Exploring the Exodus - Sarna

Exploring Exodus: The OppressionAuthor(s): Nahum M. SarnaReviewed work(s):Source: The Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), pp. 68-80Published by: The American Schools of Oriental ResearchStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3210004 .Accessed: 28/09/2012 15:48

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As prophesied, the Israelites had become a great nation, which made them a threat and a danger

to the security of Egypt.

Excavations have shown that by the end of the Late Bronze Age, which is generally agreed to cover the period of approximately 1550 to 1200 B.C.E., the land of Canaan was in an advanced state of decay. Riven by political fragmentation and chronic disunity, debilitated by economic instability, with their military strength greatly weakened by the successive forays of Egyptian kings, the fortified city-states that made up the country were in a parlous condition. Canaanite culture came to an abrupt end in the course of the second half of the thirteenth century. A significant number of city-states, among them Lachish, Bethel, and Hazor, ceased to exist. All the evidence points to violent destruction caused by human agency.

The old Canaanite culture was replaced by a totally different civilization, no longer based on the city-state system, and giving every appearance of being the work of seminomads who were in the early stages of sedentarization. The great city of Hazor exemplifies the process. Excavations there leave no doubt that it was suddenly destroyed by a gigantic conflagration sometime in the thirteenth century. By the year 1230 B.C.E. at the latest, new settlers had begun to inhabit part of the mound. The pottery type used thereafter differs radically from that uncovered in the earlier strata of the city.

In the course of the same century at least a dozen Late Bronze Age cities all over Canaan met similar violent destruction and were succeeded by more primitive and poorer villages on the ruined sites. No extrabiblical evidence has so far turned up to identify the invaders and new settlers with Joshua's armies. But the picture reconstructed by archaeological research generally fits biblical accounts of the wars of conquest, and there is no convincing reason not to correlate the one with the other.

To sum up: several diverse and variegated lines of evidence converge to make a very good case for placing the events of the Exodus within the thirteenth century B.C.E.

he newly founded com- munity of Israelites in Egypt prospered at first, and their numbers grew

enormously in the course of the years. The divine promises to the patriarchs that their prosperity would be numerous were amply ful- filled (Genesis 12:1, 17:2, 28:14, 46:3). The Israelites had become a "great nation." As the text has it, they "were fertile and prolific; they multiplied and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them" (Exodus 1:7). The term "land" here most likely refers to the area of their settlement, the region of the eastern part of the Nile Delta, not to Egypt as a whole. This population explosion was perceived as a threat and a danger to the security of Egypt, and when a "new king" (Exodus 1:8), most probably the founder of a new dynasty, took over the reins of power, the situation came to a head.

The Hyksos and Their Expulsion If the conclusion above about the date of the Exodus is correct, the develop- ment of events becomes intelligible, and the historical background can be plausibly reconstructed. For this we have to go back a few centuries to what is called by historians of Egypt the "Second Intermediate Period," which lasted from the eighteenth to the sixteenth century B.C.E. This is the era of the Hyksos, the Asiatics who seized power and ruled Egypt for about a century and a half (see Siive-Soderbergh 1951; Van Seters

BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/JUNE 1986 69

1966; Redford 1970; Hayes 1973a, 1973b; James 1973). The name itself means "Rulers of Foreign Lands," and strictly applied only to the chiefs themselves, but it has long been given a more general application.

The Hyksos were not organized invaders. They were rather a con- glomeration of ethnic groups, among whom Semites predominated, who infiltrated into the land over a long period of time in ever-increasing numbers, probably coming from Canaan. By about 1720 B.C.E. they were fully in control of the eastern Delta of the Nile and had established their capital at Avaris (see Van Seters 1966: 127-51). From this base they expanded southward into Lower Egypt. By about 1674 B.C.E. a Hyksos king with the Semitic name Salitis had occupied Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt. The Hyksos con- stituted the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Dynasties, adopting the style and bureaucratic institutions of the tradi- tional pharaohs. Gradually, Semites replaced Egyptians in high adminis- trative offices. The rise of Joseph to power and the migration of the Hebrews fit in well with what is known of the era of Hyksos rule. The Second Intermediate Period in Egyp- tian history is marked by a strong Semitic presence.

