Dear Overseer,
Pharaoh put you in a terrible position where you ended up
suffering most. I am guessing you were not popular with your own people,
possibly being seen as collaborators of some kind by having the overseer
positions. Certainly I am guessing many resented the way in which you sought to
pass on the orders of the slave drivers. At the same time you got beaten most severely
for not managing the impossible.
As I read, and whilst I know there can be no real
comparison my mind strayed to thinking about those employed in benefit offices
and so on. Where you had the straw taken away and people were punished for not
managing they are forced to sanction people who find it increasingly difficult as
the safety net is taken away from their clients in the name of austerity. At
the same time their own working conditions are being subject to cuts and they cannot
spend the time they used to supporting clients.
Both you and they were the in between people, the people
most in touch with the suffering whilst being the same people forced to
implement the new regime.
I am interested in what the meeting with Pharaoh was like
and how it was secured. In many ways it seems to have been like a deputation
from a modern day trade union. How did you secure this meeting? Was it that
there were slave drivers who weren’t so tyrannical that you managed to build up
relationship with, did you have a sympathetic ear in the palace or was it that
the slave drivers were being punished to and so wanted you to go in and
explain?
Today in our culture when the trade unions go in they too
are not being listened to. Indeed they are being punished through a range of
ways some ways talked about are legislative and some are based on the
government putting unreasonable conditions on starting talks with them whilst
seeking to portray them as the baddies who won’t come to the table. As I say I
know it is different in many ways but it is what your story brings to my mind
and I think part of the role of the bible is to make us sensitive to what is
going on around us today by jogging our minds and helping us to make these
loose connections about who the modern day people in similar positions would
be.
When you went to see Moses and complained he was making it
worse for you I wonder what that was like. Were some of your number talking
about attacking him physically or was it just a plea being made to him to go away
and stop getting involved?
Your story suggests that you were people of good intellect
and able to put your case forward well, even if you were not able to win. I am
guessing that brains rather than brawn is how you were chosen for the role of
overseers. I also wonder now whether rather than collaborators you were somehow
seen as community leaders of some kind. You were able to get the ear of people
who perhaps ordinary members of your community could not.
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