Defiant Faith and Providential Grace

Exodus, Part 2: God’s people in the hands of Pharaoh and in the care of God.

Giuseppe Mancinelli, “Moses abandoned by his mother”

An all too frequent habit over which the church often stumbles is reading the narratives of the Old Testament as if they are slightly more impactful allegories of ancient writ. The accounts recorded in the Bible’s first testament are sometimes treated similarly to The Pilgrim’s Progress or Aesop’s Fables, wherein everything within a given story exists only to illustrate some other hidden meaning or deeper truth. In the case of the former, the main character is named “Christian” because he’s meant to illustrate the life of every Christian. John Bunyan’s tale is an explicit allegory aimed at talking about what it looks like to navigate the trials, temptations, and triumphs of following Jesus. But I say all that to say that the Old Testament isn’t allegorical. Its thirty-seven books contain stories of real people enduring real and unimaginable suffering. Here’s how Michael P. V. Barrett puts it:

In the Old Testament, God often used real people, real things, or real events to symbolize truths and point to spiritual realities. All divinely intended types were based in history. God used something in the real world to point to truths beyond the person, object, or incident. Particularly, certain events were types of Christ’s redemptive work, either by virtue of their agent or their accomplishment.¹

The lessons we are meant to glean aren’t merely historical “do-not-do-that-do-this” lessons. Rather, every bit of the Old Testament, from its historical narratives to its poetry to its prophetic diatribes to its polemical wisdom, is redemptive. That is, it’s meant to highlight how God oversees and unfolds his word of promise. Through the very real chronicles of Abraham’s sojourn, Israel’s slavery, Judah’s dismantling, and everything in between, the Word of God accomplishes a dual purpose, which sets before us the historical events and settings that serve as the platform upon which God himself brings about humanity’s reconciliation.

I think this is an important point to stress since my current interpretive framework for the Book of Exodus stresses that Exodus is about the church. This isn’t to be understood as a claim for allegory, but as a Holy-Spirit-inspired window into how God called, established, and preserved a people unto himself, which is indicative of how he continues to do so in subsequent generations. The pages of Moses’s Exodus account reveal who Israel’s God is and what he’s like — namely, he’s a God of incomprehensible patience, kindness, and trustworthiness. These, of course, are divine qualities to which God’s people have perpetually clung by faith (cf. 2 Cor. 5:7), from Father Abraham’s day to Moses’s day to Paul’s day to right now.

1. Satan’s War on the Seed

Among the new Pharaoh’s first pieces of legislation upon ascending to the throne was the enslavement of a nation that had been living peacefully within his borders for decades. But even after “afflicting them with heavy burdens” (Exod. 1:11), the Israelites’ nerves weren’t broken, a fact which is exemplified in their continued growth, even amid unconscionable grief (Exod. 1:12). Upon seeing the “swarm” of Israelites multiply, though, Pharaoh opts for Plan B. This new strategy to put an end to the rapid Israelite reproduction involved getting as close to the source as possible. In this case, that meant concocting a plan for the Hebrew midwives to murder every Hebrew male newborn right in the delivery room (Exod. 1:15–16). This was the Egyptian “solution.”

That this was pure evil goes without saying, but it’s also not a stretch to call it Satanic, too. It’s no accident, of course, that Pharaoh was targeting Hebrew boys with his malevolence. After all, on the one hand, he’s a tyrant doing everything necessary to safeguard his domain from any perceived uprisings. On the other hand, though, he’s a pawn of the evil one, whose sincerest desire is to thwart the plans of God to redeem the world, which have always been intimately connected to what goes on in delivery rooms.

On the soil where Adam and Eve sinned, their Creator utters the promise that the woman’s Seed would one day come to crush the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). Ever since, the divine program to save the world has been linked to the biological marvel known as the uterus. Of course, Satan is well aware of this, which is why his great assault on the people of God has almost always taken place in the womb, a siege that is still underway today (Rev. 12:4; cf. Matt. 2:16–18). If he were able to rid Egypt of Hebrew sons, though, then there would be no David, and no Son of David either, for that matter, all but rendering the Creator’s promise moot.