The Hyksos never seemed to have dominated Upper Egypt, where a native family retained control of that part of the country. It comprised the Seventeenth Dynasty and operated out of Thebes, situated some 330 miles (430 kilometers) upstream from modern Cairo. This became the focus of opposition to the Hyksos. One of the last kings of this dynasty, Seqenen-re II, began to organize the resistance. From the state of his mummy, which showed that he died at about the age of forty from a series of horrible head wounds, and from the fact that he received the title "The Brave," it has been assumed that he fell in battle with the Hyksos. The struggle was continued by his son, Kamose, who succeeded in driv-

ing the Hyksos out of Upper Egypt and in recovering Memphis. The final and victorious stage in the liberation of Egypt was accomplished by Amose, brother of Kamose. He inflicted a crushing defeat on the Hyksos by capturing their capital of Avaris and driving them back into Canaan. Amose (approximately 1552-1527 B.C.E.) founded the Eighteenth Dynasty of pharaohs and inaugurated the New Kingdom, the period of the Egyptian Empire, in the course of which the country reached the height of its power and magnificence.

The Hyksos occupation was a

After the Hyksos occupation, the danger of foreign invasion con-

tinued to haunt Egypt.

shameful humiliation for the Egyp- tians that had a profound effect upon the national psychology. About one hundred years after the liquidation of Hyksos rule, Queen Hatshepsut (approximately 1480-1469 B.C.E.) had carved above the entrance to the rock-cut temple she built at Speos Artimedos, (Istabl Antar) in Middle Egypt, an inscription in which she recalled the ruination of the country caused by these Asiatics (Pritchard 1955: 231).

As late as about 300 B.C.E., Manetho, an Egyptian priest who wrote a history of his country in Greek, reports, according to the frag- ment cited by the Jewish historian Josephus (approximately 38-100 C.E.), that the Hyksos "savagely burnt the cities, razed the temples of the gods to the ground, and treated the whole native population with the utmost cruelty, massacring some, and carrying off the wives and children of others into slavery" (Against Apion

1: 14, 75 and following-see Thack- eray 1966: 193 and following).

Whether or not these sources truly reflect historic reality is uncer- tain, but they give expression to the sharp and lasting impact that the episode had on the popular mind. Henceforth, Egypt was acutely con- scious of the perils lurking in the outside world. The danger of foreign invasion, especially from Asia via the eastern Delta, haunted her thereafter and could never again be smugly ignored or underestimated. The fact is that the Semitic population was not driven out of that region with the expulsion of the Hyksos rulers, and it continued to reside there during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties.

The Enslavement of the Israelites It is against this background that the opening chapter of the book of Exo- dus becomes comprehensible. Quite understandable is the anxiety of the new pharaoh about the rapid growth of the Israelite presence in the strategic Delta region: "Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us then deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground" (Exodus 1:9-10).

A close reading of the final pages of Genesis uncovers subtle intima- tions of a deteriorating situation. The domicile of the Israelites in Egypt is not regarded as something permanent. Before he dies, Jacob recalls the divine promise of national territory in Canaan and foresees the return of his descendants from Egypt to the land:

I am about to die; but God will be with you and bring you back to the land of your fathers. (Genesis 48:21)

Most striking is the contrast between the private funeral and interment of Joseph in Egypt and the public state funeral earlier accorded his father, Jacob, and his burial in his ancestral vault at Machpelah in Hebron. Jo-

70 BIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGIST/JUNE 1986

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seph's family did not have the influ- ence with the Egyptian authorities to be able to secure for him a similar privilege. Moreover, Joseph himself seems to have been aware of the gathering storm clouds, for his dying words are:

God will surely take notice of you and bring you up from this land to the land which He promised on oath to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob .. . When God has taken notice of you, you shall carry up my bones from here. (Genesis 50:24-25)

If the anxieties of the authorities were understandable in the cir- cumstances, the reaction to the po- tential menace posed by the presence of a large foreign population in a strategic area can only be described as iniquitous. The pharaoh took draconian measures to limit the growth of the Israelites, and to this end he cunningly devised that adult males be pressed into slavery.

