Governmental oppression of Israel began quickly with the Pharaoh in Exodus 1. For more details on the growth of fear, here is the previous podcast episode about the politics of fear. They are such a dangerous combination!

This episode comes from Exodus 1:13-22

The Oppression Multiplies

The plans of the Egyptian rulers to stop the numerical growth of Israel backfired. This is the start of God coming to the rescue of His people.

When we attempt to do something and fail but believe that we have the power and the right to do it, we either change tactics or increase the intensity of what we are already doing. The Egyptian rulers chose to push harder.

1:12 says, “But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied…”

1:13 says, “So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor.” It was bad enough to have taskmasters set over them to make life more difficult. Now they told those taskmasters to turn up the pressure and make them serve with harshness. The idea is that the taskmasters made demands that were very strict and precise. If you are working on building projects you assume a level of error that is just part of the work. The less error you allow the more time the project will take. And the more error you allow means you finish the projects faster. So the Egyptians set extremely high standards for the Israelites’ work.

Verse 14 says that the Egyptians made their lives bitter with hard bondage. You can imagine the strictness would include beatings and mistreatment in order to enforce the strictness. This affected their mortar, their bricks, and in all manner of service in the fields. The children of Israel went from being guests in the land to becoming enslaved by a government afraid of them and determined to create more oppression.

Conspiracies of Oppression

Evidently rigor was not working well enough. Pharaoh informed the midwives of Israel that he expected them to kill all males that they help deliver in childbirth.

Not only would this curb the growth of the people, but a lack of males would force the Israelite women to be married to Egyptian men. The result would be a decrease in children who were loyal to Israel because their Egyptian fathers would not allow that to happen. This is diabolical on several levels–the greatest of which is infanticide!

Thankfully, the midwives feared God. They knew that what they were told to do was wrong, so they refused to do it. And in saving themselves, they told the Pharaoh’s officials that they just kept missing the births. “The Hebrews women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are lively and give birth before the midwives come to them.”

And in spite of the treatment, the slavery, and the plot against the male children being born, God blessed the people of Israel and they multiplied and grew in power.

From Shadows to the Light of Day

But Pharaoh did not want to just dismiss the problem and turned from private commands to the midwives to making a law for all of his people. 1:22, “So Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, ‘Every son who is born you shall cast into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive.'”

Can you imagine the fear and oppression at this time?

Another great question comes up here,