Although Shiphrah and Puah, two head nurses on the Israelite birthing unit, are privy to this dastardly postnatal policy, they aren’t shaken by it. At least, their actions demonstrate they’re not. Even with their lives and the lives of the newborn sons and postpartum mothers in front of them hanging in the balance, the midwives exhibit a faith that defiantly resists false authority, choosing instead to be obedient to Yahweh first and foremost, directly disregarding the Pharaoh’s injunction (Exod. 1:17). With the birth rates for Hebrew boys noticiably not going down, the midwives are summoned to another meeting, where they are asked to explain themselves. The excuse they offered was that Hebrew moms were giving birth too quickly. They were too “vigorous” during labor, with babies being born before the midwives ever had a chance to intervene.

Whether or not this excuse was true remains a topic of much scholarly debate, especially among scholars and ethicists. But to square the possibility of Shiphrah and Puah’s “noble lie” with the rest of Scripture is to miss the point of this story’s inclusion in the Exodus narrative. The attention of this account remains on the midwives’ “fear” of God more than Pharaoh, which moves them to take actions that result in divine blessing and favor (Exod. 1:18–21).

2. Holy Defiance and the Fear of God

Scripture, of course, has a lot to say about what it means to be a God-fearing citizen in a godless nation (Rom. 13:1–7; 1 Pet. 2:13–19), with the general point being insofar as our governing officials aren’t demanding we contradict God’s words, we are called to live as peaceably as we can with everyone (Rom. 12:18). But, to be sure, there’s always an inflection point at which one authority must overrule the other, where we’ll either continue adhereing to the decrees of man or abide by the authority of God. As the midwives demonstrate, at a certain point, God’s followers are supposed to obey him instead of the dictates of mortal flesh.

The apostles Peter and John offer a striking New Testament parallel to this point in the early days of the church. After healing a man who was lame from birth, Peter and John are unjustly thrown into prison. Eventually, they’re released and ordered “not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:18), which, of course, goes in one ear and out the other. They carry on preaching the message that Jesus of Nazareth is the Christ of God, leading to another stint in jail and another hearing before the high council, which culminates in Peter’s decisive statement: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).

Without resorting to slander or insults or mudslinging, Simon Peter exhibits a faith that defiantly resists false authority. Putting this into practice is much easier said than done, of course, as recent American history included lots of theological debate concerning the perceived merits or demerits of wearing or refusing to wear masks. Steering clear of rehashing is a hallmark of wisdom, but, in general, the cultural and ecclesiastical moment known as “the COVID-19 pandemic” serves as a microcosm of what we’re talking about, with well-meaning and God-fearing individuals suddenly partitioned into camps of what does and does not constitute biblical civil disobedience. Such moments of holy defiance are, indeed, costly. But it is faith that propels them, not out of insipid spite or mere rebellion, but out of reverence for the one whose authority is unendingly supreme.

3. A Basket of Providence

Despite Pharaoh’s orders, the Israelites grew “very strong” (Exod. 1:20), prompting Pharaoh to move on to Plan C, where instead of relying on the midwives of Israel to do his dirty work, he makes infanticide part of public policy (Exod. 1:22). He even adds a dash of religious pressure into the mix by ordering every male baby be cast into the Nile, which they held as a deity. Failure to comply with this mandate meant going against the gods. The sojourn in Egypt, therefore, was growing increasingly dark for God’s people, as their oppression moved from ruthless slavery to delivery room conspiracies to the public square, where one’s neighbors were authorized by Pharaoh to kidnap and murder one’s baby boy.

It is during this era of unfathomable anguish and persecution that we are introduced to a husband and wife in love (Exod. 2:1–2). Although they aren’t named here, we later learn that this is Amram and Jochebed, respectively, the devoted parents of Moses, Aaron, and Miriam (Exod. 6:20), both of whom were content to follow Yahweh and build a family, despite their world being riddled with misery, corruption, and death. After already successfully covertly raising Aaron for three years,² along comes Moses, whom they hide from Pharaoh’s clutches precisely because of their faith. “By faith Moses,” says the writer of Hebrews, “when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict” (Heb. 11:23).

