Journal: Priscilla Papers
Volume: PP 39:2 (Spring 2025)
Article: Women’s Work: Vocation In Exodus 2:1–10
Author: Jennifer M. Gash

PP 39:2 (Spring 2025) p. 12

Women’s Work: Vocation In Exodus 2:1–10

Jennifer M. Gash

Jennifer M. Gash is an MDiv student at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, and serves as the Connections Director at Waves Church of Christ in Malibu, California. She will soon begin her PhD in Old Testament at Baylor University where she plans to study women in Old Testament narrative and law as well as comparative Semitics.

Exodus 2:1–10, often referred to as Moses’s birth narrative, initially caught my attention because of the number of women in the story. I wondered about the practice of wet nursing in the ancient Near East and what this arrangement may have entailed for the baby’s nameless mother. I wondered about the baby’s sister, who also remains unnamed in this passage. Did she realize that speaking to Pharaoh’s daughter was subversive due to their class and ethnic differences? Was this action worthwhile enough to risk the consequences? I wondered about Pharaoh’s daughter, too. How did she know the baby was a Hebrew? What compelled her to help him? I wondered about her servants, those who silently drew the baby out of the water but whose mistress takes credit for this action. But most of all, I wondered what it means that God chose to partner with these women in accomplishing God’s mission—women whose vocations entailed nurturing and serving, yet were vital to the story of Israel.

The Narrative Context Of Exodus 2:1–10

The first eighteen chapters of Exodus detail the “enslavement and subsequent escape” of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery.1 Exod 2:1–10 immediately follows the story of the midwives who save the Hebrew babies against Pharaoh’s orders. The midwives introduce the theme of women acting disobediently. They allow the Hebrew babies to live, attributing their helplessness to follow the royal command to the vigorousness of the Hebrew women in delivery. Their role to bring life into the world is quintessentially female; yet, in doing what midwives are meant to do, they are disobeying Pharaoh. Thus, Exod 1 previews what the narrative of Exod 1–2 will be: “resistance literature.”2 As will become clear, this is not resistance literature for its own sake but for the sake of fulfilling God’s purposes for the people of Israel through Moses. Women have a key role in this.

Moses’s Mother (VV. 1–3, 8–...

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