Everyone who knows anything about the Bible knows that it was Moses who led Israel out of Egypt. However, according to the Lord, Moses had help, because he said through the prophet: “I brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you out of the house of slaves; and I sent Moses, Aaron, and Miriam before you” (Micah 6:4). After the Lord had drowned Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, Miriam led the women in song praising the Lord before all the people (Exodus 15:20-21). She encouraged Israel, and she is called a prophet! Yet, before all this, the Lord used Miriam to enable Moses to bring Israel out of Egypt. In fact, the Lord used many women to enable Moses to bring about the exodus of Israel out of Egypt.
According to the text, sometime after Israel was received honorably by Pharaoh, due to what Joseph had done for the nation, a king arose who refused to honor Joseph’s deed and Israel’s benefit to the Egypt. Instead, it was suspected, they would arise to do harm to the nation, so Pharaoh had them enslaved (Exodus 1:8-11). Yet, this wasn’t enough, because the Israelites continued to grow in number, and it was feared they would soon outnumber the Egyptians. Therefore, they decided to destroy all newborn males and commanded the midwives to kill each male babe as it was born (Exodus 1:12-16). Nevertheless, the midwives feared the Lord and didn’t carry out Pharaoh’s order, reporting that the Israelite women delivered their babies prior to their coming to their aid (Exodus 1:17-19). Thus, Pharaoh commanded every Egyptian to slay any newborn male child that they found (Exodus 1:22).
In this context Moses was born and was hidden by his mother for three months, but when that could no longer be done safely, Moses’ mother made a small boat out of papyrus and put him in the Nile River among the reeds, seemingly for Pharaoh’s daughter to find, when she came out to bathe in its sacred waters (Exodus 2:1-5). When she found the child, Pharaoh’s daughter decided he wouldn’t be slain. Instead, she consulted with Miriam, Moses’ sister, who had come to speak with the princess, and it was decided that the young girl would bring her a Hebrew woman to nurse the child for her. When he was grown or weaned, he became her son, and she called him Moses (Exodus 2:6-10).
The facts can hardly be missed, that it was women, whom God used so mightily against the wishes of Pharaoh, the male leader of Egypt. First, the midwives acted against the rule of patriarchy, refusing to submit to Pharaoh’s order. Then, Moses’ mother hid her son, until it could no longer be done. Then she released him under the watch of his sister, Miriam, to be found by Pharaoh’s daughter, who saved the child from death. At the end of the day, the text records that it was women who acted courageously, defying Pharaoh’s orders, and working against the patriarchal tradition of that day. It wasn’t males whom the Lord used; it was females. It was their courage in the midst of Israel’s male submission/slavery to Pharaoh.
Considering what we know about this record, we need to highlight one more thing, in order to understand what great courage and character it took on the part of women who brought Moses to Pharaoh to later seek the release of Israel. First of all, it doesn’t seem that anyone told Miriam to guard the child, while it was anchored among the reeds, where Pharaoh’s daughter came to bathe. Certainly, Moses’ mother laid him there, implying she believed Pharaoh’s daughter would be sympathetic. Yet, nothing is said in the text that Miriam was told to watch over the child, but she did.[1]
To conclude, one needs to step back and ask: what would have occurred, if patriarchy was steadfastly observed around the time of Moses’ birth? It doesn’t take a great theologian to understand that, if patriarchy was obeyed, Moses gets slain as a child, and the Exodus never occurs. Why, then, should we believe patriarchy (or complementarianism) is the Lord’s choice for male/female relationships today? It doesn’t seem to be something the Lord honored in the past, why should he honor it today? Where’s the proof that it originated with God? If it didn’t originate with God, it must be a tradition of men. Yet, the Lord, although he deals with men according to their traditions, never seems to honor the tradition of patriarchy. Instead, he makes light of it by having women, who are least in power under its rule, overcome the wishes of the males who are greatest in power, according to its rule.
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[1] The arguments I present in this study are also the arguments presented by Rabbi Prof. Dr. Tamara Cohn Eskenazi in a lecture she gave at the University of California in 2018: Ancient and Contemporary Perspectives on Women in the Bible; at about 27 min. to about 32 min. into the lecture.
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