The Unseen Miles

Silence

Is there any sound more deafening than silence?

Ask the mother waiting for her newborn baby to cry.

Ask the wife whose husband has gone missing in action.

Ask anyone who has sat beside a hospital bed after the machines have gone quiet.

Silence is the thunder of an empty chair at the table.

The echo of the rescue that never came.

The slam of the closed prison door.

The ache of the unanswered prayer.

Silence is what remains when every voice you expected to hear has stopped speaking.

As long as we are speaking and listening, life feels normal. But in those moments of unexplained silence the heart drops and we know something is dreadfully wrong.

When we open the book of Exodus, there is plenty of noise.

We hear the sounds of the sons of Israel filling the land.

We hear the announcement of a new king on the throne.

We hear the crack of whips, the pounding of bricks, the strain of forced labor.

We hear Pharaoh summon the midwives.

We hear him command death.

And by the end of the chapter, we can almost hear mothers crying, fathers grieving, babies wailing, and the waters of the Nile splashing.

But beneath all that noise is the most troubling sound of all.

Silence.

Pharaoh speaks.

God does not.

What a contrast.

In Genesis 1, God speaks into chaos and brings forth order.

In Exodus 1, God appears silent, and chaos reigns.

In Genesis 1, God says, “Let there be light,” and light bursts forth, chasing away the darkness.

In Exodus 1, God appears silent, and darkness settles over the land.

In Genesis 1, God speaks over the waters, and they teem with life.

In Exodus 1, God appears silent, and the waters of the Nile become a place of death.

Genesis 1 is a world ordered by the voice of God.

Exodus 1 is a world increasingly ordered by the voice of Pharaoh.

One voice calls forth life.

The other commands death.

Shemot — The Names

In the Bible, history often turns on the smallest hinge.

A sentence closes, a page turns, and years disappear.

Kings rise.

Generations die.

Nations form.

Promises wait.

Sometimes the distance between what was and what comes next is only the width of a sheet of paper.

Genesis closes with Joseph’s death.

The page turns, and four centuries disappear.

Generations are born, live, and die without a sentence to tell us their stories.

The economy of words is almost unsettling. Scripture gives no account of the ordinary days, births, deaths, prayers, disappointments, and generations that lived inside that silence.

Children become parents.

Parents become grandparents.

Names are spoken over newborn babies and carved into graves.

Promises are repeated around tables and whispered beside deathbeds.

And the people wait.

But when the page finally turns, there is no miracle.

No burning bush.

Not even the voice of God.

There are names.

The Hebrew name of the book we call Exodus is Shemot.

Names.

And Exodus does not merely begin with a name.

It lingers over them.

“Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob.” Exodus 1:1

The opening sentence stands with one foot in each book.

Jacob reaches backward into Genesis.

He is the man we know—the younger son, the deceiver, the wanderer, the wrestler, the father who entered Egypt with his household.

Israel reaches forward into Exodus.

It is the covenant name.

The name of the people this family is becoming.

Jacob came into Egypt with seventy members of his household.

Israel will come out as a nation.

One name reminds us where they have been.

The other points toward what God is forming.

Then comes the roll call.

Reuben.

Simeon.

Levi.

Judah.

Issachar.

Zebulun.

Benjamin.

Dan.

Naphtali.

Gad.

Asher.

Names reaching backward across generations of silence.

Names tying Exodus to Genesis.

Names reminding us that the promise did not begin here.

It has been carried here.

And from the opening verses, Exodus starts teaching us to pay attention not only to the names it records—but to the names it does not.

Because in a book called Names, absence can be just as significant as remembrance.

Another Voice Rises

The most conspicuous absence belongs to the most powerful man in Egypt.

Pharaoh is not a name.

It is a title.

Like king.

The narrator clearly knows how to record names. He has just listed the sons of Jacob one by one. Later, he will name Moses, Aaron, Miriam, and others.

But this king remains simply Pharaoh.

He has a throne.

An army.

Officers, cities, and the authority to enslave a people and issue decrees over life and death.

Yet Scripture does not preserve his name.

The man who appears to dominate the story is reduced to a title.

And for all his visible power, Pharaoh is afraid.

He looks across Egypt and sees the sons of Israel multiplying.

The family of seventy that came into Egypt with Jacob has become a people too numerous for him to ignore.

They are fruitful.

They swarm.

That is Exodus’ own language: the people “swarm,” teeming with life.

They grow stronger.

They fill the land.

What God calls blessing, Pharaoh calls threat.

“Look,” he says to his people. “The people of the sons of Israel are too many and too mighty for us.” Exodus 1:9

Israel has not attacked Egypt.

They have not organized a rebellion.

They have not threatened the throne.

But Pharaoh is afraid of what they might become.

If war comes, they might join Egypt’s enemies.

They might fight against him.

They might leave.

Pharaoh begins oppressing people not because of what they have done, but because of the future he is afraid they might create.

