Underground Exiles

While Proverbs 24 gives us the general command to intervene on behalf of those who are being killed, Exodus 1 provides us with a very specific example of this command in practice.  A new king has come to power in Egypt, and fearful that Israel’s phenomenal growth will threaten Egypt’s security, he orders every newborn Hebrew boy to be put to death.  To ensure that his command is carried out, he tasks the Hebrew midwives with following through on the decree.  We learn in Exodus 1.17-21 that his plan did not succeed:

But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive.  So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, and saved the male children alive?”  And the midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are lively and give birth before the midwives come to them.”  Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very mighty.  And so it was, because the midwives feared God, that he provided households for them.”

The implication of this passage is that those who fear God will do what they can to keep mothers from killing their babies.

Some might read the command in Proverbs 24 and argue that it doesn’t apply to babies in the womb.  Don’t count on it.  Exodus 1 explicitly demonstrates that those who fear God rescue babies from death, and the only differences between babies before and after birth are differences that don’t matter.  Babies in the womb are smaller, more dependent, and less developed than newborns, but these are quantative differences, not qualatative.  Newborns are smaller, more dependent, and less developed than five-year-olds, but that doesn’t make them less human or any less worthy of protection.  If we know that God is pleased with those who spare the lives of babies after they’re born, we can infer that God is also pleased with those who spare the lives of babies before they’re born.