In the book of Exodus, chapter 1, verses 15 through 22, Pharaoh tells the Hebrew midwives to kill all children. Their response is to ignore Pharaoh’s order, claiming the Hebrews are like animals: They give birth so quickly, that by the time the midwives get there, the baby has been popped out – making it impossible to stage the mass infanticide as an accident. Pharaoh, not one to be deterred (which is why there are ten plagues and not two) announces that all Hebrew first-born sons should be thrown in the river.
At first, this might seem like a strange story. In fact however, this tale conforms to the sociological reality of slavery, as can be seen by examining a relatively recent and well-documented case of slavery: That of New World enslavement of Africans and people of African descent.
New World Slavery and Women's Bodies
As historian Barbara Bush (no, not the former first lady) has documented in her book, "Slave Women In Caribbean Society: 1650-1838", a woman’s reproductive capacities were major territory for a power-struggle between masters and slaves. Masters were constantly trying to control slave-reproduction: At times when it was cheaper to import new slaves than to raise newborn slaves from birth, slave reproduction was discouraged, whereas at times when it was more profitable to raise newborns than to import new slaves, slave reproduction was actively encouraged, with severe punishments for slaves caught having abortions. Of course, given the slaves’ living conditions, both abortion and infanticide were easy to stage as accidents and realities of slave living, and many women chose to do so, rather than raise children born into slavery. In doing so, these women were enacting a form of resistance against the slave system.
The actual process of birthing itself was another realm for resistance against one’s masters; many slaves chose to practice African traditions related to the birthing process, which was possible largely because the midwives who helped the slaves were themselves slaves, who often combined their midwife activity with other health-related activities. Often, these activities involved religion as well: In African traditions at that time, the boundary between medicine and religion was not always clear; often, African deities were invoked to cure both physical and spiritual ills, through ceremonies and rituals that combined taking medicinal herbs and uttering prayers or incantations. James Sweet and Karol Weaver do an excellent job of documenting this phenomenon.
Exodus and Sociological Reality
This brings us back to the Exodus tale: The story is strange, yet this strangeness is in fact a reflection of the sociological reality of slave life and of slave society, a sociological reality that the author of the story was clearly extremely familiar with. It is this knowledge of the human condition when placed under the bonds of slavery, that causes the Exodus to be a tale that resonates until today, and that continues to have meaning, as well as current day ethical implications, whether or not it historically occurred. The congruence between the social realities expressed in Exodus and those exhibited in the institution of New World Slavery also helps explain why the story provided such a powerful message for New World slaves, especially in the US, where an entire folklore developed around tales of the Exodus as metaphors of hope for future freedom. This tradition expressed itself in ways as various as the "Go Down, Moses" song, Harriet Tubman's being nick-named "Old Moses", because like Moses, she was leading slaves to freedom (in fact, some songs about Moses were veiled references to the underground railroad), and the more modern example of Zorah Neale Hurston's book, "Moses, Man of the Mountain", which explicitly mapped the African-American slavery experience on to the Exodus tale.
Sources
Bush, Barbara. “Slave Women In Caribbean Society, 1650-1838”. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1990.
Hurston, Zora Neale. "Moses, Man of the Mountain". Harper Perrenial Press: New York, 1991.
Sweet, James. “Recreating Africa”. University of North Carolina Press: Chapel Hill, 2003.
Weaver, Karol K. “Medical Revolutionaries”. University of Illinois Press: Chicago, 2006.
Shayna Abramson - Shayna Abramson is an alumnus of Johns Hopkins University, where she was an active member of the Johns Hopkins Interfaith Center. She ...
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