The pharaoh involved is not

identified. The term pharaoh itself simply means in Egyptian "The Great House." Originally applied to the royal palace and court, late in the Eighteenth Dynasty it came to be employed by metonymy for the reigning monarch, just as "The Palace" or "The White House" or "City Hall" would be used today (Gardiner 1961: 52). This is how it is employed in the Bible. If the pharaoh in question be- longed to the Nineteenth Dynasty, the new policy of dealing with the Israelites coincides with known events belonging to this period.

The kings of the Eighteenth Dynasty (approximately 1552-1306 B.C.E.) all lived in Upper Egypt and operated out of Memphis or Thebes. Although they campaigned in Canaan and Syria, they wholly neglected the Delta area, apparently begrudging any expenditure on the region that had been the base of the hated Hyksos foreigners. However, toward the end

The Exodus accounts of Joseph's rise to power in Egypt and the migration of the Hebrews correspond well with what is known about the era of Hyksos rule during the Second Intermediate Period (around 1800-1550 B.C.E.). The Hyksos were Asiatic invaders who con- quered Egypt and tried to assimilate into the existing culture. The fiercely ethnocentric Egyptians despised foreign rule and eventually were able to expel the Hyksos from their land. The inscription shown here was erected above the entrance to a temple at Speos Arti- medos by Queen Hatshepsut approximately a century after the defeat of the Hyksos. It recalls the ruination of the country caused by these Asiatics. The drawing is from Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, volume 32 (1946), used courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society

of this period attitudes began to change. Haremhab (approximately 1333-1306 B.C.E.), the last pharaoh of the dynasty, is known to have reno- vated the temple of the local god Seth in the eastern Delta. The first effective king of the Nineteenth Dynasty, Sethos (Seti)I (approximately 1305-1290 B.C.E.), built himself a summer palace just north of Avaris that was intended to form the nucleus of a new suburb. His very name expresses an orientation toward the local deity, Seth (see Velde 1967). In fact, he was descended from an ancient family that had roots in this region and that had long supplied the priesthood of that god. This divinity was heartily disliked by the rival Thebans from whom the previous dynasty had derived.

Rameses II, successor to Sethos I, wholeheartedly shifted the center of gravity of Egyptian government to the eastern Delta (Gardiner 1918). Not long after his coronation, he made a ceremonious visit to his father's freshly erected palace near Avaris and announced the founda- tion of a new capital city to be built around it. A variety of converging motivations occasioned this step. He wanted to distance himself as much as possible from the priesthood of the god Amun centered in Thebes. He, himself, worshipped Seth as the chief god and adopted him as the divine patron of Egyptian imperial rule in Asia. Further, by transferring the capital to the Delta, he was able


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Rameses II, possibly the pharaoh of the oppression, was a great builder of palaces, temples, and colossal statuary. Above: A monumental seated statue of the king is located in the first court of the Luxor temple and colonnade decorated by Tutankhamon. Above right: Rameses II is ideally portrayed in this striding colossus, located in the southeast corner of the court he built at the temple of Luxor. Photographs by Wim Swaan from Charles E Nims'Thebes of the Pharaohs: Pattern for Every City, used courtesy of Paul L. Elek Publishers.

to shorten the lines of communica- tion and supplies and to acquire a more convenient strategic base for his campaigns in Canaan and Syria.

The new capital was named after himself, Pi (Per)-Ramesse, "Domain of Rameses." The first element was often dropped due to the fame of this monarch, so that the city was known simply as "Rameses" (Raamses). Its beauty and glory were extolled in poems that have survived to this day. One such describes it as being

full of food and provisions.... The sun rises in its horizon, and sets within it. All men have left their towns and settled in its territory. ... The castle which is in it is like the horizon of heaven.

Another text reports it to be in [very, very] good condition, a beautiful district, without its like, after the pattern of Thebes .... The Resi- dence is pleasant in life; its field is full of everything good; it is (full) of supplies and food every day, its ponds with fish, and its lakes with birds.

