Ruthless Work, the Birthing Stool, and the Nile River
The Pharaoh’s Three Strategies to Stop a Growing People in Exodus 1
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No question about it: the Pharaoh in Exodus 1 is diabolical. He’s also relentless and paranoid. But he’s certainly diabolical in light of the ways he tried to disrupt Israel’s growing population.
In Exodus 1, the Israelites lived in Goshen in the land of Egypt, and they’d been thriving. They’d been “fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them” (Exod. 1:7).
But the king was not thrilled with this kind of progress. He saw the increasing people as a threat to him. He said, “Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land” (Exod. 1:10).
In Exodus 1, he enacts three strategies to deal with the growing Israel problem.
The first strategy is to inflict hard labor upon them. He “set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens” (Exod. 1:11). The Israelites’ lives were “bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves” (1:14).
Yet this strategy was not effective. “The more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel” (Exod. 1:12). This result is important to note. The pharaoh’s strategy had the opposite effect! Rather than disrupting the people’s fruitfulness, they were more fruitful.
Strategy number two: tell the Hebrew midwives to kill male Hebrew babies on the birthstool. “When you serve as a midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live” (Exod. 1:16).
Fewer male Hebrew boys would mean fewer grown men to have children. So, fewer male Hebrew boys would mean fewer Israelites as a whole. And the pharaoh believed that the lower the number of the Israelites was, the lower the threat they posed to him.
But the midwives did not follow pharaoh’s edict. They feared the Lord and did not kill the male Hebrew babies. “So God dealt well with the midwives. And the people multiplied and grew very strong” (Exod. 1:20). Again, then, the people of Israel grew. Pharaoh’s second strategy was ineffective.
The third strategy was the worst of all. He commanded his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live” (Exod. 1:22).
The Nile River was incredibly important to the Egyptians, and the pharaoh decided that it should be the means for death for male Hebrew babies. His instruction is ghastly. The Egyptian people—presumably pharaoh’s soldiers—were to take the babies and “cast” them “into the Nile.” The image this evokes is terrible and inhumane.
In these three strategies (see Exod. 1:8–14, 15–21, 22), the pharaoh adopted an anti-creation posture. According to Genesis 1:28, God’s image-bearers were to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. In Exodus 1:7, the Israelites were embodying this command as they grew and multiplied and filled the land of Goshen.
But the pharaoh wanted their multiplication to stop. And he was willing to employ awful means to make it stop. He was acting against God’s creation mandate. He was acting against the Lord.
By trying to thwart the fruitfulness of the Israelites, the pharaoh had positioned himself as an enemy of Yahweh and a threat to Yahweh’s people. The pharaoh, therefore, was the seed of the serpent. And for those who side with the serpent, things will not end well.