NOTES for Exo 1:1-22

Exodus is a book about salvation, about deliverance from slavery and death in all its manifestations. The main character in this book, as in the other books of the Bible, will be God, but this time He will act through one of the most famous people in history - the Israelite prophet and lawgiver Moses. He does not appear in today's narrative; this chapter serves only as an introduction and describes the situation of the Israelites in Egypt before the exodus. But already here we see the world into which the future leader of the exodus is to be born: a world of suffering, slavery, and genocide.

We see that only someone who has himself experienced every manifestation of slavery can save the people. Salvation is carried out from within: here God works together with a human being, not by Himself, and at times it will not be easy for us to understand where God is acting and where the human being is acting. But this is the plan of action God chose: to do everything with our participation and consent. For now, a mortal threat hangs over Israel: it is time for God to intervene in the situation...

The situation of Jacob's descendants in Egypt changed fairly soon after Joseph's death. The sacred writer connects these changes with a new pharaoh, who no longer "knew Joseph" (v. 8). And the matter here, of course, was not only the change of power as such. Apparently, very soon after Joseph and his generation passed from life, when Jacob's descendants had grown in number and settled throughout the Nile Delta (vv. 6-7), a new dynasty came to power in Egypt, no longer Semitic but Egyptian in origin, for which the Semitic tribes of the delta were not a support but an obstacle. In addition, the Semites who lived there became hostages of their geopolitical position: they found themselves in the rear of the Eastern Corps of the Egyptian army, which covered the delta region from the Sinai side and the strategic coastal road connecting the central regions of Egypt with the cities of northern and central Palestine, which at that time were under Egyptian rule. The threat came from the Semitic tribes of the Sinai Peninsula, the closest ethnic relatives of the tribes of the delta. No wonder that in such a situation the authorities seriously feared an uprising in the rear of the Eastern Corps in the event of war (v. 10).

Moreover, if we speak not of Egypt as a whole but of the delta region, the Semites evidently greatly outnumbered the Egyptians there (v. 9); such local superiority was apparently explained both by a higher birth rate compared with the Egyptian average (v. 12) and by the fact that the Egyptians themselves were not very eager to settle in the delta region. Evidently at this time the Semites of the delta (including Jacob's descendants) began to be recruited for public works, in which the whole peasant population of the country traditionally participated (vv. 11-14), and which must have seemed like true slave labor to the Hebrews, who were unaccustomed to such activities. However, judging by the fact that their birth rate did not fall as a result (v. 12), the living conditions of Jacob's descendants in Egypt were still not too materially harsh. In this situation the Egyptian authorities began to take measures unprecedented in Egyptian history to reduce the birth rate and the size of the male population (vv. 15-22).

And what, one might ask, can an ordinary person do in such a situation, without power and without the ability to influence the decisions made by the authorities? Not so little, as the experience of the midwives mentioned in the story showed (vv. 15-19). Of course, such an act requires resolve, and that appears when faithfulness to God stands higher in a person's life than fear of the authorities (v. 17).

One could think that the resolve of the midwives did not change the situation of their fellow tribesmen (v. 22), so that they only exposed themselves to risk in vain. But for God, the choice a person makes in one situation or another is no less important than its outcome, since it is precisely on the choice made that a person's destiny in God's eternity depends. And God does not abandon those who choose His path (v. 21). The historical collisions in which people have to participate remain in history, while their participants take a step into the Kingdom of God. Or they do not take it, departing into darkness.

Over time, the position of Jacob's descendants, like that of other Semitic tribes living in northern Egypt, in the Nile Delta region, worsened noticeably. This is not surprising: judging by everything the sacred writer tells us, Joseph came to Egypt during the reign of one of the last (possibly even the last) pharaohs of the first dynasty of the New Kingdom. If so, Joseph (and therefore Jacob) found there the last pharaoh who was Semitic by origin. The first pharaoh of the second dynasty was already a native Egyptian, and the attitude toward Semites in Egypt became what it had always been: they were again treated as barbarians and, accordingly, as second-class people.

Egypt, moreover, always remained a monoethnic state, a country of one people, and no one made any attempt to integrate the Semites, who had suddenly become foreigners on land where they had already lived for at least a hundred years. Under such conditions, the traditional clan and tribal ties within the Semitic tribes only grew stronger and were not eroded, as would have happened if they had been integrated into Egyptian society. In addition, the Egyptian government had real grounds to fear trouble in the event of war with the Semitic tribes of Sinai; Egypt often had wars with them. The point is that the Semitic tribes of the Delta were the closest ethnic relatives of the Semites of Sinai. In the event of war they could easily have raised a rebellion and struck the Eastern Corps of the Egyptian army in the rear, and that corps would inevitably have borne the full weight of very difficult military action in the desert.

The danger was all the greater because the Semites outnumbered the Egyptians, not in the country as a whole, of course, but only in the Delta region, where Egyptians were reluctant to settle. Meanwhile it was precisely the Semitic population of the Delta that was assigned the work of building "store cities": probably warehouses for that same Eastern Corps. Such public works were normal for Egypt; the entire rural population was drafted for them during the time free from agricultural labor.

They were hardly murderously hard, but the Semites, who had never known any public works, perceived them as violence and enslavement, although legally, of course, they were not slaves. At the same time, however, the birth rate among Jacob's descendants did not fall, which means the work was not exhausting. In such a situation the demand of the authorities, most likely local authorities, not to help Hebrew women in labor was understandable; but here, as always in such cases, each person decides for herself what to do. The women made their choice, and God did not abandon them.