Exodus 1:8-22 Study Guide: Protected

Community Group Study Guide — Exodus 1:8-22 Protected

Study Information:
One temptation during times of prolonged suffering and darkness is to believe that somehow God is not in control or that he has lost. Many of us have felt that during times of personal hardship but what about national or corporate hardship? Many Christians today feel the weight of our world’s antagonism against God and his people. Does God care when the world’s opposed to his plan, does God care about the global persecuted church, is God powerless to stop and of it? Exodus 1 shows us a growing oppression against God’s people in order to help us feel the tension and the weight of what seems like his absence. This tension creates a longing for hop sin us. There will be many times when it feels like God is not there, but Exodus pushes us to long for and look for a redeemer and we get an example of how God’s people are protected by him. 

Growing Oppression Against God’s People
Exodus 1:8-22
We began to explore this oppression in last week’s study guide. A new Pharaoh arose in Egypt which implies a change in dynasty. Instead of having a benevolent view towards Israel, this Pharaoh viewed them as a threat. The response was systemic and hostile oppression. The Hebrew word for “oppress” means to crush or humiliate. The text portrays this Pharaoh as simultaneously harsh and foolish. He was harsh in his policy to try and keep Israel down, but foolish in that none of it actually worked or benefited their regime. In response to this oppression, the people of God grew and multiplied greatly and became a growing threat. Pharaoh’s big fear was that this sizable force would join their enemies in battle and the irony is that this oppression created a larger number of Israelites and an enemy to Egypt in God himself.

Pharaoh’s first plan was to put them to work as slaves specifically in the fields of hard labor and agriculture (Exodus 1:14). We get a lot of detail about the process of hard labor in later chapters in exodus but it consists of backbreaking labor to make bricks and build.

Pharaoh’s second plan to oppress the people of God was a form of genocide through the Hebrew midwives. Pharaoh commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill any male child born to a Hebrew woman (Exodus 1:16). The goal was to subvert the Hebrew unity by using their own against them and to reduce their population. Again, this plan was foolish and easily thwarted. It was a foolish because getting rid of the male children reduced their slave labor force and it Pharaoh was easily tricked by the the midwives.

Pharaoh’s third plan was to command all the Egyptians to enforce this genocide of Hebrew boys, thus making it a law to obey. This created a police state where each Egyptian citizen had a responsibility to act harshly against Israel. In reality this command seemed to be loosely followed and the irony of Exodus 2 was that Pharaoh’s own daughter ignored the command and rescued a Hebrew boy out of the nile, Moses, whose name meant “drawn out”. 

All along the way, in the face of this oppression from Pharaoh, God showed himself to be for Israel and unstoppable. 

Unstoppable God
Exodus 1:17, 20-22
The midwives feared God and trusted God as they resisted Pharaoh’s evil. Rather than killing the Hebrew boys they physically delivered them to life. Over time, Pharaoh saw that his order was being disobeyed and he confronted the midwives who lied to him. This once again highlighted Pharaoh’s foolishness as he just took their word for it. God responded by rewarding these midwives by giving them families and by naming them in the scripture. It is not an accident that Shiphrah and Puah were named and are remembered in God’s story but Pharaoh remained nameless.  

Many of us have looked at this passage and wondered if this gives us permission to lie to accomplish what we think is a greater good. This event is a demonstration of resisting evil, but we should be cautious to look for a moral excuse to lie. Pharaoh’s edict went directly against God’s prohibition against taking innocent life, so God was to be obeyed rather than man. The midwives could have obeyed God and suffered the consequences of disobeying Pharaoh, but the text highlighted their lying to give us an example of Pharaoh’s foolishness. We have other examples of lying to protect others like the story of Rahab and the spies, but we should exercise some caution here because it is likely that we’re more tempted to want to justify situations where lying and resisting governmental authorities is actually not the right way to go. The midwives did not resist because they disliked the law, had different preferences or because it felt like it was evil to them; rather they resisted because it directly and clearly went against what God commanded. We see an example of this in Acts 4 when the Apostles were commanded to not preach about Jesus and their reply was “whether you think it is right or not, we’re going to follow God (Acts 4:19).” Also the thrust of the text is less on giving us reasons when lying is ok and more a demonstration that Pharaoh was foolish, evil is to be resisted and God was against Pharaoh and could not be stopped. 

Finally, notice how this story mirrors the story of Jesus. In Matthew 2:16 another evil tyrant king killed innocent children in order to take out his opposition. Jesus ironically fled to Egypt in the safety of his parents arms instead of being killed. In both cases Pharaoh and Herod failed to accomplish their goal and God brought forth a redeemer to save his people. In Exodus 2, Moses will be delivered and then become the deliverer of the Israelites out of Egypt and that foreshadowed Jesus’s deliverance from Herod’s evil and fulfill his task as our deliverer. 

There is a lot of tension in Exodus 1 around the felt absence of God and the suffering of his people and this creates a longing in us for a redeemer and a savior. That longing for the people of God began to be fulfilled in chapter 2 with the introduction of Moses, but for now sit with the darkness of the oppression against Israel and be reminded that even in those moments God is not powerless, he is working in a way to show us his glory. 

At your community group:
Take 15-20 minutes to share about how God has been at work in your life, prayer concerns and pray for one another.

How did God speak to you through the scripture and the sermon this week? 

Discussion Questions:
Read Exodus 1:8-22

What was Pharaoh’s plan to oppress the people of God? What motivated this plan?

How was God at work to protect his people and what happened in response to the oppression of Egypt?

Why did the Hebrew midwives resist Pharaoh’s command and lie to him? Do you think that there are times and occasions where it is ok to lie? 

There are many times when our world and culture is hostile to faith in God and it feels like God is absent. What does a passage like this teach us during those seasons?