He looks at Hebrew sons and sees soldiers who have not yet picked up a weapon.

He sees an army before there is an army.

And so the nameless king begins trying to protect everything his title represents.

His throne.

His power.

His kingdom.

His control.

And fear becomes policy.

The children of Israel are oppressed.

Their labor is taken.

Their lives are made bitter.

But the more Pharaoh presses them down, the more they multiply.

His first plan fails.

And that only deepens his fear.

Pharaoh Changes Tactics

So Pharaoh changes tactics.

If he cannot stop the sons of Israel by breaking their backs, he will stop them before they ever have the strength to stand.

The army he fears -- will never become an army if the boys never become men.

And so Pharaoh turns away from taskmasters and construction sites and into the hidden rooms where Hebrew women are giving birth.

For the first time, his command of death is placed directly into someone else’s hands.

And the baton is passed.

Not with fanfare.

Not before a cheering crowd.

Not with any announcement that something sacred is changing hands.

It happens silently—so silently that generations of readers have moved through the story without noticing the exchange.

But the book itself has already taught us to pay attention to names.

And here, at the moment when the covenant people come under attack, Scripture gives us two more:

Shiphrah.

Puah.

The Women Whose Names Were Remembered

Two women who never appear again in the biblical story.

They possess no throne, title, army, or public platform.

Their work is almost entirely unseen.

Yet their names are preserved.

The king who believes he can determine whose name will continue is left nameless.

The women who fear God are remembered by name.

History often preserves the names of kings and overlooks the people who quietly resisted them.

Scripture reverses the record.

It remembers the women.

The first fierce protectors we meet in Exodus are not prophets speaking before crowds or scribes bent over sacred texts.

They are two midwives standing over newborn children.

Two women whose hands have been trained not to take life, but to receive it.

Pharaoh has an order for them.

Kill the boys.

And God says nothing.

No new command.

No warning.

No miraculous intervention.

The voice they hear belongs to Pharaoh.

But when the moment comes, Shiphrah and Puah do not need a new word from God to know what faithfulness requires.

They have already been trained for this.

Their hands know what to do with life.

Their hearts know whom to fear.

And when the pressure comes, they fall back on what has already been formed in them.

Default to Your Training

That is what training does.

An Olympic race may last only a few seconds or a few minutes, but the athlete who steps onto the track has spent years preparing for that moment.

Long before the stadium fills.

Long before the lights come on.

Long before anyone is watching.

The runner is being formed.

In the early dark mornings.

In rain.

In snow.

In blistering heat.

In miles where no one applauds.

In workouts no one remembers.

In the repetition of doing the same small things correctly again and again and again.

The race may reveal the athlete.

But the training forms the athlete.

Scripture uses that same language for the life of faith.

Paul tells Timothy, “Train yourself for godliness.” 1 Timothy 4:7

Training assumes repetition.

Practice.

Formation over time.

Hebrews describes mature believers as those whose discernment has been “trained by constant practice.” Hebrew 5:14

Constant practice.

What we do again and again in ordinary moments is shaping who we will be when the pressure comes.

When exhaustion sets in and there is no time to stop and reconsider every movement, the runner falls back on what has been practiced.

You do not suddenly become disciplined in the final stretch.

You default to your training.

A familiar principle in athletics says that under pressure, we do not rise to the level of our goals; we tend to fall to the level of our preparation.

Shiphrah and Puah had no time to prepare for Pharaoh’s command after it came.

The moment of testing did not create their faithfulness.

It revealed it.

Long before Pharaoh summoned them, something had already been formed in these women.

Their hands had been trained to receive life.

Their hearts had been trained to fear God.

And somewhere inside those long generations of silence, the knowledge of God had been carried forward.

Scripture does not tell us how.

We do not know who first taught Shiphrah and Puah the stories of the God of their fathers.

We do not know how many times those stories had been repeated or how many generations had carried them forward.

But Shiphrah and Puah did not arrive in Pharaoh’s presence knowing whom to fear by accident.

Somehow, someone had carried the truth through the silence.

Someone had passed the baton.

And now, when the command of the most powerful man in Egypt collided with everything that had already been formed in them, they defaulted to their training.

They Feared God

In all twenty-two verses of Exodus 1, the word God appears only three times.

Every occurrence is connected to Shiphrah and Puah:

“But the midwives feared God.” (v. 17)

“God dealt well with the midwives.” (v. 20)

“And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.” (v. 21)

Pharaoh’s voice dominates the chapter.

God does not speak openly.

Yet the midwives live as though He has.

They do not hear Him issuing a new command, but they remain faithful to what they already know of His character.

They cannot see what He is doing, but they refuse to believe Pharaoh is the highest authority in the room.

They cannot yet see deliverance, but they refuse to cooperate with death.

Their obedience becomes evidence of His presence.

They stand inside Pharaoh’s kingdom while living under the authority of another King.

And their resistance is quiet.

But it is fierce.

