Latest / Scripture Central / Exodus 1-6 I Come Follow Me I Handmaidens, Harems and Heroines I Lynne Hilton Wilson

Transcript

Exodus 1-6 I Come Follow Me I Handmaidens, Harems and Heroines I Lynne Hilton Wilson · Scripture Central

• 0:00
  And Zipporah becomes a advocate of the covenant in what we keep
• 0:04
  reading in Exodus chapter 4. And on this journey back to
• 0:09
  Egypt, the Lord becomes extremely angry at Moses.
• 0:14
  We see Zippora rising to an occasion that she did not want
• 0:18
  to do. Whether they're squatting or
• 0:20
  kneeling or standing, this is part of women's heritage.
• 0:23
  And whether you're a single woman, you were born via a
• 0:27
  woman. Whether or not you've ever had a
• 0:29
  chance to give birth, you were Born This Way.
• 0:31
  And this is part of what links us to this heritage, this
• 0:34
  wonderful heritage of women across all history of the world,
• 0:39
  is that their life is at stake as they are willing to give
• 0:43
  life. I think this is quite ironic
• 0:45
  that the Pharaoh said, put your sons in the Nile.
• 0:48
  And that's exactly what Jacobin is doing here.
• 0:51
  But she is putting him in a basket in an ark.
• 0:54
  She is saving him. She is becoming a type of our
• 0:57
  Christ as well as a savior of many.
• 1:04
  Hello, welcome back to Scripture Central.
• 1:06
  I'm Lynn Hilton Wilson, excited to talk about the beginning of
• 1:09
  Exodus. We're in chapters one through 6
• 1:12
  today. And as we look at the
• 1:13
  handmaidens and the harems and the heroines, we've got a lot to
• 1:16
  look at. We have midwives Shapora and
• 1:19
  Pura. We've got Jehokaved, prophet
• 1:21
  Moses mother. We've got Sappora, his wife, and
• 1:24
  we've got others. As we go through the text, I
• 1:26
  don't know if we'll have time to go through all of them, but my
• 1:29
  hand that will have all of them. And the daughter of Pharaoh is
• 1:32
  an unnamed woman. Her maidens are unnamed women.
• 1:35
  The seven daughters of the priest of Midian who are the
• 1:38
  porous sisters will mention as well as we go through.
• 1:41
  But let's look at this text in focusing on finding our savior
• 1:47
  as we go through. I hope you can also enjoy these
• 1:51
  texts as they are so rich in historical information.
• 1:55
  In fact, this is dramatic transition from Israelite
• 1:58
  history. You know, they go from being the
• 2:00
  honored guests in Egypt now to absolutely enslaved people
• 2:05
  crying out for deliverance. You know, the first centuries
• 2:08
  after Jacob's family. They are now in a horrific
• 2:12
  situation of slavery. They've multiplied a lot.
• 2:15
  They have a vast population. I don't know if we can trust the
• 2:18
  numbers, but it sounds like they have 600,000 fighting men by
• 2:21
  this time coming from 70 either over a 200 or 400 year period
• 2:25
  depending on which text in the Bible we're using.
• 2:28
  But archaeology has done a good job backing us up on these
• 2:30
  dates. And I have a lot of these
• 2:32
  sources in my handout if you'd like to look at some of the
• 2:34
  archaeological discoveries for their dates.
• 2:36
  But we're told in Exodus chapter one verse 7 that the Israelites
• 2:40
  increased abundantly and multiplied, which of course is
• 2:44
  all the prophecies have been given of Joseph.
• 2:46
  And even even in the Book of Mormon, I don't know if you
• 2:48
  remember this second Nephi 3 verses 9 through 10 talk about
• 2:52
  these prophecies of Joseph having a very fruitful time
• 2:55
  period and staying in Egypt for that time.
• 2:58
  But for whatever reason, we don't know all the details to
• 3:01
  avoid the political and military threat.
• 3:04
  A new pharaoh, probably a different entire dynasty now is
• 3:09
  trying to stop the procreation of the mail.
• 3:11
  And now this makes no sense to me if they want the strong
• 3:14
  people to help build these cities of Ramses and Python.
• 3:17
  But it does make sense if we have a completely new Yu dynasty
• 3:21
  and they're very worried about the sand dwellers, these
• 3:24
  shepherds joining back with the shepherd kings and being a
• 3:27
  threat because there's so many of them.
• 3:29
  So they move ahead and the pharaoh pulls the midwives in
• 3:33
  and says let's kill these babies.
