This is a sermon given at St David’s Uniting Church, Newtwon, Victoria, Australia, August 23, 2026, based on the reading Exodus 1:8-2:10.
Shiphrah and Puah. I have said before that women often don’t get a starring role in the Hebrew Bible, and so when they do we should pay attention. They aren’t just named, they even get to speak. And we are told in chapter 1 verse 20 that God dwelt well with them.
So who are these women? If we believe the story, Shiphrah and Puah are two Egyptian midwives. I have heard it said that midwifery is the oldest job in the world, the job of accompanying a person as new life is birthed. Surely these are super important jobs that get paid well and are highly prestigious, right?
Well no, probably not then and definitely not now. This might tell us something about how we value things. But back to the story.
Shiphrah and Puah are Egyptians. That is another thing to note because in the story of the Hebrew Bible the Israelites are usually the heros, or at the very least the righteous ones. So, how do we understand the role of these Egyptian women here.
Well, foreign women are allowed prominent places in the story – when they are of service to Yahweh, the Israelite God and to the Israelites themselves. We might think of Ruth – the Moabitess – who swears to Naomi that Naomi’s God – that is Yahweh – will from now on be Ruth’s God. We might think of Rahab – the prostitute who hid the spies in the book of Joshua and allowed them safely to escape. We might think of Hagar who meets and names God in the desert, when she has fled from Abraham and Sarah’s house.
And here in our reading today, it confesses that the midwives Shiprah and Puah feared ha-Elohim, the God, and so they saved the baby Hebrew boys. When I was looking at this passage in preparation, I was surprised to see that twice in this passage it adds the article – ha-elohim, THE God, not just Elohim, God. Remembering that Elohim and Yahweh are used somewhat interchangeably in the Hebrew Bible as names for God. I don’t know how common this is, but now I want to spend some time exploring that and what it might mean.
Anyway, so one message we get here is that foreigners are acceptable when they are servicing our needs. Another foreign woman who services the Israelites needs in this passage is Pharaoh’s daughter. She isn’t named, but she is the one who pulls the baby from the river and arranges for it to be cared for and protected. This protection, which includes being a wet-nurse, is in actual fact provided by the child’s mother and is facilitated by the child’s sister. The sister and the mother aren’t named in this passage, but if we put together our knowledge from other stories in the Hebrew Bible we would name the sister Miriam, and the mother Joachebad. But since they aren’t named here, I want to resist naming them as we consider this passage.
So, we have five women here who work in tandem to save one man, who will go on to save the Israelite people, and lead them out of slavery in Egypt in the larger story known as the exodus – but that is a story for another day.
This is how the story is presented to us, and we could read it and simply say ‘yay God. You saved Moses from the awful Egyptians, with the help of some alright women.’ And if that’s how you want to hear the story, that’s fine. I do believe that God saves.
But I also think there is a purpose to our ability to think critically and reason with the wider implications of this story. Particularly in times such as our own when religion is so often weaponised in service of one agenda or another. Or perhaps one ideology or another.
So, let’s think through this passage again.
There is no historical evidence that the Israelites were slaves in Egypt, or at least not in huge numbers, and not in the time period that this story has taken place. There were times however times when the empire of Egypt spread right across this region that scholars call the ancient Near East, but which we might call the Middle East. Egypt was just one of a succession of empires that ruled these lands, and the rulers often used slavery to get the work done. Work of building cities, of farming and producing food, of being soldiers and going off to war. So, while we don’t have evidence that the Israelites were slaves in this particular way, slavery and Egyptian rule was not unknown.
We have no evidence of the large-scale slaughtering of babies at this time. The Egyptians kept pretty good records, and would certainly not have been squeamish about recording things like this, but we have no evidence to say this happened. And this should be kept in mind as we read Matthew’s account of the slaughter of the Holy Innocents around the time that Jesus was born, because Matthew is undoubtedly drawing on this Exodus story, and we have no evidence that the slaughter Matthew references ever happened either.