Its meadows are verdant with grass; its banks bear dates; its melons are abundant on the sands

.... Its grana-

ries are (so) full of barley and emmer (that) they come near to the sky. Onions and leeks are for food, and lettuce of the garden, pomegran- ates, apples, and olives, figs of the orchard, sweet wine ... surpassing honey.... Its ships go out and come (back) to mooring, (so that) supplies and food are in it every day. One re- joices to dwell within it. (Pritchard 1955: 470-71; Erman 1966: 206, 270)

This lavish praise bestowed upon the city of Rameses recalls the words of Genesis 47:5-6,11:

Then Pharoah said to Joseph,... "the land of Egypt is open before you: settle your father and your brothers in the best part of the land; let them stay in the region of Goshen." ... So Joseph settled his father and


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The location of biblical Pithom, one of the cities constructed by the enslaved Israelites, has been identified with several sites in the Delta including Tell el-Maskhuta and Tell el-Rataba. Rataba's surface has been heavily disturbed by recent, temporary occupation of the site. Part of an ancient enclosure wall is shown here being cleared by excavation workers. Courtesy of the Johns Hopkins University Wadi Tumilat Tell el- Rataba Expedition.

his brothers, giving them holdings in the choicest part of the land of Egypt, in the region of Rameses.

In other words, Rameses II built his capital in the very area of Israel- ite settlement.' Not only so, but this pharaoh achieved an unrivalled repu- tation as a vigorous builder on a pro- digious scale. Monumental structures, numerous obelisks, colossal statues of himself, magnificent palaces and temples adorned the land of Egypt, and especially the Delta, in the course of his sixty-six-year rule.

Such vast public projects required an unlimited supply of labor, a high degree of organization, and the con- tinuous production of abundant supplies of brick, masonry, and other building materials. The pharaoh

For his building program Rameses II

exploited Israelite manpower to the full.

could find a large pool of manpower at hand in the Delta in the Israelite population, and he proceeded to ex- ploit it to the full.

So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor; and they built garrison cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses. (Exodus 1:11)

"Raamses" is, of course, none other than the capital city that Ram- eses II built for himself, as discussed above. Its precise location in the northeastern Delta is still a matter of dispute (see Uphill 1968, 1969; Redford 1963; Helck 1965; Van Seters 1966: 127-51; Kitchen 1975: 57-59 and notes 5-9). The district of the modern villages of el-Khata-na and Qantir now seems to house the most likely sites (Habachi 1954). Nearby is probably the old Hyksos capital of Avaris.

"Pithom" is Egyptian P(r)'Itm, "House of [the god] Atum," which is generally identified with modern Tell el-Maskhuta. The earliest inscrip- tions found here derive from the time of Rameses II and show that


Brickmaking was a task required of many of the Israelites in Egypt. This drawing, based on wall-paintings from the tomb of Rekhmire at Thebes (around 1490-1436 B.C.E.), shows Syrian and Nubian laborers performing various stages of brickmaking and building. Jars of water, used to moisten the clay, are brought from the pond depicted on the left; short-handled hoes are used to knead the moistened clay; and the material is carried in baskets to the brickmakers who form the bricks with the use of a mold. Towards the right and at the bottom is an older worker shown either tightening his hoe or in the process of hoeing. Drawing is by Linda Huff.

this place was also that known as Tjeku in Egyptian, and is the biblical Succoth, the first site on the journey of the Israelites out of Egypt, as mentioned in Exodus 12:37 and 13:20, and Numbers 33:5-6. This city is known to have been a center of the cult of Atum.

For his vast building program Rameses II preferred to conscript foreigners in the area, rather than native Egyptians. Such was reported by the Greco-Roman historian Diodorus Siculus (first century B.C.E.), who apparently relied on trustworthy Egyptian sources (Diodorus of Sicily 1:56-see Oldfather 1968: 197). The enslavement of the Israelites falls into the category that Diodorus describes. It was not domestic bondage, the type in which an individual becomes the chattel of a private master and lives in his household, although this type of slavery is well attested to in Egypt. There is no evidence that the Israelite women were enslaved or that slavery involved the dissolution of the family unit. In fact, one text shows that the Israelites could live next door to or even in the same house as Egyptians and main- tain social relations with them:

