Jubilee: Knees Knocking (Exodus 1:6-22)

In his book Subversive Witness, Dominque Dubois Gilliard poses the question, “What keeps good people silent and complicit when they know their neighbor is being dehumanized, oppressed, exploited, and/or massacred?” It’s a tough question, and one we don’t ask often enough in the church.

In Exodus 1:6-22, Pharaoh first enslaves the Israelites in effort control the population. Nowhere in the text do we see the Egyptians or anyone else raise an alarm. They feared Pharaoh.

But when that fails, he orders the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, to kill any baby boys they help deliver, but the girls they can let live. They refuse. They disobey the most powerful ruler in the land because they have deeper reverence for God than they do for Pharaoh.

We are invited to fear the LORD above all else, to revere God more than we revere the power structures of this world.  Like these midwives, we are invited to use whatever positions we have, even if they are not big or grand or powerful, to do what is right, even when there is intense pressure to do what is wrong.  And we’re invited to believe that in that, we will experience the freedom and the goodness of God.