• 3:35
  Now if we actually have 600,000 men, there's a lot more than two
• 3:39
  midwives. But we've got 2 named midwives
• 3:43
  in Exodus chapter 1 verses 12 through 15, Shipra and Pua and
• 3:48
  they represent, I assume many if we're having thousands of
• 3:52
  Israelite women, I assume we have many midwives as well.
• 3:55
  But the Pharaoh orders them that every Hebrew boy that is born
• 4:00
  you either throw into the dial and he encourages them to stop
• 4:04
  procreating. But that's not what happens.
• 4:06
  The Pharaoh continues on in verse 16 when ye do the office
• 4:10
  of a midwife to the Hebrew women and see them upon their stools.
• 4:14
  I just wanted to pause here for a minute because the
• 4:17
  archaeologists have found stone carvings of these things and
• 4:20
  paintings of women sitting on a stool giving birth.
• 4:23
  So whether they're squatting or kneeling or standing, this is
• 4:27
  part of women's heritage. And whether you're a single
• 4:30
  woman, you were born via a woman, whether or not you've
• 4:33
  ever had a chance to give birth, you were Born This Way.
• 4:36
  And this is part of what links us to this heritage, this
• 4:39
  wonderful heritage of women across all history of the world
• 4:44
  is that their life is at stake as they are willing to give
• 4:48
  life. And as we continue reading on,
• 4:50
  the Pharaoh gets very upset at them because the midwives are
• 4:53
  not killing all the boys. And so the midwives make up a
• 4:59
  lie and they say, well, the Hebrew women aren't like you
• 5:02
  Egyptians. In fact, they're very vigorous.
• 5:04
  And as soon as they give birth, they actually deliver before the
• 5:06
  midwives are even called. Well, I personally look at that
• 5:10
  exaggeration as an example of these women acting in faith,
• 5:15
  standing up for what is right. And God bless them.
• 5:19
  This is the BS SP translation verse 21.
• 5:22
  It says because the midwives feared God, He gave them
• 5:25
  families of their own. Now this is translated
• 5:28
  differently at different times. One of them says he gave them
• 5:31
  huge households of their own. But whatever the situation is,
• 5:34
  the Lord blessed them. They were acting appropriately
• 5:38
  even if they were able to save their lives by lying on that
• 5:42
  one. There's a time and place I feel
• 5:44
  that we need to honor these women for not killing those
• 5:47
  babies. I am so grateful for or anyone
• 5:51
  who stands up to save the unborn child and those who are just at
• 5:56
  birth. Whether you're a nurse or a
• 5:59
  doctor, thank you for your help, or a midwife.
• 6:02
  The next woman in our text is Jock of Ed, and she's not named
• 6:06
  in Exodus chapter 2, but she's named in Numbers 25.
• 6:10
  So I'm very grateful for the text there that gives us her
• 6:13
  name as Jock of Ed. She was a direct descendant of
• 6:16
  Levi, and she lived in Egypt during this very brutal
• 6:19
  enslavement of the Israelites, and she married a relative also
• 6:23
  from the tribe of Levi named Ameren.
• 6:26
  We get both of their names I mentioned in Numbers 26, verse
• 6:29
  59, but in the genealogy of Exodus, the Hebrew text claims
• 6:35
  that Jochebed was Amaran's aunt, but the Septuagint and the
• 6:39
  Aramaic text explained that was her husband's niece.
• 6:42
  We know that three of their children lived to adulthood,
• 6:45
  Miriam, Aaron and Moses. And in verse 15, Jacobins
• 6:49
  efforts to save her youngest child, Moses, who may not have
• 6:53
  been named, that initially required the help of his big
• 6:56
  sister. It also required God's help.
• 6:59
  It required great faith, very creative thinking and divine
• 7:04
  intervention. You know, Jochebed is able to
• 7:07
  hide this little baby for three months without letting anyone
• 7:10
  know. But as he grew, his life became
• 7:13
  more endangered, just like all the male babies living in Goshen
• 7:16
  at this time. I don't know if they had a
• 7:18
  Gestapo like system where people came in, but Jochebed after
• 7:24
  inspiration, I believe from God created some sort of a pyrus
• 7:28
  basket. And these are Egyptian words in
• 7:30
  our text that are that have been adopted into the Hebrew
• 7:33
  language. And it was coated with a basket
• 7:36
  of pitch, some sort of a waterproof agent that allowed
• 7:39
  her son to flow down the Nile. Now I think this is quite ironic
• 7:43
  that the Pharaoh said put your sons in the Nile and that's
• 7:46
  exactly what Jock of it is doing here.
