Ethnicity,Adoption,and Exodus: A Socio-Rhetorical Reading of Exodus 2.1–10

1. Introduction

The biblical motif of child birth, exposure, and adoption reflects socio-cultural, political, economic and legal traditions of ancient Near Eastern adoption practices and processes. ¹ However, the use of the motif to describe the birth of a son to the daughter of a Levite, his exposure, rescue by the daughter of Pharaoh, nurture by his biological mother, and eventual adoption by the daughter of Pharaoh in Exod. 2.1–10 is concerned with more than the adoption of a single child. A key moment in the narrative is the princess's identification of the exposed child in the basket, first as a young man (‭רענ‬) crying and then as one of the Hebrew children (2.6). ² The princess's dual representation of Moses as ‘young man’ and ‘child’ rhetorically connects Moses with the ‘young women’ (‭תרענ‬) that make up her political entourage (2.5), and with Hebrew ‘children’, presumably an ethnic enclave within the geographical confines of Egypt.

The motif that transforms the story of a child's exposure (2.3–4) and adoption (2.10) into a community story is the character of the relationship between the subgroup and the daughter of Pharaoh, the political representative of Egypt (2.6–9). Initially sparked by events involving a young man in distress, a compassionate princess and a watchful sister, this motif plays out in the form of ethnicity, constructed in the genealogical, socio-political, cultural, and economic spaces that define and shape subgroup and national identity. ³ Moses’ dual representation, which comes to full public recognition with his adoption in 2.10, warrants sustained reflection on ethnicity as a hermeneutical rubric for understanding this text as well as key aspects of the Exodus narrative involving the Israelites as a group. In addition to providing narrative and social structure to the birth–exposure–adoption story, Moses’ dual representation provides an interpretive ‘blueprint’ for the larger exodus story, for two reasons. First, his rhetorical association with the princess's entourage corresponds to his special but challenging status with the adopting personality (Yahweh) in Israel's adoption story, in which Moses becomes ‘like God’ (4.16; cf. 7.2). Second, his association with Hebrews by a potential adopter who ultimately claims him as ‘son’ is conceptually analogous to Yahweh's metaphoric adoption of Israel as Yahweh's ‘son’ (Exod. 4.22, 23). One consequence of this double representation is that the language of adoption in the personal story (‭ךבל‬ ‭הל‬ ‭יהיז‬, 2.10) becomes part of the language of leadership and authority in the emerging national story (‭זל‬ ‭היהת‬ ‭םיהלאל‬, 4.16).

Since Hugo Gressmann argued that the story of Moses’ birth originally existed as a legend of the birth of a hero and was only secondarily linked to the threat against the entire Israelite population, several critical refinements of Gressmann's theory have developed further insights into the genre and rhetorical and socio-political functions of the story. ⁴ Form-critical and redaction-critical analyses have arrived at a general consensus that the child exposure–adoption theme was a common literary motif in ancient Near Eastern and Greek writing. ⁵ Comparisons with the tales of Sargon of Akkad (c. 2300 bce), whose story survives in texts dated much later to the Assyrian and Babylonian periods, as well as comparisons with the tale of Cyrus the Persian have been particularly instructive. ⁶ Scholars routinely note that an overarching motif of child exposure and adoption in these heroic tales does not preclude careful analysis of each story's unique narrative texture. Analyses of the biblical text highlight varying degrees to which socio-political, theological, and literary motifs characterize the story. ⁷

My argument is as follows: a literary analysis that is attentive to the political, cultural, and economic features of Exod. 2.1–10 shows a multi-layered narrative performance of identity formation. This narrative performance revolves around three foci: first, around ethnic formation significantly shaped by an encounter between an exposed Hebrew child and an Egyptian rescuer whom the storyteller views favorably (2.3–6); ⁸ second, around ethnicity associated with nurturing that reunites the displaced child with members of his subgroup (2.7–9); finally, around ethnicity portrayed as malleable political identity by which the son of a Levite's daughter becomes the son of Pharaoh's daughter (2.2, 10). ⁹ I will return later to discuss how these three narrative foci are related to three major theories on ethnicity (Situationalism, Primordialism, and Constructivism). For now, it suffices to mention that the narrator repeatedly uses verbs of motion to describe the characters, creating not just the impression of a highly active story world, but also reflecting the larger socio-cultural and political shifts that frame the story and result from characters’ interactions. ¹⁰ Indeed, Moses’ adoption (2.10) constitutes the culmination of a cluster of socio-economic, cultural, and political negotiations involving members of his Hebrew subgroup and members of the house of Pharaoh. What I propose to do here is interpret the story as a multi-layered construal of identity formation, refracted through the lens of ethnicity. ¹¹

