August 21, 2005   North Park Presbyterian Church

The Old Midwife's Tale

Patricia K. Townsend
 

Old Testament:  Exodus 1:8-2:10
Psalm 23, sung (seated)

    
Good morning. How are you this morning?  I’m Granny Puah, off to a late start this morning because I was up after midnight delivering a baby over the other side of the village. Easy delivery for a first born, but even so I’d rather they came at a decent hour, I’m too old to be running out evenings. At least my granddaughter Dinah is taking some of the deliveries on her own now; she’s learning well. She’ll be a good midwife when she gets a bit more experience. She has a good teacher, me. Well, I had a good teacher too--old Shiphrah, rest her soul. I miss her, and it’s been way too much work for me since she passed on. 

Sure are a lot of people gathered around the well for this late in the morning. Don’t they have any work to do at home? Guess they are busy gabbing about the trader who saw Moses in Midian. I got all the news straight from Moses’ mother yesterday, but I guess the gossip is making the rounds now.

Moses’ mother and I go way back. We played together right here by the water when we were kids, no bigger than these.  Her name is Jochebed in case you didn’t know (Exodus 6:20). She married Amram, from the tribe of Levi, same as her, but he passed on a while back. He was plumb worn out, like so many of the men working the brickyard. Unreasonable brick quotas, heavy work digging the clay, long hours, no days off. Good thing she’s got her boy Aaron to look after her now.

We all wondered where Moses had ended up when he ran away to the wilderness. Turns out he stopped in Sinai, around Mount Horeb, with one of those shepherd families, a priest named Reuel, some call him Jethro, and his seven daughters. The wife died giving birth to the last, I reckon they need a good midwife out there in the boondocks. Well, I’m not volunteering, I’m comfortable here. Around here I know where to find the herbs and roots I need for my work—haven’t any idea if they grow off there in the wilderness.

So Moses has himself a girlfriend, Jethro’s daughter Zipporah. It’s about time he was marrying. That’s good, though his sister Miriam isn’t too happy about having a foreign woman for a sister-in-law--not that Miriam is going to be seeing much of Moses or his new wife. They’re not likely to come back here anytime soon. Pharoah’s men are still wanting to hold him responsible for killing that overseer, now that the word’s gotten around. I suppose you heard that’s why Moses had to run off, the young hothead. Well not so young any more, pushing 40, and he still can’t control his temper. Killed an Egyptian boss when he saw him beating up a Hebrew worker. Buried him in the sand, thought he’d get away with it.

Miriam, the sister, now there’s another one with a temper, runs in the family I guess. She was the one that saved Moses, you know, when he was a baby, hiding and watching by the water, offering to get Jochebed to serve as wet-nurse for her own boy. Heh! That was a joke on Pharoah’s daughter! But it kept us in touch with Moses through the years so he wasn’t completely lost to us, to our Hebrew people. Though he sure did turn out to be an Egyptian: Egyptian name she gave him, Moses, dandy clothes and hairdo, speaking their language, writing the hieroglyphics. Doesn’t even know how to speak proper Hebrew—just the kind the bosses use, half mixed up with Egyptian.

I remember that delivery like it was yesterday, the day Moses was born. Jochebed felt the pains coming on and sent Miriam to get Shiphrah, but we were busy with another woman, so Puah sent me off alone to tend to Jochebed. It was the first one I did without Shiphrah there to teach me. But it went all right, and being her third born she knew what to expect.

Those were hard times for us Hebrews. The king had decided that the Hebrew population was growing too fast, living down here in the eastern Delta in Goshen. His advisers figured we might rebel and join up with the enemy armies. So they told us midwives to kill the boy babies. Cockamamie notion that was! If he wanted to keep us from breeding he should have killed the girls! Must be he figured he needed the women working in the wheat and cotton fields, but he could give up some of the males. He needed the men as masons and brickmakers, but they were most likely to be the ones to cause trouble.

Anyway, the policy didn’t work because Shiphrah said to me, we won’t do it! We won’t do the king’s dirty work for him. We’ll lie through our teeth, if we need to, and say that the women give birth before we get to their house. There they be, holding the baby, leaving us just to bury the placenta and clean up. Can hardly expect us to rip the baby from the breast and throw it in the river, can he? 

So Pharaoh toughened up the policy and started sending his men house to house, looking for the baby boys. That’s the year that Moses was born. Well, you know the rest of that story—the business of the baby in the basket. They’ll tell that story for a few years, I guess!

But when they tell it they’ll probably make a big deal about Pharoah, they always do, those historians. They’ll name him-- Ramses the second-- and tell all about the big fancy temples and tombs he built during his reign. Probably they won’t even tell about the slaves who did all the work. They’ll sure forget all about Granny Puah and her teacher Shiprah. I guess I’ve gabbed enough, got to fill my water jug and get back to work, no rest for the weary.

Puah was wrong about one thing. They didn’t forget her name. And 33 centuries later the story is still told -- naming the midwives Shiphrah and Puah, naming the baby’s mother and sister, Jochebed and Miriam – but not naming the kings.  So we don’t know exactly which of the Pharoahs issued the edict to kill boy babies. Nor do we know which Pharoah hardened his heart during the plagues. Judging from the archaeology of Egypt, it seems most likely that it was Rameses II that Puah was talking about, living about 13 centuries before Christ.