Biblical Hebrew Forum

[<tladatsi AT charter.net>]

Hello Brian,

I will not get into the *historicity* of Ex 1:1-17 but I 
will comment on what I think the author intended to reader/
listener to understand about the story.  I would argue that 
we need to look at the entire story as whole before you can 
look at how the midwives might be interpreted.  The key 
element of the story is the fear that all Egyptians, and 
their king in particular, have for the Israelites.  They 
fear the growing number of these *resident aliens* and that 
they might support a foreign invasion.  The Egyptians hit 
upon the idea of enslaving the Israelites.  This will at a 
minimum prevent them from supporting an invasion and 
perhaps also prevent their numbers from increasing.  
However, although no invasion occurs, the more the 
Egyptians oppress the Israelites, the more they increase in 
number spread across the land (Ex1:12).  Now, the Egyptians 
fear not an external invasion but an internal uprising and 
revolution by the Israelites.  Plan A has backfired with 
more than a bit of literary irony.

Some new king hits upon Plan B.  He will get these two 
midwives to kill the male newborns of the Hebrews.  Why use 
midwives and not the army?  Because the king is afraid of 
the Hebrews.  He does not wish to move openly against them 
unless he absolutely has to.  This is to be a *covert* 
operation.  The midwives are to kill the newborn and make 
it look like the males died by accident or were stillborn.  
Midwives were skilled professionals and would know how to 
make a murder look like a stillbirth.  When this plan also 
fails, the King demands to know why.  Their excuse sounds 
like the observations of neutral medical professionals.  *
Your Highness, we tried our best, but those darned Hebrew 
women were just too much for us.*  The Kings had relied 
upon the midwives special skills to carry out Plan B but 
the midwives used their special skills to thwart the kings 
plan (a bit more of that literary irony here).  He does not 
punish them, they did their honest best to carry out his 
orders, he believes.  For him to believe this, they would 
have to be Egyptian women.

This precipitates Plan C.  Here the king orders ALL OF HIS 
PEOPLE (LVL ?MW, not just the Hebrews) to throw their 
newborn sons into the Nile.  Once more he does not openly 
attack the Hebrews because he fears rebellion.  His order 
applies to *all of his people*.  So with no small irony, 
the Egyptians suffer as much as the Hebrews from Plan C.  
The King was not careful in wording his order.  He of 
course does not actually order their death, just that they 
be thrown into the river. This is exactly what Moses mother 
does, following the kings orders to the letter, if not the 
spirit.  The net effect is (ironically) to put Moses, a 
Hebrew, into the kings own household as a son which allows 
him to effect a Hebrew rebellion which releases the Hebrews 
from slavery.  Of course it is not the rebellion the King 
expected, rather than an armed uprising, it is Yahweh who 
raises up.

Each of the Egyptian kings plans has the exact opposite 
effect of its intent, working in favor of Yahweh and the 
Hebrews.

Since Plan B is a secret operation against the feared 
Hebrews, it would make no sense that his secret agents 
would be Hebrews.   Had the author conceived of the 
midwives as Hebrews, the King would have suspected their 
cover story of the lively Hebrew women as being false.  But 
coming from an Egyptian woman, that the King would believe 
this cover story makes sense.


Jack Tladatsi