This paper proposes to view Pharaoh as a shrewd character in order to examine fuller connotations of his orders and governance represented in Exodus 1:8-22. This standpoint allows readers to speculate some possible intentions of his plots, those that a view of his inherent incapacity does not satisfactorily deal with. Viewing the Hebrews as a cheap laboring source for the socio-economic benefits of the Egyptians, Pharaoh contrives a selective genocide plan to make them more easily controllable. This plan is more evil than it looks as it conceals his cruel intention to crush their mentalities. To achieve his goal, Pharaoh takes steps astutely and shrewdly; he intently leaks out his plan through two esteemed Egyptian midwives and obscures the exact target of the male infants to be thrown into the Nile. All his evil intentions call for and justify an emergence of thwarters ―God and his human agents― who must foil his plans.
This paper proposes to view Pharaoh as a shrewd character in order to examine fuller connotations of his orders and governance represented in Exodus 1:8-22. This standpoint allows readers to speculate some possible intentions of his plots, those that a view of his inherent incapacity does not satisfactorily deal with. Viewing the Hebrews as a cheap laboring source for the socio-economic benefits of the Egyptians, Pharaoh contrives a selective genocide plan to make them more easily controllable. This plan is more evil than it looks as it conceals his cruel intention to crush their mentalities. To achieve his goal, Pharaoh takes steps astutely and shrewdly; he intently leaks out his plan through two esteemed Egyptian midwives and obscures the exact target of the male infants to be thrown into the Nile. All his evil intentions call for and justify an emergence of thwarters ―God and his human agents― who must foil his plans.
(0)
(0)