Each woman shall borrow from her neighbor and the lodger in her house objects of silver and gold, and cloth-

ing, and you shall put these on your sons and daughters, thus stripping the Egyptians. (Exodus 3:22; compare 11:2 and 12:35)

What we are dealing with is state slavery, the organized imposi- tion of forced labor upon the male population for long and indefinite terms of service under degrading and brutal conditions. The men so con- scripted received no reward for their

There is no ervidence that the Israelite

women were enslaved.

labors; they enjoyed no civil rights, and their lot was generally much worse than that of a household slave. Organized in large work gangs, they became an anonymous mass, deper- sonalized, losing all individuality in the eyes of their oppressors (see Bakir 1952: especially 1-4, 7, 88, 114; Hayes 1973b: 372-81, especially 375, 377; Baines and Milek 1980: 100).

They were requisitioned for the maintenance of the irrigation ditches, dikes, and canals, having to

clean out the mud deposited by the inundation of the Nile. Agriculture in Egypt is not sustained by rainfall, which is too meager for the purpose, but by the annual rise of the Nile, which is literally the lifeline of the country. A ramified network of ditches and canals conducts the Nile waters into the fields. Unless these waterways are constantly kept in proper condition, the fertile soil becomes barren (compare Deuter- onomy 11:10-11).

The Israelites were also put to work in the fields to be subject to the unending drudgery demanded by the manifold and arduous tasks of agriculture (Exodus 1:14). Several Egyptian texts shed light on the burdens endured by the agricultural worker, on his wretched condition, and on his low status in Egyptian society (see Erman 1966: 426-27, 434). A composition known as "The Satire on the Trades" describes the burdens of the vegetable gardener: "Early in the morning he must water the vegetables and in the evening the vines." Of the farmer it is said that he is wearier "than a wayfarer ... His sides ache, as if heaven and earth were in them. When he goes forth thence from the meadows and he reaches his home in the evening, he is one cut down by traveling" (Prit-


Details of the wall-paintings of brickmaking from the tomb of Rekhmire Photographs are by Tcharna HASSIA and are from Les Chefs-d'Oeuvre de la Peinture Egyptienne by Andre Lhote, used courtesy of Librairie Hachette.

chard 1955: 433; compare Erman 1966: 69). Another wisdom composition warns the young that labor in the fields "is the toughest of all jobs" (Lichtheim 1976: 170), and the following citation elaborates on the harsh treatment he receives:

the worm has taken half of the food, the hippopotamus the other half;... Poor miserable agriculturist: What was left on the threshing-floor thieves made away with.... Then the scribe lands on the bank to re-

ceive the harvest, his followers carry sticks and the negroes carry palm rods. They say, "Give us corn"-there is none there. Then theybeat him as he lies stretched out and bound on the ground, they throw him into the canal and he sinks down, head under water. His wife is bound before his eyes and his children are put in fet- ters. (Erman 1971: 445; compare Lichtheim 1973:184 and following)

A feel for the unremitting toil to which the workmen were subject is gained from this complaint of labor-

ers engaged in loading heavy sacks of corn onto ships:

Are we then to have no rest from the carrying of the corn and the white spelt? The barns are already so full that the heaps of corn overflow, and the boats are already so full of corn that they burst. And yet we are still driven to make haste. (Erman 1971: 445; compare Lichtheim 1973: 184 and following)

Brickmaking The building program inaugurated by Rameses II required an inexhaust- ible supply of bricks. The lives of the Israelites were "embittered with harsh labor at mortar and brick." From another episode it becomes clear that they were required to manufacture the bricks according to fixed daily quotas (Exodus 1:14, 5:7-8, 5:13-14).

