Exodus 1:8-22

8 Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13 The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.

15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. 18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” 20 So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.”

Shiphrah and Puah

I have found myself yearning for hopeful stories and so, with that on my soul, what I share with you today is a story, a story of our faith, a story of our generations.

The midwives were not used to being put in the spotlight.  Most of their work happened in the dark, in the small quarters where death and life met and found their way.  They had been called into the small rooms with women crying over and again and they came, coaching them through the work of labor, being a presence as the pain came again and again and again, holding the women’s hands through their bone-deep panic and their exhaustion and those moments when fear seemed to fill the whole room and there they stayed.  The hours passed from one to the next until that moment, that time when they were there when a new breath breathed its first, as people cried and the families sang with joy, or those times when instead it was terrible, and they stayed there with them, with the death that had arrived into heartbroken arms and people cried and the whole family sobbed in sorrow.

These women had seen it all and they were known by the names Shiphrah and Puah.  It was said they feared God and how could they not, for how could they help but hold God in reverence for how else could they kneel before the one who delivered a woman from her agony into joy?  Who else could they worship but the one who allowed new breath to enter a beloved’s lungs and cry? Who else but the priests held in their hands such holy blood and broken sacrifice?

When Shiphrah was called to the woman’s chamber she went with the urgency of the one who had been called to holy work.  When Puah went home at the end of the night her eyes were still glowing at times from the holy she had seen, which was in part what made it so shocking to them that others would see their work, which they found so daily and messy, instead as a source of fear or intimidation.  There had been whispers for years, of course.  You aren’t a minority in a foreign land without getting the occasional long g