2. Text, Narrative Anchors, and Narrative Movements

2.2. Narrative Anchors

There are three narrative anchors in the story. First, there is a ‘son–son’ anchor (2.2, 10) that describes how the son of a Levite woman becomes the son of an Egyptian princess, a story that uses the circumstantial moment of rescue and the eventual process of adoption to perform a political function of locating Moses in Pharaoh's court. The story is thereby institutionally located. Second, there is a ‘daughter–daughter’ anchor (2.1, 10), structured around the perceptions and ethically based life-saving actions of two daughters, a biological mother and an adoptive mother. The story is thereby ethically motivated. Finally, the middle space, the holding space that brings together individual, circumstantial ethics and institutional practice and policy is the narrative rhetoric of group association, which connects Moses to his biological mother's entourage (described as an ethnic subgroup) and to his adoptive mother's entourage (described as young women). This is also a ‘child–young man’ story, sociologically grounded.

The following narrative structure is discernible in the story, connecting those three anchors:

OPEN IN VIEWER

2.1 A daughter of Levi marries a Levite man
	2.2 Woman gives birth to a son and conceals him upon seeing how healthy he was
		2.3 Mother acquires a basket in which she sets her son among the reeds of the Nile
			2.4 Sister watches from a distance
				2.5 Pharaoh's daughter descends to Nile, with young women as attendants
				2.6 Pharaoh's daughter sees a young man crying, a Hebrew child
			2.7 Sister intervenes and proposes to get a wet nurse from the Hebrews
		2.8 Child's mother returns to the Nile where she placed her son
	2.9 Mother (resumes) nursing the child, for Pharaoh's daughter, for pay
2.10 Pharaoh's daughter adopts a son, names him Moses, with a Hebrew etymology

In the development of the narrative, vv. 5–6 constitute a chiastic turning point that uses social identification to expand the story beyond Moses. ¹³ Through Miriam's mediation, a ‘daughter–daughter’ relationship connects the daughter of Levi and the daughter of Pharaoh, expanding the story beyond the circumstantial motivations and ethics of both daughters, using the rhetoric of social identification and ethnic representation to add a layer of socio-cultural texture to the story. Ultimately located in Pharaoh's court, the story is not without its enduring ethnic character, expressed through the narrative perspective of the adopting personality's etymology about Moses’ name.

The two daughters echo and parallel each other in significant ways; they are portrayed as using their economic resources and social virtues to provide security, structure, and cultural texture to an otherwise vulnerable child/son. First, their initial actions are grounded on perceptions of a son/young man: one sees a good/healthy son (2.2) and the other sees a young man crying (2.6). Cumulatively, both daughters see the beauty/goodness and the distress that characterize Moses’ lived experiences in the shadow of Pharaoh's decree (1.22). ¹⁴ Second, their perceptions lead to actions attending to survival and nourishment: the biological mother acquires a protective basket for her son (2.3) while the adoptive mother funds the nourishment of the child after getting the basket and rescuing him (2.9). Both daughters initiate attempts at providing a structured solution involving the larger ‘community’ of characters in the story. Third, ironically, these actions lead to momentary separation of both women from the son/young man: the biological mother places the child among the reeds (2.3) while the adoptive mother gives away the child to be nursed by a Hebrew woman (2.9).

While the biological mother, in a moment of political vulnerability when she could no longer hide her son, places the (beautiful/healthy) son on the banks of the Nile and therefore at the discretion of the ‘nation’ (Pharaoh had commanded that children be cast into the Nile, 1.22), the adoptive mother, perhaps at a moment of apparent cultural vulnerability, momentarily releases a (crying) young man whom she already claims (‘nurse this child for me’) to a member of the ethnic subgroup. In this cluster of perceptions and activities, the two daughters, representing ‘subgroup’ and ‘national’ identities respectively, nevertheless interact in ways that mimic each other. And in that narrative mimicry, it is not the subgroup that mimics the nation; rather, it is the adoptive mother that mimics the biological mother. The chiastic structure to the story and the thematic mimicry that characterizes the actions of the two daughters suggests a narrative ‘architecture’ that expands from inside-out.

