Instead of seeing the Israelites as an influence of blessing, the king decides to fight with God.
The pampered lives of Jacob’s family were about over. Given prime real estate in Egypt, the rich grasslands of Goshen, some of the sons also held key positions overseeing Pharaoh’s cattle. Joseph had seen to it that life was good for his family. But he was gone now, as was the pharaoh who admired and valued him. The new ruler in Egypt was afraid that the birth rate of the Hebrews was rapidly outpacing that of his own people. What would happen, he asked, “in the event of war”? What if “they also join our enemies and fight against us” (Ex 1:10)? So a plan was devised. Enforced labor of these foreigners would wear them out, diminish their ranks, and at the same time provide free labor for Pharaoh’s ambitious building projects. We read, “They set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and Raamses” (v 11). Was the plan working? The next verse tells us. It wasn’t! Like the Church in times of persecution, in trying to stamp out the flames, the fire only spreads. “The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew” (v 12). The king was getting desperate, so he called in the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, and instructed them to kill every boy as he was being born, although sparing the girls! “But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive” (17). When asked to explain, they told the king that, unlike the Egyptian women who lived indoors and were spared hard labor, the Hebrew women were vigorous and bore children quickly, without help—due largely to his work projects! It will take this man a long and painful time to see that fighting against the Lord is always a losing scheme.