The Egyptians were among the world's most talented and skilled stoneworkers. Temples, pyramids, funerary monuments, gateways, and other imposing structures made abundant use of stone taken from the great quarries that lay on either side of the Nile Valley (see Clarke and Engelbach 1930). But the common building material was the alluvial


Although dating to the Eleventh Dynasty and not the Nineteenth Dynasty when Rameses II was directing his ambitious building program, this tomb model vividly depicts a scene of brickmaking in ancient Egypt. The wood and gesso model is from tomb XA at Bersheh. It measures 54.3 centimeters long and is 17. 4 centimeters wide. Harvard and Museum of Fine Arts Expedition (21.411). Cour- tesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

mud supplied by the Nile River and shaped into bricks by laborers (see Lucas 1962: 48-50, 74-75; Kitchen 1976, 1977: 77-78; Finegan 1979: 270; Spencer 1979). The brick walls that encircled towns often reached a height of about sixty feet. The ordi- nary private dwellings and the admin- istrative buildings were mostly constructed of brick. It is readily understandable that the frantic building activity in the region of the eastern Delta called for the organization of a brickmaking industry of unprece- dented dimensions. Egyptian papyri and paintings yield a clear picture of the nature of the work and the tech- niques involved. The industry would be located within easy reach of a plentiful supply of water, usually a pool or canal. Some laborers would do nothing but cart the water back and forth all day long. Others would be employed in the collection of stubble. The artisan who actually molded the bricks would receive from the workers baskets of water- soaked clay mixed with stubble gathered from the fields. He would then shape the material either by hand or in a rectangular wooden mold. The brick would be left to dry in the sun for about three days and then turned over, so that the entire process took just about a week.

Some idea of the immense quan- tity of bricks used may be gained from studies done on the pyramids of Sesostris III at Dahshur. It is cal- culated that it took about 24.5 mil- lion bricks to construct. A practiced artisan in present-day Egypt, where the same brickmaking technique as employed from time immemorial can still be observed, is capable of turning out about three thousand bricks in the course of a seven- to eight-hour working day. Such a quota imposed on raw slaves would constitute an intolerable burden. Thirteenth-century B.C.E. inscrip- tions testify to official concern about maintaining the quotas of brick production. A leather scroll from the fifth year of Rameses II tells of forty men who were each assigned a quota of two thousand bricks, making a total supply of eighty thousand. The text shows that the target was rarely reached by any of them.

Something of the hardships ex- perienced by the brickmaker may be perceived from an inscription ac- companying wall paintings from the days of Thutmosis III (approximately 1490-1436 B.C.E.). It depicts, among various scenes of building construc- tion, Asiatics making and laying bricks, and it bears the ominous line from the mouth of a taskmaster, "The

The building activity in the Delta required a

huge brickmaking industry.

rod is in my hand, do not be idle." The afore-cited "Satire on the Trades" has this to say of the brickmaker and the builder:

He is dirtier than vines or pigs, from treading under his mud. His clothes are stiff with clay; his leather belt is going to ruin. Entering into the wind, he is miserable.... His sides ache, since he must be outside in a treacherous wind.... His arms are destroyed with technical work.... What he eats is the bread of his fin- gers, and he washes himself (only) once a season. He is simply wretched through and through. (Pritchard 1955: 433; compare Lichtheim 1973: 187; Erman 1966: 69)

The nefarious scheme of the pharaoh to reduce the male Israelite population through state-imposed enslavement, and its subjection to degrading, exhausting, and back- breaking toil, did not yield the expected results: "But the more they


The important role of the midwife in antiquity is high- lighted in the biblical account of the Egyptian pharaoh's attempt to kill all newborn Israelite males (Exodus 1:15- 21). The childbirth scenes shown here are from another ancient civilization, that of Cyprtzs, and show women in labor being assisted by midwives. These terra- cotta figures date from approximately 600 to 500 B. c.E. and measure 11 and 10.3 centimeters long. They are in the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia.

were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out" (Exodus 1:12). Accordingly, the king resorted to more barbarous measures. In order to achieve immediate and certain regulation of the population, he decreed the murder of all newborn Israelite males. The obligation to commit this infanticide was thrust upon the midwives (Exodus 1:15-16).

