Wrong Response (Exodus 1-2)

Have you ever had the right intentions but the wrong response? Know you are not alone. Even the great men of faith in the Bible had these moments. I often think of the people in the Bible as these great people of faith but they had no idea what they were doing either. They were trying to rely on God and did not always have the correct response. They had moments of fear and of exhaustion and of doubt but also of joy and of victory, just as we have.

In the first chapters of Exodus we see Moses wants to follow God and stand for justice but goes about it in the wrong way. However, this is preceded by two stories. The first story tells of the midwives’ fear of God. The Israelites kept increasing in number so Pharaoh told the Israelite midwives to kill the baby boys. They let the babies live and had to answer to Pharaoh as to why they allowed this. This was breaking Maat. Because they feared God more than Pharaoh (who ordered them to against God) God blessed them with families of their own (1:21).

Side note: In ancient Egyptian society, Maat (ma-aht) is right or correct behavior (which is personified by a goddess). It is justice and truth, law and order (but much more than can be described in a paragraph). It is obeying those over us and treating those under us in a good manner. The opposite of Maat is greed, ruthlessness, lying, and violence. You have to learn Maat. Pharaoh was to preserve Maat and resurrect Maat if it was lost. When you die and go to judgment you are to give the negative confession (in the book of the dead). You are to say you fed the hungry, clothed the naked, helped some cross the river, saved the weak and didn’t inflict pain or make man weep.

The second story is of Moses’ mother. She refused to kill her son as Pharaoh commanded and hid him instead. When he was too old to hide in the house she hid him in a basket in the Nile and had his sister watch over him. Pharaoh’s daughter found him and took him as her own child. However, she first had Moses’ mother nurse him (and paid for her to raise her son!) (2:10). Because Moses’ mother did not kill her son like Pharaoh had commanded, God blessed her and allowed her to be paid to raise her son.

The next story in Exodus tells a time when Moses went and watched his people working as slaves. He saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite and killed the taskmaster to protect the slave. Like the previous two stories of the midwives and his mother, Moses wants to stand for justice but goes about it the wrong way. He wants to stand up for the underdog but kills someone in the process. When it was discovered he fled for his life.

Moses flees to Midian and sits down by a well. I imagine he is feeling pretty defeated right now. Soon, seven daughters of a priest come to draw water for their flock but the shepherds try to drive them away. In ancient societies women were not even considered people. Shepherds were the lowest in society. Nobody trusted them and they trusted few people. The shepherds are driving away the women, viewed as a step lower than the shepherds. It is at this point that Moses steps in and rescues the women.

Moses tried to bring peace and justice for the underdogs. He would have heard stories of how the midwives and his mother saved the baby boys and were blessed for it. He also wanted to stand for justice. While murder is never the right response, he began to learn what it meant to stand for justice.