THE TOOL OF TYRANNY

“Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” —Exodus 1:9, 10

As we are discovering, fear can infect all our relationships, but the largest scale of this is how fear has been used throughout history by nations and their rulers to oppress others, particularly those who are different in some way. This was the situation that began the story of Exodus. A new king “to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt” (Exodus 1:8). Ignorant of the history behind the presence of these “foreigners” in the land and likely as a way to consolidate his power, this new ruler’s shrewd dealing included creating an imagined scenario in which these “foreigners” might be a threat. This political ploy would unite the “real Egyptians” against this perceived threat and justify the enslavement and exploitation of the other group, with the added boost to the Egyptian economy of a new and plentiful source of free labor.

The operating mechanism of this scenario was fear.

“Tyrant kings and kingdoms are accustomed to controlling people through fear, especially through the threat of violence.”* Tragically, this is a political tactic still much used today in varying degrees. The irony is that such “shrewdness” tends to create the dynamic it imagines. Those who are marginalized and oppressed in this way tend to become more willing to fight against the nation that enslaves them. In this case, the suffering of the enslaved people prompted God to intervene, bringing about the destruction of Egypt and the departure of the Israelites in search of a country in which they could be free.

* Brian Zahnd, Postcards From Babylon: The Church in American Exile (Spello Press, 2019), 74.