The Midwives Midwifery in Egypt was one of the few professions open to women. Its practitioners seem to have been held in esteem, for a popular tale about magicians has three important god- desses practicing the craft on a certain occasion (Lichtheim 1973: 220 and following; Erman 1966:36 and following). It must have been a regu- lar institution in Israel to judge by the matter-of-fact way in which the presence of the midwife is mentioned not only here, but also in connection with the birth of Benjamin to Rachel in Genesis 35:17, and of the twins to Tamar in Genesis 38:28. There is no record in the Bible of a male assist- ing at confinements. From the fore- mentioned Egyptian legend and from Ezekiel 16:4 and other biblical passages, it would appear that in

addition to attending the mother at the time of the parturition, it was the function of the midwife to cut the umbilical cord, to wash the baby in water, to rub its skin with salt, and to swaddle it. In the case of twins, she had to testify as to which was the firstborn (Genesis 38: 28-29; see Preuss 1978: 36-39).

The English text in Exodus 1:16 refers to the "birthstool." The exact meaning of the Hebrew ovnayim is unclear. The word literally translates "the two stones." Some scholars take the word as a euphemism for the genitals (compare Gordis 1968: 230), a glance at which would at once enable the midwife to determine the sex of the baby and to act in accor- dance with the pharaoh's decree. The more usual understanding is as an allusion to the custom of women ex- periencing parturition in a crouching or sitting position. Such a posture is clearly mentioned in 1 Samuel 4:19: "she was seized with labor pains, and she crouched down and gave birth." The birthstool would then be that on which the mother sat during delivery in order to ease the access of the midwife, who sat facing her, to the baby as it emerged from the uter- us, while at the same time facilitat-


Faced with an irreconcilable conflict between the sovereign's depraved law and the moral law of God, the midwives chose morality.

ing passage through the maternal birth canal. The Egyptian hiero- glyphic sign for birth was a woman in a kneeling position. One hymn to a goddess read, "I sat upon the brick(s) like the pregnant woman" (Pritchard 1955: 381; Lichtheim 1976: 107 and following). A similar custom is attested to in Mesopotamian society (see Lambert and Millard 1969: 9, 60-63, 153, note to line 259).

In issuing his decree to the midwives, the king obviously relied upon the ease with which the baby could be killed at the moment of delivery by means not easily detectable in those days. What is not clear is whether these midwives were Israelite or Egyptian women, for the Hebrew text can yield the renderings "Hebrew midwives" and "midwives of the Hebrew women" (see Greenberg 1969: 26). It would have been strange for the king to have expected the Israelites to kill the males of their own people. Another oddity is that only two midwives are mentioned for such a large population. Either they were the over- seers of the practitioners, and were directly responsible to the authorities for the women under them, or the two names, Shiphrah and Puah, are those of guilds or teams of midwives called after the original foun- ders of the order (Rand 1970). At any rate, the names are Semitic. Shiphrah is derived from a verbal stem meaning "to be beautiful," and appears in a list of slaves belonging to an Egyptian household? She is marked as being an Asiatic. Puah is the name of the daughter of the hero Danel in Uga- ritic literature and simply means "a girl," apparently originally being a term for a fragrant blossom (see Gor- don 1965: 19.2081, page 469; Albright 1954: 229, note 50).

What is remarkable is that the names of these lowly women are recorded whereas, by contrast, the all-powerful reigning monarch is consistently veiled in anonymity. In this way the biblical narrator expresses his scale of values. All the power of the mighty pharaoh, the outward magnificence of his realm, the dazzling splendor of his court, his colossal monuments - all are il- lusory, ephemeral, and in the ultimate reckoning, insignificant, and they must crumble into dust because they rest on foundations empty of moral content. Seven times in this brief episode the term midwife is repeated, an index of the importance that Scripture places upon the ac- tions of the women in their defiance of tyranny and in their upholding of moral principles.

The midwives, fearing God, did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live. (Exodus 1:17)

Here we have history's first recorded case of civil disobedience in defense of a moral cause (Daube 1972: 1-22). Be it noted that the motivation of these women in defy- ing the promulgated law of the sovereign is given as "fear of God." This phrase is frequently cited in biblical texts in relation to situations that involve norms of moral or ethical behavior. It will be recalled that in Genesis 20:11 Abraham justified the tactic he adopted, of passing off his wife as his sister in order to save his life, on the grounds that the local citizenry was not thought to possess "fear of God" and would not there- fore have any restraint on commit- ting murder. Joseph sought to con- vince his brothers of his integrity by appealing to his own "fear of God"

