Good morning and Welcome aboard Air Exodus Flight 4038 to Canaan. My name is Lacy, and I’ll be your flight attendant today. If you are traveling with us to our final destination we will have 3 connecting flights in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

Before we take off, please store your pre-conceived ideas under the seat in front of you or in the overhead bins. If you need to retrieve these ideas, please use caution when opening overhead bins as items are likely to have shifted during flight.

Please keep your context securely fastened at all times.

Exegetical Regulations prohibit the use of modern and postmodern worldview devices on this and all Air Exodus flights. Please power down these devices now and stow them away for the duration.

You will find a safety card in your Bible showing our emergency exit in chapter 14, section 22.

Our flight time to Leviticus will be 4 weeks and 2 days. We should have smooth conditions, and we’ll be serving complimentary links once we reach cruising altitude.

Thank you for choosing to fly with us today. We’re glad you’re here and looking forward to serving you. Have a pleasant flight. 🛫

---

The Hebrew midwives… God bless em. Shiphrah and Puah. Their names mean “brightness” and “to glitter.” Usually we only know the names of Pharaohs and Kings from 3,600 years ago. I love that we know the names of two Hebrew midwives from then.

Most of my readers who know me personally may also know that my mom was a midwife for many years. And, contrary to my natural inclinations, I assisted her with a few births when she needed an extra pair of hands. I say ‘contrary to my natural inclinations’ because I have zero birth training, can get woozy at the sight of blood, and I don’t always function well under stress. But I am VERY good at following directions, I don’t complain, I find meaning in being helpful, and (I think?) I’m moderately sometimes good at pretending that I’m calm when inwardly I’m quite far from that blessed state. So that’s helpful at a birth.

My youngest brother was born before the midwife arrived. Sometimes it does happen. My Mom once had a woman give birth in the back seat of our mini van. Made it to the hospital but not quite inside. So whether the Hebrew women were actually giving birth before the midwives got there or they were, uh… “obfuscating” the truth- the midwives had the courage to defy an order of Pharaoh.

“And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.” Exodus‬ ‭1‬:‭21‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Awww… 🥰🥰🥰

Let me just point out briefly an unpleasant but crucial fact: Evil hates children. Particularly babies. Hates the human family. Would gleefully wipe us all off the face of the earth given a nanosecond’s chance. The infanticide called for by Pharaoh was inspired by the Ancient Serpent of Eden. The Almighty sentenced him to a future head-crushing by an anonymous “seed of the woman.” If a human offspring is going to crush the Serpent’s head, then the Serpent will endeavor to make sure there are none left. Corrupt the genome. That’s what all that weirdness was about in Genesis 6. The pre-flood attempt failed because God intervened. As the generations have passed, God’s promises have shown which family the seed is going to come through. First Abraham. Then Isaac and Jacob. At Jacob’s death-bed blessing, the fallen realm learned that a descendant of Judah and/or Joseph would reign over the nations. The head-crusher will come from them. We will see Evil narrow its focus. Forget the other nations. It’s the Hebrews who will bring the head-crusher. So the seed-destroying focus shifts to them. But God will rescue them. Every time. Starting with a baby in a basket.

One of the first Bible stories anyone learns in Sunday school is baby Moses in the bulrushes. But do we stop and think just how extraordinary it is? It’s really a divinely orchestrated miracle to put baby Moses in the position to be adopted into Pharaoh’s own household. He received an ancient world class education. Every advantage money could buy. But Moses knows who he is- that he is not Egyptian but Hebrew.

After killing an Egyptian and running off to Midian, he meets his future bride by a well. What is up with that trope? This is the 3rd (or 4th) man-meets-future-bride-at-a-well we’ve seen so far. Isaac met Rebecca at a well. Jacob met Rachel. Now here’s Moses (whose name means “drawing out of the water”) meeting the 7 daughters of Reuel at a well- among whom is Zipporah who will become his wife. The 4th would be Jesus meeting the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. She is a picture of the Bride of Christ because as a Samaritan half-breed she is both Jew and Gentile in one body. 🤯

Hmm. 🤔 Didn’t realize wells were such promising places to meet a husband… 😉

BTW, the well scene with Moses is SO cute in the 1998 animated film Prince of Egypt. Such a great movie… That was the first movie I ever saw in a theater. In Bible College.

The parallels between Jacob and Moses are striking. Moses interacts with other shepherds then waters the flock exactly like Jacob did back in Gen. 29:7-10. Jacob and Moses both meet their wives after having left home to go to a relative in a distant land. Both are shepherds too. And they both encounter God face to face. They both have to confront the family about getting rid of idols before going to meet with God.

But I’m getting ahead of myself…

Moses settles into his new life in Midian. The Midianites are distant relatives. Midian (or Medan) was a son of Abraham by his second wife Keturah. (This is why we don’t skip genealogies.)

And time passes. Years actually. Decades.

“During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.”
‭‭Exodus‬ ‭2‬:‭23‬-‭25‬ ‭ESV‬‬

My mind immediately responds with: And God knew…what? The NLT supplies that God knew “it was time to act,” and perhaps that is inferred by the Hebrew- I wouldn’t know to that level of nuance. It’s the word yadah which is a very broad term. It’s also the word that was popularized in the 90’s from an episode of Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld is Jewish). He used it rather cunningly (and biblically!) to mean both “ya know” and uh, (ahem) “to know intimately.”

Yada yada yada.

Anyhoo- back to Exodus…

The LEB and NASB (very solid translations) both have that God saw and He “took notice.” But I really like the simplicity of “and God knew.”

The Lord wasn’t off fiddling with galaxies. He knew.

Every brick. Every whip lash. The mud. The straw. The taskmasters. He knew.

And He hasn’t changed. He knows you. Your life. Your disappointments. The struggle to keep food on the table. The theft of your labor to enrich “Pharaoh.” He knows.

And though we may not be awaiting deliverance from Egypt, we are awaiting the greater deliverance of the world from the bondage of sin, of which Exodus is a picture. And the Lord knows when the time is right. It may be years. Even decades of suffering. But we trust Him though we face hardships. Deliverance is coming.