• 7:48
  But she is putting him in a basket in an ark.
• 7:51
  She is saving him. She is becoming a type of our
• 7:54
  Christ as well as a savior of many.
• 7:57
  In the book of Hebrews it also mentions that her great faith
• 8:00
  and in fact remember that Chapter 11 of Hebrews where they
• 8:03
  mentioned all the great people. Then verse 23, whoever the
• 8:06
  author is says that Jacob defied the Pharaoh's ruling and kept
• 8:11
  Moses hidden for three months. Both Moses's remarkable mothers,
• 8:15
  though, I feel fit into God's plan.
• 8:18
  Her, his birth mother and his Egyptian mother.
• 8:22
  And the Egyptian mother, we're told in Exodus is the daughter
• 8:26
  of Pharaoh, so we don't have her name.
• 8:28
  The daughter of Pharaoh was out bathing in the Nile in Exodus
• 8:31
  chapter 2, verses 5 through 10, the stories retold in the New
• 8:35
  Testament twice. It's also in the book of Acts
• 8:37
  Chapter 7. But as she's there in the Nile,
• 8:40
  it says there's some handmaidens.
• 8:41
  Now the word maiden suggests that they're young.
• 8:44
  They're too young to be married, but they may have been walking
• 8:46
  up and down making sure there's no dangerous animals there.
• 8:50
  Or they may have just been her friends and peers and colleagues
• 8:54
  that were bathing with her. I were not told, but one of them
• 8:56
  discovers the basket. The Pharaoh's daughter
• 8:58
  recognizes that this baby was an Israelite.
• 9:02
  I assume that the crying baby had been circumcised because
• 9:06
  that was part of the law of given to Abraham.
• 9:09
  Abraham that on the 8th day the males were circumcised.
• 9:12
  Now the Egyptians also circumcised, but it was usually
• 9:14
  done at puberty and it was usually just a slice on the
• 9:17
  foreskin or perhaps a small little triangle.
• 9:19
  It wasn't a full circumcision like the Hebrews did.
• 9:22
  So she could have identified the child that way or perhaps other
• 9:27
  ways as well, skin color, blankets, whatever.
• 9:29
  But these maidens helped retrieve this baby and the
• 9:33
  spirit of the Lord entered into the heart of this daughter of
• 9:36
  Pharaoh and she wanted to adopt. And we're told that this
• 9:41
  wonderful big sister, what we learned later is named Miriam,
• 9:44
  comes out of the reeds where she's been hiding and offers to
• 9:48
  be able to help and find wet nurse for the baby.
• 9:51
  And it works out that Jockovut is able to nurse her own son.
• 9:56
  And it works out to be a positive thing for both of them.
• 9:59
  I this is just one of the best stories of all for a mother that
• 10:02
  is she's giving her baby away. She gets to have a few more
• 10:05
  years with him. Remember in the ancient world
• 10:08
  they nursed they're kids a long time, but we're not then told
• 10:11
  anything else about this wonderful Jochabed through the
• 10:13
  rest of the story. Even though her three children
• 10:16
  come to the forefront as Exodus continues and Miriam becomes one
• 10:19
  of our heroines. In fact, she's even identified
• 10:21
  as a prophetess 40 years later in verse 15 we learned that the
• 10:27
  pharaoh on the throne, it found out that Moses was trying to
• 10:31
  defend his Hebrew people and he's going to seek to slay
• 10:35
  Moses. Now we don't have the whole
• 10:37
  story, but I think Moses probably had premonitions,
• 10:41
  whether it was from his family members or others, you know, if
• 10:44
  he was nursed till at later age of five, he may even have had
• 10:48
  memories of his role as a delivery.
• 10:51
  I don't know. This is all supposition.
• 10:54
  All what I know is that he becomes a prophet of God, and
• 10:57
  we're told that he slew an Egyptian.
• 11:00
  So I don't know whether or not that was a forgiven sin or if
• 11:04
  that was part of the plan. But he leaves.
• 11:08
  He is worried about his life, and he flees to escape.
• 11:12
  I don't know how far he went. He says he went to the land of
• 11:15
  Midian. Now, most people think that
• 11:17
  Midian is on the East Coast of the Red Sea, on the farthest
• 11:21
  side of the Sinai Peninsula. So he he had to go a long way.
• 11:28
  But whatever distance he went to the people of Midian, when he
• 11:32
  gets to a well, there are seven daughters trying to water their
• 11:37
  sheep, and the local shepherds come and bully them.