(Genesis 42:18). In Leviticus 19:14, 32, one is exhorted not to insult the deaf or place a stumbling block before the blind, to rise before the aged and to show them deference - all out of "fear of God." The Amalekites could commit unprovoked aggres- sion against the peaceful Israelites who had just escaped from Egyptian bondage because "they had no fear of God" (Deuteronomy 25:18). Job was a perfectly righteous man who es- chewed evil precisely because he did "fear God" (Job 1:1, 8). In short, the consciousness of the existence of a higher power who makes moral de- mands on human beings constitutes the ultimate restraint on evil and the supreme incentive for good.

Faced with an irreconcilable conflict between obedience to the sovereign's depraved law and alle- giance to the higher moral law of God, the midwives chose in favor of the transcendent imperative of morality. Their noncompliance with the law, however, was not publicly announced but privately effected on obvious prudential grounds. They could not disclose the truth in re- sponse to the pharaoh's interrogation because had they done so, the pre- dictable consequence would have been their removal from a situation in which they could be enabled to save lives.

Thwarted once again in his evil designs, the pharaoh then enlisted "all his people," the entire apparatus of the state, in a national effort sys- tematically to annihilate the people of Israel. All newborn males were to be drowned in the River Nile (Exodus 1:22), a decree that was ultimately to turn out as tinged with irony, for the very agency of destruction that he had chosen-water-was eventually


to become the instrument of his own punishment.

Notes 'On Goshen, see Montet 1959: 15-17,

53-54, 57-59; 1968: 8, 57-59; Vergote 1959: 183-87; Albright 1968: 99, 155, note 8; Yeivin 1971: 243-46; Har-El 1973: 90-91, 139, 173, 194-96; Aharoni: 1979: 196.

2For the use of the stem Ipr, compare Genesis 49:21; Psalm 16:6; Job 26:13; Daniel 3:32, 4:24, and 6:2. See Albright 1954: 229, number 233; Kitchen 1976: 144.

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Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch- Archaeologisch Institut in het Nabije Oosten.

Reprinted from Exploring Exodus: The Heri- tage of Ancient Israel by permission of the publisher, Schocken Books Inc. Copyright ? 1986 by Nahum M. Sarna.

As indicated above, the preceding article is an excerpt from the author's recently published volume on the book of Exodus. This volume, which gives much additional evidence for the dating of the Exodus, also dis- cusses numerous other aspects of the event, including the motif of the abandoned hero, the role of women, the ethnic complexity of the Prom- ised Land, signs and wonders, the literary form of the plagues narrative, the Hebrew calendar, the route of the Exodus, Near Eastern parallels, the nature of the Torah's collection of laws, the Ark, and the Tabernacle, the Sabbath, and Creation. The volume includes helpful notes, bibliography, and index.

"Valuable and indispensable1 ...sheds a brilliant light2. The best general study of Exodus available today3... equal if not greater impact [than] his Genesis4. Professor Sarna has done it again!5" EXPLORING EXODUS The Heritage of Biblical Israel NAHUM M. SARNAL

1 Alfred h Gottschalk.

Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion

2 Chaim Potok 3 Marvin Fox.

Brandeis University

4 Breva-cI S Childs Yale University

5 Yochanan Muffs. The Jewish Theological Seminary

Schocken Books 62 Cooper Square. New York 10003

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Article Contentsp. [68]p. 69p. 70p. 71p. 72p. 73p. 74p. 75p. 76p. 77p. 78p. 79p. 80

Issue Table of ContentsThe Biblical Archaeologist, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jun., 1986), pp. 65-128Front Matter [pp. 65-81]Letter to the Readers [p. 67]Exploring Exodus: The Oppression [pp. 68-80]Archaeological Sources for the Study of Palestine: The Chalcolithic Period [pp. 82-108]"BA" Portrait: Paul mile Botta [pp. 109-113]Enigmatic Bible Passages: The Timing of the Snagging of the Ram, Genesis 22:13 [pp. 114-117]The Wells of Gerar [pp. 118-126]Book ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 127-128]Review: untitled [p. 128]

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Exploring the Exodus - Sarna