We are told Moses means “I drew him out of the water” and it could be connected to the Hebrew root masha, which means to draw out. But scholars argue that it is actually an Egyptian name connected to Mes or Mose – meaning born of. So in the story they are building the city of Rameses – or Ra-Mes – born of Ra, who is an Egyptian God.
But one thing we do have evidence of is that this story of drawing a baby out of the river occurs in a range of different cultures from this time. This story of rescue which sounds miraculous to us – and lets face it is pretty miraculous – was a known myth at this time, that the writer drew on to create his narrative.
So, if we start to look critically at the evidence supporting this story, it begins to look a little shaky. So, we might look at another way. As storytelling or as rhetoric. Now, these two frames – storytelling and rhetoric – are not exact synonyms but they have things in common. I have told you a story this morning from my trip, and I have lots of stories that I could have chosen, but I chose one because I think it demonstrates love of strangers – the love that a random man showed me, without having to check my religious affiliation – and grace. I chose words that sought to convey the beauty of the place and the beauty of the moment. The words I chose were deliberate, to paint a particular picture that fits with the context that I am telling it, that is this morning, in a service of worship. At other times and places I have told other stories of my trip, ones that carry a difference nuance and message.
That is what rhetoric is. It is more than the story, it is the reason we tell particular stories in particular ways. Rhetoric is the art of using language effectively and persuasively to influence an audience. Now, you could hear that as manipulation, and sometimes it is used to manipulate. But all good writers (and good story tellers) choose their words. Choose what they want people to hear. Choose the message they want to convey. Choose where to put the emphasis, so that certain moments linger in the audiences mind.
Our reading today has the bad guys – the Egyptians, led by Pharoah – and the good guys, Moses, the Israelites and the women who support them. The Israelites are weak and should be expected to lose the fight, but because God is on their side, they triumph over the stronger Egyptians. They win because they are able to trick the Egyptians, by way of the Pharoah’s daughter, into saving Moses who will become their saviour.
In lots of the rhetoric about modern day Israel, the story is told that this small and vulnerable nation, the only democracy in the middle east (which works rhetorically to remind us that the Israeli’s are more like us than the foreign Arab tribes that surround them) – the only democracy in the middle east must stand up for their freedom because God has chosen them and is on their side and wants them to be in this land. This rhetoric is used to cover over all kinds of abuses.
Prior to the recent census, I saw lots of campaigning from Christians for people to make sure they tick Christian on the census because otherwise the country would be overtaken by Muslims and Sharia law would be enforced. Never mind that the combined Christian population far exceeds the current Muslim one in Australia, this rhetoric tries to convince me, us, that we have to fight for Christians to be dominant, statistically, so that we can have power. But, despite what many people might say, Christians do still have the balance of power in this country. Our leaders start the parliamentary year by attending a church service. The Lord’s prayer is still recited at the start of each sitting day in our Federal Parliament. Christians schools, health services and other organisations have huge influence and form powerful lobbies to have laws made in their own interest.
When we read the story from Exodus, it is tempting to hear the story as if we are the enslaved Israelites. As if we are the powerless. I have certainly been in a lot of church spaces where I was told that Christians, in this country, in our own culture, are the underdogs. We are like the Israelites slaves. And God will rescue us, like Yahweh or ha-Elohim rescued them.
But honestly, we are the Egyptians. We are the ones with power and authority. We are the ones who can make decisions about who lives and dies, and we do when we reject refugees, and set up processes that use our power and wealth to bullying our smaller neighbours, when we lock up Indigenous people and continue to look away as they die in custody, as we prioritise men’s needs over the women who each week are being killed by their current or former partner.
And we can choose. We can choose to be like Shiphrah and Puah. We can choose to stand beside those who are oppressed. We can choose to love.
Let’s pray.
Loving God,
Let us hear the story of Shiphrah and Puah.
Let these women inspire us to stand for the oppressed. Let these women encourage us to speak up for justice. Let these women demonstrate for us what love looks like in action.
Amen.
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