Exodus 1:22

And Pharaoh charged all his people,.... Finding he could not carry his point with the midwives, he gave a general order to all his people everywhere: saying, every son that is born ye shall cast into

And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.

Exodus 1:22 And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.Ver. 22. And Pharaoh charged.] Imperio non tam duro quam diro. This was a most bloody edict: therefore, when God came to make inquisition for blood, he gave them blood again to drink, for they were worthy. The like he did to Nero - qui orientem fidem primus Romae cruentavit - to Julian, Valens, Valerian, Attilas, Girzerichus, Charles IX of France, and many other bloody persecutors. Tertullian.

(22) Every son that is born.—The LXX. add “to the Hebrews,” but without any necessity, since the context shows that only Hebrew children are meant. Ye shall cast into the river.—Infanticide, so shocking to Christians, has prevailed widely at different times and places, and been regarded as a trivial matter. In Sparta, the State decided which children should live and which should die. At Athens a law of Solon left the decision to the parent. At Rome, the rule was that infants were made away with, unless the father interposed, and declared it to be his wish that a particular child should be brought up. The Syrians offered unwelcome children in sacrifice to Moloch; the Carthaginians to Melkarth. In China infanticide is said to be a common practice at the present day. Heathen nations do not generally regard human life as sacred. On the contrary, they hold that considerations of expediency justify the sweeping away of any life that inconveniences the State. Hence infanticide is introduced by Plato into his model republic (Rep. v. 9). Almost all ancient nations viewed the massacre of prisoners taken in war as allowable. The Spartan crypteia was a system of licensed murder. The condemnation to death of all male Hebrew children by Pharaoh is thus in no respect improbable. On the other hand, the mode of the death presents difficulties. For, first, the Nile was viewed as a god; and to fill it with corpses would, one might have supposed, have been regarded as a pollution. Secondly, the Nile water was the only water drunk; and sanitary considerations might thus have been expected to have prevented the edict. Perhaps, however, the children were viewed as offerings to the Nile, or to Savak, the crocodile headed god, of whom each crocodile was an emblem. At any rate, as the Nile swarmed with crocodiles throughout its whole course, the bodies were tolerably sure to be devoured before they became putrescent.

Verse 22. Ye shall cast into the river] As the Nile, which is here intended, was a sacred river among the Egyptians, it is not unlikely that Pharaoh intended the young Hebrews as an offering to his god, having two objects in view: 1. To increase the fertility of the country by thus procuring, as he might suppose, a proper and sufficient annual inundation; and 2. To prevent an increase of population among the Israelites, and in process of time procure their entire extermination. It is conjectured, with a great show of probability, that the edict mentioned in this verse was not made till after the birth of Aaron, and that it was revoked soon after the birth of Moses; as, if it had subsisted in its rigour during the eighty-six years which elapsed between this and the deliverance of the Israelites, it is not at all likely that their males would have amounted to six hundred thousand, and those all effective men. IN the general preface to this work reference has been made to ORIGEN'S method of interpreting the Scriptures, and some specimens promised. On the plain account of a simple matter of fact, related in the preceding chapter, this very eminent man, in his 2d Homily on Exodus, imposes an interpretation of which the following is the substance. "Pharaoh, king of Egypt, represents the devil; the male and female children of the Hebrews represent the animal and rational faculties of the soul. Pharaoh, the devil, wishes to destroy all the males, i.e., the seeds of rationality and spiritual science through which the soul tends to and seeks heavenly things; but he wishes to preserve the females alive, i.e., all those animal propensities of man, through which he becomes carnal and devilish. Hence," says he, "when you see a man living in luxury, banquetings, pleasures, and sensual gratifications, know that there the king of Egypt has slain all the males, and preserved all the females alive. The midwives represent the Old and New Testaments: the one is called Sephora, which signifies a sparrow, and means that sort of instruction by which the soul is led to soar aloft, and contemplate heavenly things; the other is called Phua, which signifies ruddy or bashful, and points out the Gospel, which is ruddy with the blood of Christ, spreading the doctrine of his passion over the earth. By these, as midwives, the souls that are born into the Church, are healed, for the reading of the Scriptures corrects and heals what is amiss in the mind. Pharaoh, the devil, wishes to corrupt those midwives, that all the males - the spiritual propensities, may be destroyed; and this he endeavours to do by bringing in heresies and corrupt opinions. But the foundation of God standeth sure. The midwives feared God, therefore he builded them houses.

22. The third measure. As the midwives refused to carry out the Pharaoh’s wishes, a command to the same effect is issued to the whole people: the Egyptians themselves are to throw every male infant of the Hebrews into the Nile. The command, if fully carried out, would have resulted obviously in the extermination of the Hebrews; it is thus inconsistent with the intention expressed by the Pharaoh in v. 10 to retain them as his subjects. Perhaps the thwarted and angry king did not heed the inconsistency: perhaps inconsistent traditions have been combined by the compiler. However that may be, the measure seems calculated for a people numbering far fewer than 2,000,000 souls (among whom the birth-rate would be something like 80,000 a year1[97], i.e. more than 100 males a day), and also all living within near distance of the Nile. It is intimately connected with the narrative following (ch. 2), and indeed supplies the conditions necessary for it. [97] The birth-rate in Cairo in 1900 was 41 per 1000 of the population.that is born] Sam. LXX. add, to the Hebrews: in any case, a correct explanation, and perhaps part of the original text. the river (Nile)] Heb. yĕ ?’ôr, from the Egyptian yoor, ‘river,’ often used of the Nile, yĕ ?’ôr is the regular name of the ‘Nile’ in Hebrew.

The extreme cruelty of the measure does not involve improbability. Hatred of strangers was always a characteristic of the Egyptians (see Genesis 43:32), and was likely to be stronger than ever after the expulsion of an alien race.

22. Every son… ye shall cast into the river — The Nile. This third and most sweeping edict is now promulgated, by which all Pharaoh’s subjects are commanded to become executioners of the Hebrew children.