Israel in Egypt and the birth of Moses

The first thing Exodus does is name the women.

Exodus opens with Israel multiplying in Egypt and a new pharaoh who did not know about Joseph (Ex 1:8). Slavery. Oppression. A command that every Hebrew baby boy be thrown into the Nile. And in the middle of the most genocidal moment in the early biblical story, the narrator stops to record the names of two midwives.

Shiphrah and Puah (Ex 1:15).

Pharaoh is unnamed in this chapter. His daughter is unnamed. His soldiers are unnamed. The midwives are named. Because they feared God more than they feared Pharaoh — and they refused to murder Hebrew babies.

Then a Hebrew woman has a son. She hides him for three months, then puts him in a basket — the same Hebrew word for Noah’s ark — and floats him on the Nile, the very river that was supposed to kill him. Pharaoh’s daughter pulls him out. I drew him from the water. Moses.

In the first two chapters of Exodus, five women save the deliverer of Israel — the midwives, the mother, the sister, the princess, and (later, in Midian) Zipporah. The Father saves the deliverer through women before the deliverer can save anyone.

Watch how this rhymes through Scripture. Hannah births Samuel. Elizabeth carries John. Mary carries Jesus. Anna recognizes Him in the temple. The women at the tomb are the first to see Him risen. The Father has always entrusted the carrying of the Deliverer to women who will say yes when men would not.

Then Moses kills an Egyptian, flees to Midian, and disappears for forty years tending sheep. The deliverer is in the desert. The people are still in slavery. Nothing visible is happening.

But God is not gone. The Israelites groaned because of their difficult labor, and they cried out, and their cry for help ascended to God. God heard their groaning; God remembered His covenant; God saw the Israelites; God knew (Ex 2:23–25). Four verbs of relational presence. Heard. Remembered. Saw. Knew.

Centuries later a different deliverer would also be hidden as a baby from a king who wanted him dead. He would also be carried to Egypt. He would also wait in obscurity for years before His ministry began. The pattern is older than the gospel. The gospel is also the pattern.

Today: name a place where you feel like the deliverance is taking too long. Hold these four words — heard, remembered, saw, knew. The Father is doing all four right now. Your groaning has reached Him.