EXOD23 See [[EXOD12]] Exodus 1:16 kill SACKS 79-80

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EXOD22 Did God disapprove of the midwives' lies? Definitely not. The next verse informs us that "God dealt well with the midwives… And He established households for them" Exodus 1:20-21. Like Samuel I Samuel 16:1-3, Shifra and Puah had reason to fear that if they told Pharaoh the truth, he would execute them. These episodes yield important and still relevant lessons, among them being that we do not owe the truth to persecutors, and we do not have to accept martyrdom when it can be avoided.

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EXOD24 The story of the midwives that belongs to a larger vision implicit throughout the Torah and Tanakh as a whole: that right is sovereign over might, and that even God Himself can be called to account in the name of justice, as He expressly mandates Abraham to do. Sovereignty ultimately belongs to God, so any human act or order the transgresses the will of God is by that fact alone ultra vires. These revolutionary ideas are intrinsic to the biblical vision of politics and the use of power. In the end, though, it was the courage of two remarkable women that created the precedent later taken up by the American writer Thoreau in his classic essay Civil Disobedience (1849) that in turn inspired to Gandhi and Martin Luther King in the 20th Century. Their story also ends with a lovely touch. The text says: "So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, He gave them houses [this and following verse]." Luzzato interprets this last phrase to mean that He gave them families of their own. Often, he writes, midwives are women who are unable to have children. In this case, God blessed Shifra and Puah by giving them children, as He had done for Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel. This too is a not unimportant point. The closest Greek literature comes to the idea of civil disobedience is the story of Antigone who insisted on giving her brother Polynices a burial despite the fact that King Creon had refused to permit it, regarding him as a traitor to Thebes. Sophocles' Antigone is a tragedy: the heroine must die because of her loyalty to her brother and disobedience to the king. The Hebrew Bible, however, it is not a tragedy. In fact, biblical Hebrew has no word meaning "tragedy" in the Greek sense. Good is rewarded, not punished, because the universe, God's work of art, is a world in which moral behavior is blessed and evil, briefly in the ascendant, is ultimately defeated. Shifra and Puah are two of the great heroines of world literature, the first to teach humanity the moral limits of power.

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EXOD25 See [[EXOD18]] Exodus 1:17 fearing TELVOL1 488

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EXOD26 The most famous non-Israelite villain in the Torah is the unnamed Pharaoh of Egypt, who launches a campaign to drown all male Israelite infants at birth [this verse]. Yet the Bible does not want the Israelites to hate all Egyptians. Indeed, one of its commandments states, "You shall not a abhor an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land" Deuteronomy 23:8. As a reminder to Israelites not to let their antagonism toward Pharaoh escalate into dislike of all Egyptians, the Bible teaches that the infant Moses was saved by the daughter of the very Pharaoh who issued the order to kill the Hebrew babies. There is perhaps no stronger repudiation of racism in the Bible than this; the man who tried to destroy the Israelites was thwarted in his plan by his own daughter. Pharaoh was evil, but his daughter was righteous.

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EXOD27 See [[EXOD2]] Exodus 1:1 came AMEMEI 69-70

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EXOD28 [continued from [[EXOD3]] Exodus 1:1 AMJV 193-4] But unlike those other families, now divided, their young daughter Miriam convinced her parents Amram and Yocheved to reunite. It was this reunification of the family which resulted in the subsequent birth of Moses, which in turn symbolized and began the redemption of the Jewish people from Egypt. [Continued at [[EXOD132]] Exodus 10:10 no AMJV 194].

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EXOD29 In his Commentary on [this verse], [Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra (1089-1164)] remarks on the significance of Moses' having grown up in freedom in the house of Pharaoh and not as a slave in the house of bondage: owing to the education he received in the palace and the habits he acquired there, his soul was "on the highest rank" and not "lowly" as are the souls of slaves. Moses' noble morality is already exemplified at a young age, when on two occasions (Exod 2:11-12, 15-17) he physically interceded against those who were acting with violence [hamas]. Similarly, Ibn Ezra remarks, Moses' verbal intervention in the fight between the two Hebrews [this verse] was motivated by his desire to prevent violence. These comments about Moses' "high soul" and bold actions bring to mind Nietzsche's views on master morality versus slave morality in his Genealogy of Morals. However, while Nietzsche's master acts egocentrically on the basis of values he has created by his own will, Ibn Ezra's Moses acts altruistically in order to prevent oppressors from doing violence to others. It is Moses' determination to save victims from the violence of their oppressors that, according to Ibn Ezra, qualified him to liberate the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. (By Warren Zev Harvey, “Ethical Theories among Medieval Jewish Philosophers”)

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EXOD30 Why "reeds" [a relatively inferior material]? R. Elazar said: From here it is derived that the righteous value their money more than their lives [or, in this case, more than the lives of their children]. And why so? For they do not stretch forth their hands to steal. R. Shmuel b. Nachmani said: Because reed is pliable and can withstand both soft and hard objects. (Sotah 12a)

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EXOD31 "As one measures, so is it measured under him." Miriam waited for her brothers; for this reason, the Jews waited for her in the desert, as it is written (Numbers 11:15): "And the people did not journey until Miriam had been taken back." And "The good measure [i.e.., that of reward for the first measure] is greater," for she waited for a short time, whereas the Jews waited seven days for her (Sotah 9b, 11a).

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