1:18-22
After a time the king realises that his orders are not being carried out. So he calls in the midwives to find out why. They give him what is essentially a cock and bull story (ie a load of nonsense). We then get the reaction of God and the reaction of Pharaoh. The Lord is pleased with the midwives and blesses them. The people multiplied all the more and became even stronger. Dictators have power and can cause horrendous harm and suffering. However, they are not all powerful. There will always be some people who stand up to them and rebel. And following on from my comments on the previous verse, we see God approving of this. The whole matter of obedience and disobedience is far more complicated than it is often made out to be. I have made points “supporting” disobedience, largely because that is what was happening here, and the general tenor of much church teaching in recent events has been unquestioning obedience. We do need to be careful with disobedience, because within all of us is a root of rebellion, i.e. the root of sin, and it is very easy to rebel claiming we are doing it for righteous reasons when in fact it does for our own sake. Moreover, disobedience which may start out as righteous can very easily turn into self-centred rebellion. We need to be very careful, watching our hearts. The Book of Daniel gives some excellent examples of how to react in an ungodly regime issuing ungodly edicts.
Meanwhile Pharaoh commands that all male babies be thrown into the Nile. We like to build up simplistic pictures. One the one hand it can be of a tyrant and there is nothing that can be done. On the other hand, a successful rebellious action can be painted as the end of all our troubles. In real life things are much more complicated, and the Bible is the most realistic book that there is.
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