Re: My "Hebrew Lives Matter" tweet.

Here's how it appears in Postcards From Babylon (p.55):

In the vast narrative of Hebrew Scripture one of the grand themes is that the people of Israel were to be Yahweh’s alternative to pagan empire. 1/8

When God chose a people who would embody fidelity and justice in a world of idolatry and injustice, God chose the seed of Abraham—an oppressed immigrant minority providing cheap labor for the Egyptian empire. 2/8

Economic superpowers always need a source of cheap labor to support their affluent lifestyle—whether to bake their bricks or pick their cotton—and they generally prefer to exploit an ethnic minority that can be readily identified as an outcast “other.” 3/8

Oppressors have an easier time psychologically justifying their cruelty if the oppressed are a vilified other. For the Egyptian elite, the Hebrews were the ethnic minority other. But God sees it all. 4/8

The book of Exodus tells how Yahweh heard the groans and saw the suffering of the Semitic slaves toiling in the brickyards and raised up a deliverer for them. Judgment Day now loomed on the Egyptian horizon. 5/8

Pharaoh and the princes of Egypt were about to find out the hard way that Hebrew Lives Matter. Directed by the divine I AM encountered in the burning bush, Moses returned from the wilderness to issue Pharaoh the divine imperative, “Let my people go!” 6/8

After a bit of persuasion from God (ten plagues!), Moses brought the Hebrews out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, and led them on their long trek to the promised land. This was the birth of a nation—a nation of former slaves who had surprisingly been adopted as God’s own people.7/8

This kind of story should make the thoughtful Bible reader wonder where we find Jesus in the formative years of America—was Jesus guiding Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson in the White House, or was he picking cotton in Mississippi and walking the Trail of Tears? 8/8