3. Some Theoretical Formulations on Ethnicity

Because of its fluidity as a concept, a comprehensive definition of ethnicity is not only difficult but perhaps ultimately counterproductive. However, for purposes of analysis, working definitions and conceptualizations of ethnicity and its social manifestations are warranted. Three views are important for my analysis. First, Primordialism (‘Essentialism’) defines ethnicity in terms of affective, biological, phenotypical, and emotive attributes, deeply rooted in cultural and socio-political notions of ‘kinship’ that claim common ancestry or origin. By focusing on concepts of identity that construct a sense of belonging across socio-economic classes across the vicissitudes of history and across the permeability of cultural and geographical boundaries, Primordialism seeks to differentiate itself from purely circumstantial forms of social mobilization. Second, Situationalism (‘Circumstantialism’, ‘Instrumentalism’) construes ethnic sentiments and loyalties in largely functionalist terms. Ethnicity in this context is understood simply as a tool for achieving political identity. Individuals choose to belong to one ethnic group or another depending on circumstantial logic and interests. Ethnicity in this sense can be dropped once the goal is achieved. The third category, Constructivism, sees ethnicity as a product of macro ‘streams of traditions’ or ‘universes of discourse’ within which individuals and communities live and operate. ²³ Constructivism requires analyses of the ‘protean outcome of a continuous … interaction of political, economic and cultural forces both external and internal to developing ethnic communities’. ²⁴ Ethnicity in that sense is not dependent on or limited to individual volition or the construction of a sense of unchanging primordial identity, but is defined by larger historical, socio-political, and economic structures.

In reality, all three forms of ethnic construction are often organically operational in any given process of identity formation. Andreas Wimmer has argued for a ‘multi-level’ analysis of ethnicity that is attentive not just to the macro, historical forces of Constructivism, but also to the individual, contextual variations that ethnicity embodies in its Circumstantialist formulations, and finally to the socially ‘stabilizing’ function that Primordialism evokes and pursues. ²⁵ Analyses of ethnicity should therefore move beyond definitions to examine how the concept creates specific embodied identities (human, cultural, religious, political), and conversely how particular forms of embodiment set into motion distinct processes of identity formation.

Broadly, post-World War II research on race and ethnicity, following the collapse of Nazi ideology, the end of official colonial rule, the rise of social movements (such as the Civil Rights Movement in the United States), and the end of apartheid in South Africa offered a new space for reimagining ethnicity and race in the reconstruction of European and African nation-states as well as US politics. The emergence of sub-Saharan Africa as a multi-ethnic and multi-racial society, as well as changes in national demographics across the globe resulting from post-war migrations, provided a new context for discussions about critical theory on race and ethnicity framed around notions of Diaspora.

The result of these major shifts has been understandably diverse. On the one hand, there has been a move away from the so-called classical formulations around primordial essence (often critiqued as the ideological bedrock for such oppressive practices as Nazism, Colonialism, racial segregation, ethnic genocide, and apartheid). Instead, ethnicity is understood to be consonant with ongoing economic, social, and historical processes and institutions that emerge and define any historical moment. ²⁶ Racial and ethnic identities are not a given; they are constantly being constructed and enforced. On the other hand, there has been a resurgence of a sense of ethnic nationalism in the face of globalization. As Mark Brett accurately writes, ‘Contrary to the expectations of many social theorists writing in the 1950s and early 1960s, ethnic identity is still a pressing feature of contemporary politics the world over’, with the emergence of ‘ethnic nationalisms’ in Europe and the ‘politics of immigration and indigeneity’ in North America and Africa. ²⁷

Contemporary discussions about racial/ethnic, national, and transnational identity include sustained analyses of the socio-economic and political dynamics of multi-racial and ‘poly-ethnic’ societies. ²⁸ And critical theory on race and ethnicity insists on macro and micro analyses that examine not just inter-ethnic and inter-racial dynamics of identity formation but also its intra-racial and intra-ethnic aspects. ²⁹ Such analyses illustrate the distinctions between cultural and political identities and their relevance to the constructions of subgroup, national, and transnational identity. Although these distinctions are especially pronounced around issues of transnational migration, they are not limited to such formulations.

