“1:19 And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew {g} women [are] not as the Egyptian women; for they [are] lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them.
(g) Their disobedience in this was lawful, but their deception is evil.”
I have been trying to learn more about the Geneva Bible, the original translation into English by William Tyndale, to find out how its attitude to the state differed from that of the more familiar King James Version. The King James Version was based on the Geneva Bible, but it was authored by the very powers that had persecuted Tyndale.
Anyway, in researching the Geneva Bible, I came across the passage I just quoted.
The passage describes how during the Egyptian captivity of the Jews, Pharaoh was worried that the Hebrews were multiplying faster than the Egyptians and would overtake them in power.
He orders all Hebrew male children be killed.
Two Hebrew mid-wives defy his order and deliver the children, making up a story that the Jewish women were livelier than the Egyptian women ( more animal-like) and thus gave birth even before the arrival of the mid-wives.
In this way, the Hebrew children were saved.
The Bible records that God blessed the women for this act of disobedience.
But, what the Geneva Bible adds, and the King James version doesn’t, is that while God approved of the midwives’ disobedience, he also regarded the “deception” they used as sinful.
This version of the story clarifies the Bible’s teaching on something that has been worrying me.
To what degree can we be deceptive when flouting what we consider unjust state actions?
For me, this translates into the question of how can one justly deconstruct imperial propaganda without being guilty of the kind of subversion/revolution that the Bible condemns?
Apparently, the Biblical answer is that if one challenges the state, for the challenge to be moral, it has to be done in the open.
Incidentally, this is exactly what Gandhi also taught.
In other words, you cannot hide your purpose in deconstructing or opposing what you consider unlawful authority. You can’t fly under false colors. No red herrings.
In that sense, Wikileaks, Greenwald, and many others, who, I believe, do genuinely oppose the unlawful actions of the state, are proceeding immorally – from the point of view of this text – by trying to use subterfuge to avoid the wrath of the state.
Self-preservation seems like a rational and logical (and moral) thing to do for “natural man.” After all, human nature demands self-preservation.
Unfortunately, it’s not what Christianity seems to demand.
Christianity seems to require a degree of fool-hardiness.
I don’t know if it expects you to stand in front of tanks, but, at least here, the Bible seems to say that there is a degree of subterfuge in disobeying authority that is unacceptable.
You’d think that healthy subterfuge would make the chances of defeating unjust laws much better.
But the Bible doesn’t say that.
It suggests instead a degree of openness, of vulnerability, in confronting something wrong. It’s as though one’s expected to convert one’s opponent, not just defeat him. …
And to convert him, you have to show him your neck…
You have to trust him in some way.
At least, that’s how it reads to me. Even though it’s not particularly a message I want to hear….