounds like Genesis language, right?).

But Egypt is not the Promised Land.  As Exodus begins, things have taken a turn for the very much worse for the Hebrews (Israelites).  A new Egyptian king (pharaoh) has come to power, who knows nothing of how God saved the Egyptians (and the Hebrews, along with a lot of other people) from a devastating famine) through Joseph.  This Pharaoh sees the Hebrews as non-natives, foreigners, “others, “don’t-belong-here” types, and Pharaoh becomes suspicious, even paranoid of them.  

He orders them into forced labor, enslaving them to his imperial agenda.  But God’s people continue to thrive and multiply.

So Pharaoh orders a genocidal eugenics program: as the Hebrew women are giving birth, if it’s a boy, the midwives are to kill him.  Enter Shiphrah and Puah, identified simply as “the Hebrew midwives.”  Likely not a high-status job in Pharaoh’s Egypt.

But they are the heroes, and here’s the heart of their heroism: these women “feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had ordered” (verse 17 – see also verse 21).  When challenged by the king –What’s the deal with all these Hebrew baby boys still running around?” – they responded with an artful dodge (see verse 19).  Because of their courage and wisdom, many Hebrew baby boys got to see the light of day.  One of them was named Moses.

Shiphrah and Puah’s Let’s Go! moment did not require them to change jobs or location.  It did require them to continue doing their jobs faithfully and well; to disobey a wicked order; to extend special attention and care to the most vulnerable; to challenge and resist the “powers that be” and the reigning cultural paradigms (and idols); to be “wise as serpents, and innocent as doves”; to play their small but critical part in God’s greater and unfolding Story.

Who are the (perhaps ‘unacknowledged’) heroes in your life, ‘ordinary’ people whose faithful actions guided, rescued or preserved you in some way?

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