Just an observation. God seems to use suffering throughout the history of the church to bring about growth. I hadn’t noticed the same thing in the OT until reading this passage today (though it well may be elsewhere too). Wouldn’t it be radical (and difficult)the next time we face suffering of some kind to instead of looking for relief (as is my first instinct), to be expecting and trying to percieve how God is moving.

As the passage points out, the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. And here comes Jesus saying that God IS the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – that he is not the God of the dead but of the living. He is saying that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive – not walking among them, but ALIVE in the presence of God. They may be gone from the earth, but they are not dead. God is the God of the living, not the dead, because all who die in Him will live eternally.

I think this is the most fascinating verse of chapter 1. The very king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, who was thought of as a god by his people, is called “the king of Egypt” and never given a name. Meanwhile, two lowly Hebrew midwives are called by name – Shiphrah and Puah. I would bet that this is not legend, but that these names were passed down from generation to generation, as the Hebrews remembered the courage and righteousness of these two women.

There’s a similar thing that happens in one of Jesus’ parables beginning in Luke 16:19, where Jesus talks about a rich man and Lazarus. Again, it is the lowly, poor man who is given a name, while the rich and powerful one is only known as “the rich man.” Are the authors simply forgetting the other names? Or is there something deeper going on about the importance of having a name? I think it could be the latter, that for “the rich man” and “the king of Egypt”, that was all their identity is – that without money or power they are nothing (see the rich man in Hell in that parable). But Shiphrah, Puah, and Lazarus have an identity, an everlasting name, in their righteousness before God.