Shiphrah, Puah, and Moses

tl;dr: There's an interesting contrast in the stories of Exodus 1 and Exodus 2 and how different characters respond to injustice.

I occasionally think about the contrast of the first two chapters of Exodus.

In chapter 1, Shiphrah and Puah were midwives who were ordered to kill Hebrew babies. But they don't do it, instead claiming Hebrew women gave birth before they could get there. They undermined the system, saving a lot of lives.

In chapter 2, Moses, raised in palace privilege because of a different bit of quiet courage from another couple women, sees a slaver beating a Hebrew. He gets mad, kills him, then has to go into hiding.

The role of privilege here does matter, I think. Moses grew up in the palace. He has probably always been taught that the way to enact change is to wield your strength against those who need to be kept in line. So when he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and gets angry, that's how he responds: wielding his power violently. Then he is surprised to learn that the Hebrew slaves were not excited by this display of dominance; they are afraid that he'll do the same to them.

Of course Moses eventually becomes the movie-style hero that is the symbol of the Exodus. But first he has to spend an entire generation in exile, surrendering the privilege and domination mindset he had, encountering God, and waiting for the people who were trying to kill him to die off. And in that time, "the Israelites were still groaning" (CEB) in slavery, who maybe could have been helped if he shown some wisdom earlier.

I recently watched the first Hobbit movie again, and was struck by this bit of Tolkien wisdom about power:

Saruman believes that it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I've found it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.

There's at least one big difference from the Exodus context, and the Hobbit context, compared to my context and likely the context of most readers: unlike Egypt at this time, we live in a democracy. We have more ability to directly oppose evil with freedom of expression. And we definitely need a lot of people in that category, explicitly countering harm.

But I think we also need the Shiphrahs and the Puahs, those who will quietly throw a stick into the gears of the death machine, saving a lot of lives in the process even if nobody seems to notice.