The Hebrew Midwives

Evil men do not easily give up their schemes, but they frequently try to find new ways to accomplish a sinister goal when their plans do not come to fruition. In today’s passage, we learn that the pharaoh who attempted to control Israel’s population through forced labor did not cease trying to reduce the Israelite population when his initial efforts failed. Instead, he moved to a more direct method of eliminating the perceived threat of the Israelites by ordering the Hebrew midwives to put to death male Hebrew children as they were born (Ex. 1:15–16).

Moses says that the midwives whom the pharaoh addressed were named Shiphrah and Puah. Since there were almost certainly many more midwives among the Israelites, these two women likely held some kind of seniority and would be the ones to instruct the other midwives in their duties. Commentators point out that these women are the only individuals named in the early chapters of Exodus besides Jacob’s sons and members of Moses’ family. Not even the pharaoh, the most powerful earthly king in his day, is named. We should not miss the significance here. These women are remembered because they feared God and did not obey the pharaoh’s evil command (v. 17).

In the world’s eyes, these women would not have been very significant at all and would have been hardly worth being remembered. We like to celebrate and memorialize the great leaders in world history, but God evaluates things differently. These women are named and remembered because though they were ordinary laborers, their faith led them to do the extraordinary thing of disobeying the pharaoh. They chose to obey God rather than men (see Acts 5:27–29). In so doing, they changed the course of world history and were the means through which the Lord continued His chosen people in that era and thus the people from whom the Messiah would come to bless the world. So, they are remembered in the biblical text. Let us not miss how encouraging this is to us. If God can use ordinary people for great things, then He can use us, and He will remember our faith and obedience even if it never gets inscribed in a history book.

To disobey the pharaoh was to risk one’s life, but the midwives chose to obey the Lord by disobeying the king. As one commentator notes, they were willing to die rather than commit murder, fearing more what God might do to them after their death than they feared death itself.