The implications of such research on biblical interpretation are twofold. The first is that it provides fruitful analogies for interpreting the formation of ancient Israelite institutions and cultural identity in the context of ancient Near Eastern empires. ³⁰ The second implication is decidedly contemporary in its ethical motivation. As Joane Nagel has shown, the construction of ethnicity involves the production of identity and culture markers, functioning as permeable boundary-making and meaning-making tools respectively. ³¹ The role that ethnicity plays as a boundary-making and even survival-making concept attends to the layers of identity formation that characterize a community's struggle to maintain a sense of structural cohesiveness, meaning, and purpose in the face of internal and external socio-political, economic, and cultural flux. Fredrik Barth, who is most credited with advocating a constructivist view of ethnicity, maintained that a certain quality of stability, even constancy, characterizes multi-ethnic communities:

The intersection between analyses of ancient Israelite society and contemporary lifestyle and theory is a slippery yet vital part of interpretation and cultural hermeneutics. And it is to that task that I now turn.

4. Yahweh and the Princess: Ethnicity, Adoption, and Empire

The issue now is to identify a possible social history in ancient Israel for the production and/or use of this story. That is, which ancient imperial context provides the best possible setting for understanding the characters in the story as embodying complex empire–subgroup relations in which a cluster of specific forms of political, economic, and cultural manifestations are at the center of ethnic identity construction? Given ancient Israel's multiple experiences of domination under the Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks, why does Egypt emerge as the ‘empire’ par excellence for the exodus story?

Helena Zlotnick-Sivan's historical analysis illumines intriguing parallels and variations between the tale of Moses’ birth and the concocted biography of Cyrus the Persian. ³³ Dating the story of Exodus 1–2 to the period between Cyrus’ death and the conquest of Egypt by the Achaemenids (530–525 bce), Zlotnick-Sivan provides an interpretation that addresses the role of Egypt in a Persian context:

The implications of Zlotnick-Sivan's analysis go beyond the narrative of Exod. 2.1–10, but they provide a possible historical context for interpreting Moses’ exposure–adoption story.

Persian Yehud is intriguing for a number of reasons. First, part of its literary, religious, and political ideology emphasizes the role that Cyrus’ edict (Ezra 6.1–5) played in setting into motion the migration of exiles from Babylon to Jerusalem and the empire-backed reconstruction work (Ezra 1–2). ³⁵ Yet, as Kuhrt argues, the main significance of Cyrus’ policy is not its depiction of Cyrus as ‘pious’, but its insight into the mechanism by which Cyrus legitimized his conquest of Babylon by ‘manipulating local traditions—an exercise in which he probably received the support of a fairly powerful segment of the urban population in Babylon, whose traditional privileges were being threatened by Nabonidus’ policy’. ³⁶ There is an important, if veiled resonance with the role of the Egyptian princess who, in contrast to Pharaoh, did not just rescue Moses out of compassion but also collaborated with Moses’ ethnic subgroup to ensure the child's nurture. Not unlike Cyrus and his adopted mother, Moses as a leader will need the support of tribal leaders to carry out the exodus mission effectively (Exod. 3.16–18). Second, imperial financial and labor interests fueled Cyrus’ reconstruction project; indeed,

In Moses’ story, his rescue is followed by economic concerns expressed by Miriam, and the princess structures a contract with Moses’ mother to pay her for her labor, echoing in contrast the economic challenges in the story. Third, the rationale for the migration under Cyrus’ supervision (Ezra 1–2) was not to occupy a Land of Promise, away from imperial influence, but to reconstitute or re-integrate ethnic and religious communities within the confines of the empire. Similarly, Moses reintegrates the cultural and ethnic ‘space’ of his community within the political confines of Egypt. Indeed, part of Moses’ leadership role in the exodus story is defined in terms of religious pilgrimage within Egypt's political purview (Exod. 3.18; 5.3). ³⁸

The cluster of these specific forms of political, economic, and cultural manifestations has indeed been a part of scholarly analysis of the effects of Babylonian and Persian policies dealing with internally displaced migrants. ³⁹ The relative autonomy for local ‘self-’governance triggered by these policies probably set into motion questions about (self-)identity as subgroups within the empire. Analyses of the specific forms of identity formation in these subgroups need not proceed on the assumption that transitions from one empire to another meant the complete eradication of previous imperial policy or that subgroup reaction to changes in imperial structures necessarily meant complete rejection of old forms of identity; such transitions probably had both a layered and a linear effect on subgroup consciousness.

