P is for Puah
This is the sermon I preached on Sunday, July 28 at St. Timothy Lutheran Church . The text is Exodus 1:15-22. P is for Puah. She is one of the two Hebrew midwives mentioned in today’s story in Exodus. “Exodus calls only a handful of women by name: Shiphrah (the other midwife) Yocheved, Zipporah, and Elisheva. But there are other women: Israelite, Egyptian, Amorite, Hittite, Hivite, Perizzite, Jebusite and Canaanite women without whom the story of Exodus…the story of God…our story cannot be told” (Wilda Gafney, Womanist Midrash). During that time and throughout much of the time of scripture's writing, women were considered to be nothing. Yet, the names given to the two midwives are significant: Shiphrah means “beauty” and Puah can mean “to gurgle or murmur”- like a baby, (Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible). It was clear that these women were well-loved, despite their gender. Here we have two gutsy gals. Don’t you love the way they go head-to-head with Pharaoh? Although commanded t