The Army Pharaoh Never Saw

Pharaoh imagines that the threat lies in the Hebrew sons who may one day rise against him.

He looks at infant boys and sees a future army.

So he tries to destroy that army while it is still helpless in its mothers’ arms.

But Pharaoh does not realize that the resistance has already begun.

It is not charging toward him with chariots and swords.

It is standing beside birthing stools.

It is catching babies.

Guarding first breaths.

Refusing to cooperate with death.

Pharaoh fears the sons who might one day resist him, but he overlooks the women who are resisting him already.

The army does not look like an army.

The weapon does not look like a weapon.

It looks like two women faithfully doing the work they have been given to do.

Not dramatic.

Not celebrated.

Not even noticed.

Just trained hands doing what they know to do when the moment of testing comes.

The army isn’t always carrying a sword.

Sometimes it looks remarkably like a baton being passed.

The Baton Moves

Shiphrah and Puah cannot see the full weight of what they are protecting.

They do not know which child might become a priest, a father, a prophet, or a deliverer.

They do not know how far the consequences of their obedience will travel.

They can only see the life immediately in front of them.

Faithfulness rarely knows the full weight of what it is protecting.

So they protect what has been entrusted to them.

The midwives disobey Pharaoh.

The children live. And the people continue to multiply.

The nameless king has authority.

But he does not control the story.

And the baton keeps moving.

The Ordinary

You will often meet the silence of God with whatever has been formed in you before the silence came.

Sometimes keeping the baton moving is not a dramatic act of courage.

It is simply doing, under pressure, what faithfulness has trained you to do.

Do not miss God in the ordinary.

Most of our training happens in places no one notices.

Sweeping floors.

Washing dishes.

Rocking babies.

Raising children.

Opening our homes.

Reading Scripture before anyone else is awake.

Praying prayers no one else hears.

Trusting God when nothing seems to be changing.

Doing again tomorrow what faithfulness has asked of us today.

Ordinary does not mean insignificant.

And it certainly does not mean that Shiphrah and Puah did something ordinary when Pharaoh commanded them to kill the Hebrew sons.

Their work was ordinary.

Their courage was not.

Day after day, these women had done the work placed before them. Their hands had received babies. Their lives had been shaped by a fear of God strong enough that, when the most powerful man in Egypt commanded them to use those hands for death, they knew what they must do.

Then history called on them to act.

And they did.

Their decision preserved lives, defied the machinery of an empire, protected the covenant people, and changed the course of the story that followed.

Their faithfulness in the ordinary days had prepared them for an extraordinary moment.

That is what training does.

We do not always know which ordinary act of obedience is forming us for something we cannot yet see.

Nearly a century later, we hold Lessie Henderson’s twenty-two handwritten pages.

We can step into a theater and hear her words come to life with all the fanfare of modern technology.

Lights.

Music.

Sound.

A stage filled with people telling a story that began in a quiet valley in East Tennessee.

Every time the doors open, her words echo in the ears of hundreds of people.

They travel far beyond the mountains where they were first written.

And Lessie’s name is remembered by people who never knew her, never sat in her home, never heard her voice, and never could have imagined that a woman from another century would one day speak into theirs.

But those pages did not begin beneath theater lights.

Long before there was a stage or an audience, there was a girl with little formal education learning to read through the pages of Scripture.

She read.

She studied.

And in her own account, she tells us that she “read night and day and prayed night and day.”

And later, she writes, “The more I read the more I saw.”

This was the hidden training. That is formation.

Returning to the Word again and again until it begins to shape what you see.

Lessie was not formed by the heat of theater lights or the applause of an audience.

She was formed in the unseen hours.

In the reading.

In the praying.

In the returning.

And she lived a life filled with ordinary acts of faithfulness.

She raised children.

Swept floors.

Opened her home.

Loved her neighbors.

Kept reading her Bible.

From the outside, there were seasons when it might have appeared that God was silent.

But she lived as though He had already spoken.

That kind of faithfulness does not begin in the moment of crisis.

It is formed long before anyone sees it.

Long before Pharaoh gave the order, Shiphrah and Puah had already learned whom to fear.

God does not speak aloud in Exodus 1.

Yet they live under the authority of His Word.

Their obedience becomes evidence of His presence.

Perhaps that is one reason the ordinary matters so much.

There are days when the people around us may not hear the voice of God.

They may not see the thing He is doing.

We may not see it ourselves.

But a life formed by His Word can make His presence visible.

And most of that formation happens before the moment anyone notices.

In the kitchen.

Behind a desk.

In a classroom.

On a job site.

Beside a crib.

Beside a hospital bed.

Around a table or behind a closed door.

With an open Bible.

In the decision to trust Him one more day.

Do not despise those days.

History may never call your name the way it called Shiphrah and Puah.

But faithfulness does not wait for history to notice.

It trains today.

So that when the moment comes—whatever that moment may be—you already know whom you fear.

You already know what is true.

And your hands know what to do.