For a brief moment the previous day, I’d felt a flicker of kinship with him because of my own barrenness, but he brandished his brokenness like a sword, ready to cut anyone who displeased him because someone in Pharaoh’s household had once cut him.

I tried to close my ears to the strange worshipful chanting and fix my mind on God, but the Egyptians’ idolatry weighed down my weary shoulders and brought tears to my closed eyes.