Torah Portion No. 13
Torah: Exodus 1:1-6:1
January 12, 2025
Like last week, I’m trying to go through my four-step process in this portion. It’s proving to be a bit more difficult because of the length of the portion, but we’ll carry on.
During my initial read through Exodus 1-6:1 I wrote down a few questions.
What is God’s name? (3:14-15)
Was the “holy ground” that Moses stood on the future site of the temple? (3:5, 12)
Who did the Lord confront and intend to kill? And why? (4:24)
What did killing the baby boys do for Pharaoh? What was the point? (1:15)
January 13, 2025
Last week I was able to complete steps 1 and 2 all in one day. Step 1 is read through the portion following along with the audio in my CSB translation. Step 2 is to read through again and annotate in my ESV journaling Bible. I only completed step 1 yesterday. For the sake of time and to honor my desire to go deeper and answer the questions, I think this week I will tackle it chapter by chapter. Today I read and annotated Exodus 1 and now I’m going to spend a bit of time answering any questions I have.
What did killing the baby boys do for Pharaoh? What was the point? (1:15)
Unlike other times in Scripture, Pharaoh isn’t looking to kill a certain baby boy when he orders all the baby boys to be killed. Realizing this makes me wonder why this was Pharaoh’s solution to over-population of the Hebrews.
From the text, we know that Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, was fearful of the Hebrews because they were growing in size, and in power. He says in Exodus 1: 9-10
“Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land” (ESV).
Plan A was to oppress the people of Israel through slave labor. This didn’t work and they continued to multiply. Plan B was asking the Hebrew midwives to kill all the baby boys but let the girls live. Other than eventually reducing the population of the people of Israel, I don’t see any indicators in this text as to why this was his plan.
Because in the story of the Messiah, Herod ruled that all baby boys under the age of 2 be killed, I wonder if there is some sort of prohetic link in the story to that one.