• 11:40
  And Moses is able to stand up and help these seven daughters.
• 11:45
  And these seven daughters get back to their dad, the priest of
• 11:48
  Minion, a little bit early. And his dad said, how did you
• 11:51
  get here so quick? And they said, oh, we had this
• 11:52
  wonderful guy come and help us. He's an Egyptian, I think.
• 11:55
  And the dad said, well, where is he, You know?
• 11:59
  So it's even though Moses had been very chivalrous and he
• 12:03
  stepped in to help these daughters, they hadn't invited
• 12:05
  him to dinner. And their father choose him out,
• 12:07
  you know. So they go out, they find him,
• 12:10
  he's still by the well, He's invited to dinner.
• 12:13
  The priest realizes that he's a wonderful person.
• 12:16
  He invites him to stay, and it appears that he even wants to
• 12:20
  arrange a marriage between one of his daughters.
• 12:24
  Now, this priest of Midian receives 2 names between Exodus
• 12:28
  2 and Exodus 4. And it's the same person.
• 12:30
  But we have Koal and Jethro. So we have the priest of Midian,
• 12:35
  a direct descendant from Abraham and Couture.
• 12:39
  Remember Abraham's first wife, His name is changed to Sarah,
• 12:43
  and her handmaiden is Hagar. Hagar delivers Ishmael his first
• 12:46
  son. Isaac is his second son.
• 12:48
  And then through Katura, he has the six sons that we talked
• 12:51
  about earlier, and Midian is his fourth son.
• 12:54
  And so were hundreds of years, generations, even centuries past
• 12:59
  that time now. And one of these Midianite
• 13:02
  daughters is named Zipporah. She's a shepherdess.
• 13:06
  They're all shepherdesses. And this is the wife of Moses.
• 13:11
  I don't know if he had other arranged marriages in Egypt.
• 13:15
  It would make sense since he's an older man and marriages were
• 13:18
  usually arranged very young. But in verse 21 of Exodus
• 13:22
  chapter 2, Moses agrees to stay with them and agrees to the
• 13:27
  marriage with Zipporah. I want to add one extra detail
• 13:30
  here that we get in restored scripture.
• 13:32
  We are so fortunate to have more information on Jethro and
• 13:37
  Moses's line of priesthood authority in the Olden covenant
• 13:41
  of the priesthood right here in Section 84, the Doctrine
• 13:44
  Covenants, we learned that even though Jethro is a direct
• 13:47
  descendant of Abraham, his priesthood does not come through
• 13:51
  Abraham. He received it through another
• 13:54
  person. Remember, this is the higher
• 13:56
  priesthood. The Aaronic priesthood is
• 13:58
  established later. This is after the golden calf
• 14:01
  time period when it's only given to the descendants of Aaron.
• 14:04
  But now Jethro as a priest of Midian is a worshipper of
• 14:09
  Jehovah. Not only is he a descendant of
• 14:11
  Aaron, but he received the higher priesthood according to
• 14:13
  Doctrine Covenant section 84, verse 6 through 14.
• 14:16
  And it is through his lineage that we receive this great
• 14:21
  blessing of Moses receiving the higher priesthood.
• 14:25
  We also learned that later on that Moses had a wife that is
• 14:29
  referred to as an Ethiopian wife.
• 14:32
  I don't know if this is a different wife than Sephora or
• 14:34
  if he had multiple wives or if he had wives before he came and
• 14:40
  wives after Zippora when he was in the 40 years in the
• 14:43
  wilderness. I don't know.
• 14:45
  But we do know the name of one of Moses's wives is Zipporah.
• 14:50
  And we're very fortunate to have that fabulous information.
• 14:54
  She is able to bear him two sons, Jershon and Eliezer.
• 14:58
  And we're told that in Exodus chapter 18, verse four in the
• 15:02
  NIV, that he says, my father's God was my helper and he saved
• 15:07
  me from the sword of Pharaoh. These names often have meanings.
• 15:10
  I don't know if those meetings are added later on or before.
• 15:14
  I don't know also if Zippora was part of the conversation when
• 15:18
  Moses was caught up in the mountain to an exceedingly high
• 15:21
  mountain when he saw God face to face.
• 15:24
  I don't know if he told her about the burning Bush, which is
• 15:26
  a different vision. I don't know if he told her
• 15:29
  about the miraculous signs that are going to come out of his rod
• 15:32
  like a snake. But we are told that Moses does
• 15:36
  take his wife Zippora and his two sons Jershan and Eliezer
• 15:40
  with him back to Egypt after the Lord called him to be a prophet
• 15:44
  and deliver his people. And this is exciting
• 15:47
  information. And Zipporah becomes a advocate
• 15:50
  of the covenant in what we keep reading in Exodus chapter 4.