Even still, Amram and Jochebed were in a pickle. With the new mandate in effect, their newborn son was destined to become crocodile fodder, and the window for keeping him hidden was running short. So, after enjoying a beautiful three months with her baby boy, Jochebed bravely and tearfully chooses to entrust his life to the hands of God. She constructs a basket³ out of papyrus and tar, puts her infant son inside, and carefully places it into the Nile, relinquishing the last shred of maternal control and care she was created to express (Exod. 2:3). On a riverbank in Egypt, we’re made to see what it means to surrender one’s life to the will of God. The very one that both she and her husband were convinced had a divine purpose (Exod. 2:2; cf. Acts 7:20; Heb. 11:23) was now sailing away in a make-shift craft in crocodile-infested waters.

This is, perhaps, the purest, rawest demonstration of putting one’s faith in the providence of God. Of course, invoking a term like “providence” is no small or flippant assertion. Rather, it’s to say, along with the apostle Paul, that the God we trust is the God who’s working out all things together “for good, for those who are called according to his purpose” (Rom. 8:28). Confidence in the providence of God doesn’t mean we see or know how things will end or unfold. Instead, it means entrusting our lives to the one whose economy of grace is at work in every moment of our lives. Jochebed had no idea how her son Moses would be saved, let alone used by God, but through bare faith, she trusted that he would, which sets the stage for God’s providence to work.

4. God’s Upside-Down Wisdom

Despite how fortuitous it all seemed, nothing that transpired on the banks of the Nile that day was by chance (Exod. 2:3–10). It “just so happened” that Jochebed placed Moses’s basket in the river at the same time as Pharaoh’s daughter went there to bathe. And she “just so happened” to see the basket and hear his newborn cries. And it “just so happened” that Moses’s sister Miriam was watching all of this unfold from afar (Exod. 2:4). And it “just so happened” that Pharaoh’s daughter was eager to have someone else wean this serendipitous infant for her. And it “just so happened” that the governess fit for the task was the boy’s own mother. Of course, none of that was happenstance at all. This is what God’s providential grace looks like.

It looks like the enemies of God’s people becoming the caregivers of the one God had chosen to deliver his people. It looks like Moses’s mom raising her son on Pharaoh’s own dime. In other words, it looks like nothing we’d ever expect. It looks like a young mother, thousands of years later, placing her newborn baby in a feeding trough, all while believing that he’s the very Son of God. And it looks like that same Son from Nazareth being put on a cross to die as a common criminal, with even that being part of God’s design (Acts 2:22–24). What we might call the upside-down wisdom of God is what J. Alec Motyer calls the mystery of God’s sovereign rule:

This is the mystery of the divine government of history, whether on a national, domestic or individual level: the great and loving God is in control, and because he is truly sovereign he works out his purposes in his way, not ours (Isa. 55:8). He offers no explanations, but grants his people a sufficient insight into his ways, his character, his intentions and his changeless faithfulness so that, however dark the day, they can live by faith and be sustained by hope.⁴

The bedrock testimony of the church, therefore, whether that be the church in the wilderness or the church now, trusts in and hopes in the uncanny ability of God to work all things out for his glory. This, of course, is downstream of the announcement that is so integral to our faith, that of God’s Son enduring the cross and triumphing over death in our stead so that we might live in the light of his glory and grace. Indeed, the God who preserved Moses in the river and raised Jesus from the dead is the same God who preserves you, right now, and forever.

1. Michael P. V. Barrett, The Gospel of Exodus: Misery, Deliverance, Gratitude (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2020), 17.

2. Aaron was Moses’s elder by three years, according to Exod. 7:7.

3. Literally, an “ark,” Gen. 6:14ff.

4. J. Alec Motyer, The Message of Exodus: The Days of Our Pilgrimage, Revised Edition, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2021), 3.