S2:E2 The Revivalists - Exodus Chapter 1

Join us this week as we embark on our first episode of Exodus! What started out many years ago under Joseph where his family came to Egypt and living in the best of conditions, have now resulted in a large population that Pharaoh fears. He fears that they will raise up and war will break out. He put them all into slavery and appointed slave masters to rule them. As a result, he orders the midwives to terminate all male children as they are born. The midwives do not do as they are told and instead lie to Pharaoh that the Israelite women are too robust during childbirth and they cannot prevent the males from being born. Pharaoh sees more males and again gives the order, kill all male boys and let the girls live. He ordered them to put them in the Nile. There is significant moral injury and disagreement in this first chapter of Exodus. Consider that Pharaoh's order to kill the boys is selective postmortem abortion (in today's terms). But this is a major form of population control to prevent the males from raising an army within the borders. From the moral healing and recovery side, consider this. These two midwives who dared to disobey Pharaoh understood that obeying God's higher orders gave them freedom. The midwives feared not. The problem was that the Israelites (Joseph's decedents) became too complacent, they were too comfortable in their surroundings to consider that perhaps they should take their own initiative and return to Canaan on their own.