Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Midwives Feared God
Exodus 1:15-22
15 The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah, · WEB
Two women refuse a royal order, and the book names them while leaving the king who gave it anonymous.
The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah Exodus 1:15.
The most powerful man in the world is not named anywhere in this book. Two midwives are named in his first scene. The contrast is not accidental, and it states a valuation the narrative keeps making: heaven's records are not kept by rank.
The order given them is infanticide disguised as obstetrics. If it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live Exodus 1:16. It is also, in its own terms, sound policy. Daughters could be absorbed by marriage into the Egyptian population; sons carried the name and could carry a spear. The king is not killing children out of rage. He is doing arithmetic.
But the midwives feared God, and didn't do what the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the baby boys alive Exodus 1:17.
The sentence is built on two fears, and the smaller one loses. This is the earliest civil disobedience in Scripture, and its terms should be stated precisely, because the passage is often asked to prove more than it says. The refusal is not resistance to authority as such; it is refusal of one command that required the taking of innocent life. The midwives do not rebel, publish, or organize. They keep doing their work and decline to add murder to it, which is the least dramatic form obedience to God can take and often the costliest.
Summoned and questioned, they answer with something less than the whole truth: the Hebrew women aren't like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them Exodus 1:19. The narrative does not commend the words. What it commends is stated twice, and both times it is the same thing — because the midwives feared God, he gave them families Exodus 1:21. Readers who want the passage to settle whether deception is permissible under tyranny will find it silent on a question it was not asked. Readers who want to know whose approval matters when a government commands a crime will find it perfectly clear.
The reward has a quiet symmetry. Two women who refused to destroy other people's children are given households of their own, and what the king was trying to prevent multiplies in the very people obstructing him Exodus 1:20.
So the policy moves from the delivery room to the riverbank, and from covert to open. You shall cast every son who is born into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive Exodus 1:22. The whole population is now deputized, and the instrument is the Nile itself, the river Egypt worshiped as the source of its life. The god of the land is turned into a grave for infants, which is worth remembering when the first plague falls on the water.
settled What this mark means