The midwives Shiphrah and Puah in Exodus 1:15-21are an interesting story in themselves. First it is unusual for women’s names to be included in the narratives of the Hebrew Bible, especially when they are bit part players. This indicates to me the significance of their part of the story.
Their resistance to the oppression of the Egyptian policy must have made a significant impact. I wonder if the story was told to children (and their descendants) saved by these midwives, preserving their names for generations until the story was recorded in written form. It is interesting that the Hebrew word that is translated “midwife” is derived from the rood yalad which contains the idea of showing lineage. In a very real sense the children they birthed owed their lineage to the act of disobedience to Pharaoh.
There are three interesting ethical themes that this passage evokes. First is the issue of infanticide. Clearly the story characterizes Pharaoh’s edict to throw the male babies into the Nile as an escalation in the evil of his previous orders to the midwives. It seems that the evil perpetrated in the order to the midwives to smother the male babies at birth is then multiplied in the order to throw the birthed babies into the river. Clearly both forms of infanticide are rejected in the story’s approbation of the midwives, but also in the triumphant rescue story of Moses that begins in chapter 2.
The second ethical theme that is hinted at is disobedience to authority. There are several places where the Bible speaks strongly about the necessity to obey civil authority.
The third is the midwives’ untruthfulness before Pharaoh.
