The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels by Thomas Cahill
Authors: Thomas Cahill
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very names seem to call them up from the distant past; and we can almost see them standing before Pharaoh, the young, beautifulone with the young, beautiful name, the old, plain one with the old, plain name, listening to him rave:
“When you help the Hebrew women give birth, look at the two stones:
if it is a boy, kill him;
but if a girl, let her live.”
It has been objected that this scene could not possibly be historical: if you want to kill off a people, you must assassinate their women, their baby factories, not their men. What Pharaoh urges is irrational on two levels: he is trying to destroy his own labor force—and he is going about it inefficiently. Nor could two midwives do the whole job if Israel had become so numerous.
But what about those “two stones”? They could (as some commentators have thought) be something on the order of medieval birthing stools, but why more than one? The Bible often employs euphemism in describing sexual (especially male) anatomy. To me, the meaning leaps out: the minute the midwife sees that the newborn has testicles, she is to smother him.
And why must we think of Pharaoh as rational? Have we not already been given the evidence that he is irrational—that he thinks the Children of Israel are “many-more and mightier” than the Egyptians? Is it perhaps only in Pharaoh’s eyes that the Children of Israel “swarm,” as if they were breeding insects? Is this a weak, fantasy-beset god-king who fears the potency of the Israelites, much as enervated plantaownersof the American South feared the potency of their black slaves, especially those slaves who had “two stones”? Would the Nazi attempt to destroy the Children of Israel be any more rational than this (less efficient) one? I do not doubt that what we have here is the portrayal—in a few deft strokes—of an insecure Egyptian madman, an all-powerful god-king who fears that someone else could be more powerful than he.
“But,” continues the narrator in his usual economic fashion,
the midwives held God in awe,
and they did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them,
they let the children live.
Such beautiful, simple words. Because they bowed down before real power, they were not tempted to bow down before empty show, and so they did the right thing. It is less than clear that these “midwives of the Hebrews” were themselves Children of the Promise; they may have been pagans who bore the true God in their hearts, they may have been, like Hagar, Egyptians who could See. But in their exquisite moral discernment (“they let the children live”) they are people of stature—real individuals who are worthy of names, unlike the little god-king. Nor should we forget that they are women, who in their sharp insight into the deep truth of things have taken a giant evolutionary step beyond Sara thepawn, beyond Avraham himself, who was willing to sacrifice his wife to save his own neck.
The next turn of the screw is even more satisfying. When Pharaoh learns that the midwives have disobeyed him, he summons them once more with a petulant “Why have you done this thing?”
The midwives said to Pharaoh:
“Indeed, not like the Egyptian (women) are the Hebrew (women),
indeed they are lively:
before the midwife comes to them, they have given birth!”
Once again, we are back on that southern plantation, where well-brought-up “ladies” need potions and medical assistance just to keep from fainting on a hot day, but slave women are so full of life that they drop their young with as little ado as barnyard animals—and the oppressed subvert the overlord with seeming guilelessness.
The exasperated god-king takes a further step into irrationality and orders that henceforth all newborn Hebrew males be thrown into the Nile. Thus it is that we are introduced to a Hebrew mother, a woman who
became pregnant and
“When you help the Hebrew women give birth, look at the two stones:
if it is a boy, kill him;
but if a girl, let her live.”
It has been objected that this scene could not possibly be historical: if you want to kill off a people, you must assassinate their women, their baby factories, not their men. What Pharaoh urges is irrational on two levels: he is trying to destroy his own labor force—and he is going about it inefficiently. Nor could two midwives do the whole job if Israel had become so numerous.
But what about those “two stones”? They could (as some commentators have thought) be something on the order of medieval birthing stools, but why more than one? The Bible often employs euphemism in describing sexual (especially male) anatomy. To me, the meaning leaps out: the minute the midwife sees that the newborn has testicles, she is to smother him.
And why must we think of Pharaoh as rational? Have we not already been given the evidence that he is irrational—that he thinks the Children of Israel are “many-more and mightier” than the Egyptians? Is it perhaps only in Pharaoh’s eyes that the Children of Israel “swarm,” as if they were breeding insects? Is this a weak, fantasy-beset god-king who fears the potency of the Israelites, much as enervated plantaownersof the American South feared the potency of their black slaves, especially those slaves who had “two stones”? Would the Nazi attempt to destroy the Children of Israel be any more rational than this (less efficient) one? I do not doubt that what we have here is the portrayal—in a few deft strokes—of an insecure Egyptian madman, an all-powerful god-king who fears that someone else could be more powerful than he.
“But,” continues the narrator in his usual economic fashion,
the midwives held God in awe,
and they did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them,
they let the children live.
Such beautiful, simple words. Because they bowed down before real power, they were not tempted to bow down before empty show, and so they did the right thing. It is less than clear that these “midwives of the Hebrews” were themselves Children of the Promise; they may have been pagans who bore the true God in their hearts, they may have been, like Hagar, Egyptians who could See. But in their exquisite moral discernment (“they let the children live”) they are people of stature—real individuals who are worthy of names, unlike the little god-king. Nor should we forget that they are women, who in their sharp insight into the deep truth of things have taken a giant evolutionary step beyond Sara thepawn, beyond Avraham himself, who was willing to sacrifice his wife to save his own neck.
The next turn of the screw is even more satisfying. When Pharaoh learns that the midwives have disobeyed him, he summons them once more with a petulant “Why have you done this thing?”
The midwives said to Pharaoh:
“Indeed, not like the Egyptian (women) are the Hebrew (women),
indeed they are lively:
before the midwife comes to them, they have given birth!”
Once again, we are back on that southern plantation, where well-brought-up “ladies” need potions and medical assistance just to keep from fainting on a hot day, but slave women are so full of life that they drop their young with as little ado as barnyard animals—and the oppressed subvert the overlord with seeming guilelessness.
The exasperated god-king takes a further step into irrationality and orders that henceforth all newborn Hebrew males be thrown into the Nile. Thus it is that we are introduced to a Hebrew mother, a woman who
became pregnant and
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