"The Birthing Narrative"

"Jesus answered him, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.'" ( John 3:3 ) 

I decided while I was continuing some barn housekeeping this past week and preparing to tag and band the new lambs from this spring's fruitful birthing season that I'd listen to Jen Wilken's Bible study in Exodus. I had ordered it earlier in the month from Lifeway and hadn't made time for it yet. I felt a bit guilty and disobedient though as I had not read the Bible passage or completed the homework section in the workbook beforehand as directed. I admonished myself and made a mental note to do it that evening as I started the audio. 

The Passover and Exodus from Egypt, when God delivered Israel out of slavery and onto the Promise Land, is in many ways the central story of the Old Testament. 

In asking the basic questions about the Exodus text, we learned that authorship is attributed to Moses. Since I knew Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that was no surprise. What did surprise me; however, what I hadn't ever stopped to think about before was 'where' Moses started the story of the Exodus. 

It is God's story, but Moses, most everyone seems to know, possibly in part to all of the movies about his life, Moses is the central human figure in the Exodus narrative: The burning bush, demanding Pharaoh to let God's people go, the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the difficult wilderness years, Mount Sinai and the Ten Commandments.  

Moses is epic; he's bigger than life it seems.  

But Moses doesn't start his story at what we would consider to be the climatic or epic parts. No, he starts his story with a couple of Hebrew mid-wives. Their names are Shiphrah and Puah. 

Before God raised Moses up to deliverer Israel out of the land of Egypt, mid-wives were already delivering God's children. Literally. 

We learn that the Israelites were still living in Egypt from the time of Joseph. ( Remember him? With his amazing, technicolor dreamcoat? ) Due to extraordinary circumstances Jospeh had become second to Pharaoh in the land of Egypt; he then moved his family to Egypt to care for them when a severe famine struck Canaan. That's how the Israelites ended up in Egypt in the first place. 

Years have past now, and the new Pharaoh won't let the Hebrew people go. 

This Pharaoh doesn't know Joseph and frankly thinks the Israelites are multiplying too quickly and could become too mighty for the Egyptians to handle. He's afraid they will rise up, join with Egypt's enemies, fight against them, and escape, so Pharaoh makes their lives bitter with hard labor as slaves. 

Now there must have been more than two mid-wives within the Israelite people because we are told throughout the account that the Hebrews are multiplying and growing strong. They are a fruitful people. Jen tells us that Shiphrah and Puah were most likely head of the guild, representing all of the mid-wives. Pharaoh calls them to appear before him, commanding the mid-wives to kill the baby boys when they are born, but let the girl babies live. 

Why kill the boys? Why not the girl babies? Because Pharaoh is thinking that the boys are the strong ones, the warriors, the girls can be useful to the Egyptians in "domestic" areas and are of no threat to him, or so he thought. 

The mid-wives of course don't do it; they defy Pharaoh's order. Even when summonsed a second time to Pharaoh so he can find out why they did not obey the order and kill the boys, Shiphrah and Puah lie to his face telling him the Hebrew women are so vigorous that they give birth before the mid-wives can get to them. 

They risk their lives to save lives. 

Then there is Jochebed, Moses's mother, who hides him for the first three months of his life and then constructs a floating basinet and places him in the Nile. ( She uses the same waterproof material that Noah used when building the ark. ) His older sister, who is more than likely Miriam, watches from a distance to see what will become of her baby brother. I can't imagine the pain in either of their hearts. 

As Pharaoh's daughter comes to the Nile to bathe, she discovers the baby boy floating in the Nile. She takes pity on him as she hears him crying and decides in that moment to adopt him as her own child. The young sister watching the fate of her infant brother keeps her head and acts quickly saying that she knows of a "mom" who could nurse the child for her. Pharaoh's daughter encourages Miriam to take the baby to the nurse mom, and she will even pay for his care. 

The story tells us that Moses's own mother did in deed nurse him, and when he had grown older he was returned to Pharaoh's daughter in the palace. She named him "Moses" because she said, "I drew him out of the water."  

You have to laugh at that part of the story. It's like God is saying to Pharaoh, "You think women aren't a threat to you? How about this? I'm sending a deliverer to my people who will deliver them out of your evil hand, and I'm going to use your very own daughter to raise him up, in your very own household, right under your wicked nose."  

The Hebrew women and the mid-wives were Israel's first deliverers. In fact, God was so pleased with the mid-wives, the text tells us that he gave them families of their own. 

Jen pointed out in the study that the Bible gives us such a beautiful picture of female bravery in the lives of these women. I love that she refers to this story as the "birthing narrative." 

And the "birthing narrative" reveals that Moses knew and respected this truth. We are swept away by this knowledge as he finishes the Genesis account and opens up the story of the Exodus, not with a conquering battle scene or him braving the likes of Pharaoh, but with the heroic behavior of the Hebrew mid-wives, his mother, his sister, his Egyptian step-mother, and the daughters of Israel. 

Breathtaking, isn't it? 

I had to stop rummaging around inside of the barn to process what Jen was saying. Tears streamed down my face. This is why expository Bible study is so satisfying, and why I need to make a better effort to do my homework. 

In the digging of the fertile soil of the Word of God beneath the surface and the slow turning and turning of that richness, the Scriptures begin to uncover wounds deep within the human heart and at the same time administer healing. It's the power of the biblical narrative. It unearths and heals the hidden pains we didn't even know were underneath the polished appearance.  

The Scriptures reveal God's heart and his character, and only in finding him first, understanding who he is do I understand who I am and all he created me to be. 

My grandson Jonah, he's four and likes to do every job in the world by himself without help, and whenever he gets in this work mode, my son Josh, his daddy, will say, "Jonah, team work makes the dream work." 

And I think of this cooperative language in not just the Exodus narrative, but in the entire story of God with his creating and ordering of his people, his men and his women, in his purposes, his redemption and his deliverance to one day birth forth out of another precious womb, his Deliverer. 

"For we know that the whole of creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now." ( Romans 8:22 ) 

We all know that there is something seriously wrong with this world. We groan inwardly along with all of creation as if we are all in labor anticipating the day when everything will not only be put right, but made better than before. That desire lies deep within the human soul. 

And the life death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the answer to that longing; no other religion has a leader with an empty tomb who promises to come again, making all things new.  ( Revelation 21:5 ) 

But you have to know you need him. "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." ( James 4:6 )) And I see this also in the lives of these brave women who trusted God in the midst of such atrocities. 

You have to acknowledge the brokenness and sin and that you can't save yourself with all of your righteous deeds. It will never be enough. But God's grace is more than enough in the perfect life and death and resurrection of his Son. In salvation, all of this is imputed to us, and we become part of God's family and his fellow workers in his kingdom.  ( 1 Corinthians 3:9-16, 15:1-4 ) 

"...because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." ( Romans 10:9 ) 

You will be delivered! 

You will be born again! 

( John 3:1-21 ) 

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( Exodus 1-2:1-10 ESV / CSB ) 

"God of Deliverance" A Study of Exodus 1-18, Jen Wilken