Accordingly, the story of Moses used the genre of the exposure–adoption motif that stretched back to its Sargon inflection by the Assyrians and its Cyrus inflection by the Persians. However, the biblical story used that motif in a manner that aligned Moses’ fate with that of ‘un-exposed’ Hebrews, narratively portrayed as an ethnic group that did not directly experience the compassion of the princess's rescue but would nevertheless be affected by her ensuing policy of adoption. Although Moses alone is rescued, the ethnic group will be involved and implicated in negotiating the adoption policy. With this expanded constituency, the exposure–adoption motif of a single hero is recast as a story about and/or by an oppressed group and presented in a manner that highlights the role of ethnicity and its political, cultural, and economic implications for an adoption story that includes the ‘exposed’ and the ‘un-exposed’. As John Kessler has argued regarding the emergence of Yehud, one needs to examine ‘the dual roles of ethnicity and distinctive beliefs and practices in the formation of group identity in the context of multi-ethnic imperial/colonial administration’. ⁴⁰ The story represents the distinctiveness and the overlap between rescue and adoption, between relative self-governance and empire-backed governance, and Moses’ challenging role in shaping that double identity (cf. Exod. 2.11–15).

In folkloric fashion, the story is reticent about naming its characters or providing ‘historical’ narrative details. ⁴¹ Social, cultural, and political roles, not names, seem to be of particular importance in this story about the son of a Levite who becomes the son of the daughter of Pharaoh. ⁴² As this ‘son–son’ story unfolds under the narrative guidance of two daughters representing the subgroup and the empire, the text is silent on the princess's criteria for determining the child's ethnicity. This silence has led to several plausible reasons, including the child's presence at the Nile or his garb or what William Propp calls the ‘plain sense’ of the text, namely, that the child was abandoned. ⁴³ The adoption scene itself has an etiological character.

The three working theories on ethnicity outlined above are relevant to understanding how ethnicity functions in the exodus story. The reason is a simple one: the multiple layers of ethnic construction, permeability, and structuring employed to perform the motif of the child's birth, his exposure, and adoption in Exod. 2.1–10 bring together inter- and intraethnic relationships driven and embodied by women who represent and transgress these boundaries. ⁴⁴ First, all three women (the princess, Moses’ biological mother, and his sister) are portrayed in ways that resonate with Primordialism. In spite of her personal, perhaps political compassion for a crying young man, the princess agrees with the child's sister to get a Hebrew wet nurse, who is conveniently Moses’ biological mother. Second, there is evidence of Circumstantialism. Following the ‘chance’ discovery of the child, the daughter of Pharaoh engages the daughter of Levi in a contractual, legal agreement that funds the child's cultural nurture and nourishment. ⁴⁵ Finally, all three women are depicted in ways that engage Constructivism largely shaped by the princess's point of view. Their acts of requesting, getting, funding, and providing Hebrew nursing for the child are constructed in the shadows of, and the lead up to, the nation's claims on the child.

The princess's statement that the child belonged to a group of ethnic Hebrews is not the end, but only the beginning of the process of ethnic construction. Following the princess's association of the child with ethnic Hebrews, Miriam asks: ‘Should I get a wet nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you’? The princess says to the child's mother: ‘Nurse this child for me and I will pay you’, and finally, the biological mother brings the child ‘to the daughter of Pharaoh and he became for her a son’. As a precursor to the national story of exodus, this brief narrative constructs and presents the rescue of a ‘crying young man’ as the beginning of circumstantial identity construction that is integrally linked to a larger ethnic subgroup, purposefully developed for the adopting personality. The ‘ethnic’ nurture that Moses receives from his biological mother; the economic resources from the princess to facilitate Moses’ nurture; and the institutional structure that anchors Moses’ formal adoption—these are all narrated as applicable to the national story. The story is conceptually ripe for divine harvesting. This happens with Yahweh's intervention in ch. 3, which sees Israel being brought to the land of their cultural ancestors, providing them a land flowing with milk and honey, and delivering a people adopted by and dedicated to Yahweh alone.

