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
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