Faithful to God (1:15–22)
In spite of the dangers involved, there were some who proved themselves faithful to God. Pharaoh decreed that the Israelite boys should be killed at birth. This infanticide was too horrible to contemplate, so two midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, refused to comply. Even before Pharaoh, they showed their shrewdness and their respect for human life, claiming that the Israelite women gave birth quickly, before the midwives could come to help them.
The important principle emerges here that God will honour those who defend the principles of righteousness, showing respect for his creation and his rule over life. The midwives are more anxious to please God than to please Pharaoh, and God rewards them.
Pharaoh’s plan then turns nasty, as he commands that the sons of the Israelites be drowned in the River Nile (1:22).[1]
1:15–22 / The midwives’ courage and fear of the Lord contrast with a powerful, yet paranoid, pharaoh. Although the chapter begins with the patriarchal list, the hope of the Israelites was in the daily life of the Hebrew home and childbirth. Here we see the beginning of the key role women played in God’s deliverance of Israel from crisis in Exodus 1–4 (see also Exod. 2:1–10; 4:24–26).
The “power” of the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, was at once real and tenuous—completely opposite to the power of Pharaoh’s violence. Their existence and their fear of the Lord empowered the midwives. It was enough. The text communicates this by repeating the word “midwives” seven times in seven verses.
These two women and their sassy courage dominate the narrative. The niv has abbreviated the deliberately high-profile rhetoric of their introduction (lit., “the name of the first was Shiphrah and the name of the second was Puah”). The contrast to the nameless “Pharaoh” is stark.
Because of the extreme difference in political power, the conversation between them is ironically humorous. It is odd that Pharaoh himself spoke to these women and that the ruler of Egypt would say, “When you … observe them on the delivery stool.” The command “if it is a boy, kill him” is also ironic, because it reveals that Pharaoh thought men were the threat. In fact, it was the women who continued to outfox him. His fear of the Hebrews’ ever-increasing numbers caused him to escalate his policy to infanticide.
The midwives feared God (vv. 17, 21). They believed that the murder of infants was wrong in God’s eyes. The phrase feared God announces an important theme for the book of Exodus. The “fear of God” (yirʾ atʾ elohim) was the belief that certain things were wrong simply because they were contrary to the order of the life God had woven into the fabric of the created world (see 9:30; 14:31; 18:27; 20:20; also Gen. 20:11).
When Pharaoh asked, “Why have you done this?” the women responded, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” The women removed suspicion from themselves by stating what was partly true. They spared the boys through a form of “civil disobedience,” since it is unlikely they arrived too late for every birth. Pharaoh follows their impudent and courageous response with a weak one, perhaps because they had confirmed his superstitious fears. When he oppressed them, they became more numerous (v. 12). When he enlisted Shiphrah and Puah to kill baby boys, the people increased and became even more numerous (v. 20; see also v. 7). The women outmaneuvered him by reinforcing his fear with their comments about the vigor of the Hebrew women.
God gave them families (lit., “households”) of their own. God made households for them. They may have been childless previously and God gave them fertility as a reward for their courage.
Pharaoh then gave a more general command, “Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile.” The word “Nile” is an Egyptian loan word that simply means “water” or “canal.” In Egypt, that usually meant the Nile River and its tributaries. What had begun as forced residency escalated to forced labor, then to increased brutality, to a policy of forced infanticide, and finally to a general order to all his people to kill Hebrew babies.
The drowning of babies, albeit cruel, seems like an ineffective method for a pharaoh who could have killed them by the sword to employ. The command sets up several deep ironies for the continuing narrative. Is the Nile a source of life or of death? Who is ruler of the great river, if not the one who would turn it to blood? Who would God drown in the Reed Sea, but the Egyptians (14:28)? God repeats the pattern of using creational means that “match the crime” to resolve injustice throughout the Pentateuch and the Prophets.
A second irony prevails, for Pharaoh repeated the command to let every girl live. As we will see in Exodus 2, females were more than capable of thwarting the machinations of the mighty pharaoh. In spite of their resistance, it is clear that the Hebrew people need salvation. Pharaoh’s command sets up a narrative tension for the birth of Moses in Exodus 2:1.[2]
1:15–17 the midwives feared God. These brave, older women reverenced their God and thus obeyed Him and not man. They obviously understood that children were a gift from God and that murder was wrong. The two midwives mentioned by name were probably the leading representatives of their profession, for it is unlikely that such a burgeoning population had only two midwives to deal with all the births.[3]
1:15–22 The Hebrew midwives (v. 15) show through their defiant actions that they feared God (vv. 17, 21) more than they feared the king of Egypt (v. 17). For the narrator to say this twice shows that he commends them for their faith. Also, this narrative names so few people (not even naming the pharaohs!) that it is probably a further display of the narrator’s approval of the women’s deeds that he gives their names, Shiphrah and Puah (v. 15), a detail unnecessary for describing the events themselves. The faithfulness of the midwives is also an indication that there were those among the people of Israel who feared God after all the years of enslavement and before there was any knowledge of God’s call of Moses. The exemplary actions of the midwives signify a central theme of the book of Exodus: Israel is called to fear God above any other ruler, nation, or circumstance.[4]
1:17 had said to them In disobeying Pharaoh, the Hebrew midwives were motivated by their loyalty to Yahweh, and a sense of moral rightness derived from their faith in Yahweh. God rewarded the midwives for their actions (v. 21).[5]
[1] Campbell, I. D. (2006). Opening up Exodus (p. 24). Leominster: Day One Publications.
[2] Bruckner, J. K. (2012). Exodus. (W. W. Gasque, R. L. Hubbard Jr., & R. K. Johnston, Eds.) (pp. 22–24). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.
[3] MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (2006). The MacArthur study Bible: New American Standard Bible. (Ex 1:15–17). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
[4] Crossway Bibles. (2008). The ESV Study Bible (pp. 145–146). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.
[5] Barry, J. D., Mangum, D., Brown, D. R., Heiser, M. S., Custis, M., Ritzema, E., … Bomar, D. (2012, 2016). Faithlife Study Bible (Ex 1:17). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
Truth2Freedom's Blog 