For this week and next, we’re going back to excerpts from my book in progress on divine affirmation. This week’s excerpt begins with the story of Shiphrah and Puah, two extraordinary women who really should be more famous among believers. And then you’ll read about Basil, Chrysostom, and another woman whose courage during the reign of “Bloody Bonner” is enough to convict the most courageous of us. There are extraordinary consequences when we realize that God, and God alone, is truly enough for us. There is nothing any bully can take away from a woman or man who has pressed into divine affirmation.
“Be my rock of refuge, to which I can always go; give the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress. Deliver me, my God, from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of those who are evil and cruel.”
Psalm 71:3-4
“Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people both now and forevermore.”
Psalm 125:1-2
It might seem cruel, but it was practical: midwives in ancient Egypt were typically barren. When your job is to run at a moment’s notice to help another woman give birth, it’s easier if you don’t have your own children to look after. Certainly, being barren and helping other women give birth was a painful reminder of their own childless condition, but it was a job, and an important one at that.
Enter the kind of evil man who always takes a painful situation and makes it even worse. Pharaoh lived with moral cataracts; he couldn’t even see how his harsh words and blunt programs inflicted pain on others because he was impervious to any pain but his own. When he feared the increasing population of the Israelites, he commanded the two barren Hebrew[1] midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, to start killing the baby boys upon delivery. Think about the cruelty of this: Pharaoh was commanding two women who daily suffered their own lack of children with the task of directly killing other women’s children. It was about as barbaric as it gets, but if Pharaoh was as evil as he sounds, he probably didn’t see it as any more cumbersome than telling them to clean out the straw after the birth was over.
Pharaoh’s edict already tells us he was ruthless. When you’re willing to commit genocidal murder to preserve your power, the feelings and even lives of two barren Hebrew midwives wouldn’t register in your conscience. It is one thing to kill; it is another level of evil entirely to try and force good people to kill for you.
Now, pause for a moment and empathize with the situation this edict put Shiphrah and Puah in. Disobeying a tyrant like Pharaoh is beyond dangerous; they must have thought it would be fatal: “We kill them, or Pharaoh kills us.” We already know that Pharaoh had no respect for human life and therefore would have none for theirs.
The implication was frightful and obvious: obey or die.
How astonishing then, how heroically courageous, that Shiphrah and Puah refused Pharaoh’s edict and chose to wrap the baby boys in clean cloths instead of death. And then, of course, they got out of there as fast as they could.
When Shiphrah and Puah were called to appear before Pharaoh to explain why male Hebrew babies were still surviving, imagine the terror of their husbands, who may well have begged them not to disobey Pharaoh in the first place. Perhaps, in their pain, they even said, “I told you this is what would happen! It was either kill them or you be killed! You’ll never walk out of there alive.” When these two men kissed their wives goodbye, they may well have thought they were kissing them for the last time.
Continue reading this blog on Substack HERE.