A cluster of themes describing the princess's rescue and adoption activities anticipate Yahweh's actions on behalf of Israel. Both go down to the place of rescue (Exod. 2.5; 3.8), both see and respond to human crying (2.6; 3.7, 9) and, with the help of members of the ethnic subgroup (2.6–9; 3.16–18), both adopt the rescued child/son (2.10; 4.22–23). ⁴⁶ In Moses’ adoption story as well as in the eventual national adoption story under Yahweh, members of the subgroup nurse (one of) their children for adoption and, in the process, position themselves as the vital ‘middle-persons’ between the adopting personality and the rest of the population.

5. Conclusion

Moses’ birth–exposure–adoption story involves a transformation that stretches from the home of a Levite family to the courts of the Pharaoh. During this transformation, Moses is referred to as ‘son’ (which locates him institutionally), as a ‘young man’ (which associates him with the princess's entourage), and mostly as ‘child’ (which associates him with his biological mother's social group). A key moment in the narrative is the princess's double characterization of Moses as a young man (crying) and an ethnic child. This double recognition and public identification of Moses is important; it inaugurates the process of Moses’ identity construction. The storyteller seems keen to indicate that there will be no contestation of Moses’ Hebrew ethnicity on the part of his adopting mother. If one is to engage meaningfully and successfully the political implications of the adoption policy, as well as explore the role that members of Moses’ subgroup play in the construction of the narrative, it is not particularly important that Moses’ biological mother should be the one to nurse him. What is important, at the macro level of political engagement, is that a generic ethnic mother nurses him. Apparently recognizing the political power of ethnic identity operational in the princess's statement, Miriam asks to get ‘a nursing woman from among the Hebrews’ (2.7).

Public pronouncements about the ethnic belonging of a formerly displaced and now reintegrating child, however, do not adequately capture the multi-layered nature of subgroup identity formation. The relationship between the rescuing personality and the rest of the subgroup is not direct, and there is apparently something about Moses’ nurture that needs addressing at the primordial level, especially if the story is to move from rescue to adoption. Accordingly, Moses was nursed by his biological mother before he was adopted; cultural and political identities are clearly distinguished here. Gwynn Kessler has shown that nursing was considered to be an important marker, even a transmitter of ethnic identity in the writings of the rabbis. ⁴⁷ Such an understanding of ethnicity partly explains the critical exchange between Moses and Yahweh in Exodus 3–4 over Yahweh's credentials as an adopting personality, and the need for the participation of Israelite tribal leaders. Beyond the exodus story, such understandings of ethnic construction and transmission through nurturing partly explain the desire to expel foreign women in Ezra (10.10–11) as well as Naomi's role in nursing Obed, the son of Ruth the Moabite (Ruth 4.16).

The group that this story represents through its narrative themes of birth, concealment, exposure, rescue, nurture, and adoption appears to be wrestling with how to negotiate the world of its biological mother and of its adoptive mother, defined in terms of ethnic and political identities. With such layering of identity, the challenges associated with combining the rescue and adoption motifs in the story begin to play out in the next narrative (Exod. 2.11–15) where Moses’ attempts at establishing workplace authority are questioned. The possibility of ‘self-’determination is fraught by the obligations associated with empire-backed funding for cultural nurture. This challenge, it seems to me, is in full display following Cyrus’ edict that sanctioned internal migrations and reconstitutions of semi-autonomous subgroups within the Persian Empire. For Moses and his subgroup community, the tasks of liberation require one to engage not just the empire-generated identity and its enduring legacy (cf. Exod. 2.19), but also the persistent quest for subgroup identity (Exod. 2.1). The political, economic, and cultural inflections of these identities are complex and layered, reflected in the narrative art of a story that reuses the motif of exposure and adoption to lay the groundwork and begin the process for the liberation of communities, not just the rescue and adoption of individual heroes.