As Genesis ends, Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father’s household, seeing his descendants to the third generation. As he lay dying he requested the return of his bones to the land of Abraham. Then he died at 110 years. Joseph had come a long way from the provocative brat prancing around in his technicolor dreamcoat. Genesis concludes by telling us that Joseph was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.

With Joseph’s death the stage is now set for the next installment in Israelite history as recorded in the book of Exodus. Exodus 1:1-7 records the 12 sons of Jacob who came down to Egypt, the death of Joseph and that whole generation, and that the Israelites continued to be fruitful and prolific: they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong that the land was filled with them.

Exodus 1:1-7 is the explanatory preamble to what we are now told in verse 8, which begins with the ominous words: Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. Twelve momentous words that introduce us to the story of the enslavement of the Hebrews in Egypt.

The new Pharaoh has come to fear and envy the presence of a people living separately within his nation.  We might read this as the first historical instance of antisemitism proper – a hatred of Jews born of the mix of fear and envy – exacerbated by a refusal to abandon their separate identity. The Pharaoh who had forgotten who and what Joseph had done had come to fear the separate identity of the Hebrews – a nation within a nation separated by customs and religion – a dynamic to be repeated again and again throughout the history of the Jewish people.

Pharaoh indulges in hyperbole when he says the Hebrew people are more numerous and powerful than we are – so come let us deal shrewdly with them. His pretext casts them as a fifth column who, in the event of war would join the enemy. I say hyperbole, because were it true that the Hebrews were more numerous and powerful than the Egyptians, why didn’t they resist enslavement?

We are not privy to Pharaoh’s mindset. We only know what the Deuteronomist compilers of the history say – their aim being to give the pretext to explain Hebrew enslavement.

As we read or listen to the Exodus narrative, we hear the historical echoes in the Nazi use of a similar hyperbole as justification for the extermination of European Jewry.  We hear the echoes in this ancient story as the pretext for the internment of the Pacific Coast Japanese communities in 1941 – let us deal shrewdly with them for fear they will give aid to our enemy. We witness it in the CCP’s Uighur interment in vast forced labor camps. We note it in Russia’s forced transportation of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars; in all the attempts to destroy the future through the theft of the children.

The early phase of forced labor seems not to have dented the prolific growth in Hebrew numbers. Growing more desperate, Egyptian policy becomes more ruthless culminating in a policy of infanticide. The Hebrew midwives are instructed to kill the male babies at birth. However, we are told that the midwives feared God and refused to do so. When interrogated, they tell Pharaoh that the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women because they are more vigorous- giving birth before they can arrive. The midwives use the word khayot – meaning brutish- animal like. The midwives complain to Pharaoh – what can we do- these Hebrew women breed like rabbits – thus turning Pharaoh’s dehumanizing trope against him.

The narrative now switches to the birth of a Hebrew male infant whose mother placed him in a waterproofed basket and concealed him among the bulrushes at the river’s edge charging her daughter to watch from a distance to see what would happen.

Pharaoh’s daughter came down to the river to bathe when she and her maids heard the infant’s cry. Of course, she recognizes the infant as a Hebrew. The infant’s older sister offers to find a Hebrew nurse to care for the child and the Princess agrees. Thus, the infant is restored to his mother, who raises him until the time when he is adopted by the Princess as her own son. The Princess names him Moses because I drew him out of the water.

Words matter and it should not be lost on us to learn that the word used to describe Moses’ basket is the same word used for Noah’s ark. We also note that the Deuteronomists are at pains to identify Moses is in some sense like Noah and belonging to the line of Levi – Moses is a member of the tribe which after the Exodus become the Levitical priesthood.

A key detail in the Exodus story concerns the role of women. The actions of the midwives, Moses’ mother, and sister; of Pharaoh’s daughter and her maidservants, express the resistance of women against patriarchal violence. The birth of Moses is a story about female fidelity to God, maternal and sisterly love, and women’s instinctual compassion for the vulnerable.

The initiatives sponsored and led by women among the migrants on the Mexico-US border continue this long tradition of resistance to patriarchal violence because of a concern for the vulnerable. Women are often more likely to be motivated by an appreciation of human needs – seeing in the easily dehumanized migrant faces the plight of women, children, and families – restoring migrants to the fullness of their human dignity.

I only have space and time to note here a link identifying the role of women in six care agencies working with migrants along the Southern Border. Like the women in the first two chapters of Exodus, today women are at the forefront of resisting the dehumanizing processes of the immigrant experience – which opens us to a wider observation.

Today the myth that promotes a fear of immigrants as having some secret power or potential to steal our jobs –jobs we no longer deign to perform; who and pose a dangerous threat to law and order and national stability. This would be ironic if it was not also a tragedy. In a nation chronically short of unskilled labor to fill the jobs vacancies we rely on an yet reject as somehow beneath us – it’s ironic and tragic that in a nation of immigrants – where a sizable portion of the population is separated from the immigrant experience only by one, two or three generations at most – should now so vehemently advocate pulling up the migration ladder behind them.

The economic health of the US now depends on immigration. Like the ancient Hebrews, migrant communities have higher birth rates and instead of seeing this as some kind of race replacement conspiracy we need to remember that like our parents and grandparents’ today’s migrants long to become American and to imbibe American values as they integrate. Yet cultural interaction and integration is a two-way street and immigrants bring elements that are currently revitalizing the host culture from the arts we celebrate to the food we eat.

If concern for the plight and suffering of fellow human beings is not enough to move our hearts – and clearly it’s not -let’s not forget that necessary immigration will ensure a healthy labor and tax pool large enough to sustain the Social Security and Medicare systems that an aging boomer population is increasingly reliant upon.

I want to highlight two further elements in the Exodus narrative. FIrstly, the experience of enslavement and liberation from slavery – fundamentally shaped the development of the post-Exodus Israelite community. In remembering their own captivity and liberation, Israelite law enshrined a sacred duty to welcome and respect the stranger in their midst. This sacred duty – like many sacred duties – more often observed in the breach yet, nevertheless, became a central moral principle for the post-Exodus Israelite society.

Secondly, the Exodus as recorded in the book of the same name marks a crucial transition in the evolution of God’s identity. The Creator now becomes the Liberator. The Exodus event becomes for all enslaved people a sign of the promise that God not only hears their cries and notes their suffering but works for their freedom.

This weekend as we celebrate the memory of the historic 1963 March for Freedom, we remember the Exodus experience graphically demonstrated in our own national history as the spiritual and social catalyst in the African American journey from the days of enslavement into the continued Civil Rights struggles of our own time.

The Liberator God is also a personal god. A god who requires human collaborative agency – be they midwives, mothers, sisters, or princesses. In the birth and life of Moses, God now find a principal collaborator.

Not since the days of Abraham has God encountered a human being in the intimacy of a personal relationship. The promise to Abraham is now renewed in a promise to Moses. The God of Abraham now becomes for all intents and purposes the God of Moses. More about Moses next week.