• 15:54
  And on this journey back to Egypt, the Lord becomes
• 15:59
  extremely angry at Moses because one of his sons is not
• 16:03
  circumcised. This is a very puzzling neglect
• 16:06
  because both on the Midianite side and on the Hebrew side,
• 16:10
  there would have been circumcision.
• 16:12
  Moses had been circumcised. Midian had been circumcised.
• 16:15
  Why didn't they circumcise a child?
• 16:17
  Well, perhaps the child was sick.
• 16:19
  I do not know. I have no idea, but they are all
• 16:24
  from Abraham and Zipporah stands up and saves the day.
• 16:29
  Now if you look at the Hebrew text, it says she uses a Flint
• 16:33
  knife. They stopped by at a lodging
• 16:35
  location and on the way and the Lord met Moses and was about to
• 16:40
  kill him. Now Flint knives are very
• 16:42
  interesting. I took a couple of classes in
• 16:43
  archaeology at Stanford recently and we were told that Flint
• 16:48
  knives rarely lose any of their sharpness.
• 16:52
  You can uncover a Flint knife and still cut yourself by
• 16:55
  picking it up. You know, these are extremely
• 16:58
  sharp tools and they can get so thin, they can get thinner than
• 17:02
  anything we could ever have imagined at that sharp blade
• 17:05
  that now under microscopes we can find out.
• 17:07
  And that is what Zippora used. And she was the one who went and
• 17:12
  circumcised one of her sons. We don't know which one it was,
• 17:16
  but it was an extremely difficult thing for her to do.
• 17:20
  And she gets upset and and and it's describes that the foreskin
• 17:26
  flew down and touched Moses on the foot.
• 17:29
  We see Zippora rising to an occasion that she did not want
• 17:33
  to do that was difficult, but she fulfilled God's
• 17:37
  commandments. Not only did she protect her
• 17:39
  husband, who God said he was going about to kill, but she
• 17:42
  also helped fulfill the covenant.
• 17:45
  I cannot emphasize how important this is and her role in this
• 17:49
  particular story. It further emphasizes the
• 17:51
  importance that women take part in God's promises.
• 17:54
  They share that responsibility. They are working as part of
• 17:58
  carrying out His plan. Also, historically, they could
• 18:01
  not have traveled for several days as their son heals.
• 18:04
  So I don't know if this is when Zipporah and the son stayed and
• 18:09
  went back or if they went clear into Egypt and then were sent
• 18:12
  back. We're not told.
• 18:13
  But it would make sense to me that if Moses was on a timeline
• 18:17
  to get to Egypt and to meet his brother Aaron, as the text says,
• 18:21
  this may have been the time after the healing when he sent
• 18:24
  back his wife and son to their her father's home.
• 18:29
  We aren't told that, but we are told something very important in
• 18:33
  the Joseph Smith translation here and I'd like to read.
• 18:35
  This is in our appendix. Exodus chapter 4.
• 18:38
  The Lord spared Moses and let him go because Zipporah his wife
• 18:43
  circumcised the child. And she said thou art of bloody
• 18:46
  husband. And Moses was ashamed.
• 18:48
  This is added in the Joseph the translation Moses was ashamed
• 18:52
  and hid his faith in the Lord and said I have sinned before
• 18:56
  the Lord. So these texts are challenging,
• 18:59
  are difficult. We don't know the whole story.
• 19:01
  I'm looking forward to heaven where we can learn the whole
• 19:03
  story. The next text we have of
• 19:05
  Zipporah is is probably months later.
• 19:09
  It's three months after their escape.
• 19:11
  This is Exodus 18 when Zipporah is mentioned again, and we'll
• 19:15
  talk more about that when we get to that text.
• 19:17
  But I would just like to testify, in addition to
• 19:20
  emphasizing the importance of the God's prophet, we need to
• 19:23
  emphasize the importance of these prophetesses, the
• 19:26
  importance of every person. I'm sure his son also had to
• 19:32
  agree to this excruciatingly difficult surgery that could
• 19:35
  produce a fatal outcome. I hope that every one of us,
• 19:39
  whether it's a life and death situation or whether it's just
• 19:42
  waking up and living the gospel, can defend our prophet and can
• 19:46
  defend our God and can be witnesses of him.
• 19:48
  I testify of these things in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.