Shiphrah and Puah step onto the biblical stage at a dark hour and shine with a light that does not fade. They are introduced as Hebrew midwives at a time when Pharaoh had chained Israel with forced labor and then sharpened the cruelty into a decree against infant sons (Exodus 1:13–16). Their story turns on a simple line that carries holy weight: “The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live” (Exodus 1:17). In a narrative where a king goes nameless and two women are named, Scripture teaches us what heaven calls greatness.
Their courage preserved life and protected the covenant people at the brink of extinction. The God who had promised to make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation and to bless all nations through his seed would not allow that promise to be choked off by a tyrant’s order (Genesis 12:2–3). He worked through hands that brought babies into the world and through hearts that trembled at His name. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” and that wisdom guided choices that defied a throne and delighted the King of heaven (Proverbs 9:10).
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Historical and Cultural Background
Israel’s growth in Egypt began as a story of mercy and hospitality. Joseph had brought his father and brothers into the land during famine, and they settled in Goshen with Pharaoh’s blessing (Genesis 47:5–6). Generations later the tone changed. “Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt,” and he said, “Look, the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them” (Exodus 1:8–10). Shrewdness turned to slavery. The Egyptians made Israel serve “with rigor,” embittering their lives with hard labor in brick and mortar and in every kind of field work (Exodus 1:13–14). Oppression did not still the promise; the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread (Exodus 1:12).
When fear hardens, cruelty follows. Pharaoh summoned Shiphrah and Puah and commanded a policy that aimed at the nation’s future. “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live” (Exodus 1:16). The command was surgical and sinister, turning the hands that welcome life into weapons against it. In that ancient world midwives were trusted figures who moved quietly through homes and villages. Pharaoh tried to turn that trust to violence. Scripture names the midwives and withholds the king’s name so that readers will remember not the face of power but the fear of God that rises above it (Exodus 1:15–17).
The wider background helps us feel the weight of their choice. God had pledged to Abraham that his offspring would be strangers in a country not their own, enslaved and mistreated for four hundred years, but He would punish the nation they served and bring them out with great possessions (Genesis 15:13–14). The stage of Exodus 1 is the foretold bondage. The covenant promise still stands above it, and the Lord’s eye is on every child born into that oppression. He who “defends the fatherless and the widow” and “loves the foreigner” set His love on a people kept low and used two lowly servants to accomplish His will (Deuteronomy 10:18). The fear of God is not a vague feeling in this story; it is a settled loyalty to the Lord that refuses to call evil good.
Biblical Narrative
The narrative is spare and strong. Shiphrah and Puah received the order, and they declined to obey. The text does not linger on their inner life, but it gives us the reason: they feared God (Exodus 1:17). That fear is not terror that shrinks back; it is reverence that bows low and then stands firm. Their hands kept receiving sons, and those sons kept crying into the air and being placed into the arms of mothers and fathers who had braced themselves for the worst. The quiet resistance could not remain hidden. “Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, ‘Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?’” (Exodus 1:18). Their answer was shrewd and disarming: “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive” (Exodus 1:19).
The narrator does not evaluate their words with a moral footnote, but he tells us what God did next. “So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own” (Exodus 1:20–21). The blessing fits their calling. Women who spent their days serving other families received homes of their own as a token of God’s pleasure. The growth of Israel accelerated under pressure because the God who promised children to Abraham kept making room for them in a hostile land (Exodus 1:7; Exodus 1:20).
Pharaoh’s fury turned outward when his covert plan failed. “Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: ‘Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live’” (Exodus 1:22). Violence moved from the delivery stool to the riverbank, from the hands of a few to the hands of a whole society. Yet even that decree became the path by which the Lord prepared a deliverer. A Levite woman bore a son, hid him three months, placed him among the reeds in a basket coated with pitch, and watched as he was drawn from the water by Pharaoh’s daughter and named Moses, “because I drew him out of the water” (Exodus 2:1–10). The line from the midwives’ fear of God to the birth and rescue of Moses is not an accident. Covenant mercy is quietly at work behind the scenes, writing a story the mighty cannot halt.
Theological Significance
The fear of God stands at the center of this passage, and Scripture helps us hear what that means. The fear of the Lord is clean and enduring; it leads to wisdom and turns from evil (Psalm 19:9; Proverbs 1:7; Proverbs 8:13). In practice it means that God’s voice outweighs every other voice when orders collide. When rulers later commanded the apostles to stop preaching in Jesus’ name, they replied, “We must obey God rather than human beings” (Acts 5:29). Shiphrah and Puah stood in that same stream of loyalty. Their refusal was not loud, but it was firm, and it made clear that there is a higher throne and a higher law. “The fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe” (Proverbs 29:25).
This passage also advances the storyline of God’s covenant with Israel within a dispensational reading that honors the distinct roles of Israel and the church. God had set His love on the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and promised to make them a nation through whom blessing would reach the world (Genesis 12:3; Deuteronomy 7:7–8). The midwives’ courage preserved sons in a moment when a nation’s future hung by a thread, and the Lord used their faithfulness to keep the covenant line alive for a deliverer to be raised up in due time (Exodus 2:1–10). The church looks back at that history with gratitude but does not replace it. We learn from it how God keeps promises to Israel and how His purposes move forward through humble obedience even under hostile rule (Romans 15:4; Romans 11:29).
A third thread runs through the text and points to the heart of God. He names the lowly and resists the proud. Pharaoh’s title is enough for the story’s purposes; his personal name is not worth recording here, while the midwives’ names are preserved for all generations (Exodus 1:15). Mary will sing a similar truth many centuries later: God has scattered the proud, lifted up the humble, and filled the hungry with good things (Luke 1:51–53). The God who “settles the childless woman in her home as a happy mother of children” showed that kindness to Shiphrah and Puah when He gave them families in return for their reverent defiance (Psalm 113:9; Exodus 1:21). In this way the narrative celebrates the character of the Lord as the defender of life and the rewarder of those who seek Him (Hebrews 11:6).
Spiritual Lessons and Application
First, the text calls us to honor life because God is the Author of life. The decree that targeted newborn boys was an assault on God’s image in the smallest and weakest. The midwives’ refusal rose from a fear of God that treasures what He treasures. Scripture teaches that human beings are made in God’s image and are to be protected and cherished, and it binds that truth to everyday choices in home and community (Genesis 1:27; Psalm 139:13–16). A people who revere the Lord will not quietly accept the destruction of the vulnerable. They will welcome life, protect mothers and children, and labor for just ways that reflect God’s heart for the helpless (James 1:27; Proverbs 31:8–9).
Second, the passage teaches a wise and peaceable boldness when earthly authority commands what God forbids. The apostles’ answer—“We must obey God rather than human beings”—does not cancel the general call to honor rulers, pray for them, and live quiet lives that adorn the gospel (Acts 5:29; Romans 13:1–7; 1 Timothy 2:1–2). It sets a boundary line where faithfulness must take its stand. Shiphrah and Puah did not organize a public protest; they simply and steadfastly refused to become agents of death. Their answer to Pharaoh shows prudence as well as courage, but the text is clear that the root of their action was the fear of God (Exodus 1:17–19). The Lord who sees the heart judged their choice and blessed them, and that verdict steadies believers who face costly decisions in their own time (1 Samuel 16:7; Exodus 1:20–21).
Third, the story invites us to trust God’s providence in small obediences. The rescue of Moses follows immediately after the midwives’ story, as if to show that the Lord’s great deliverances are often prepared by hidden faithfulness in humble places (Exodus 2:1–10). The same pattern repeats throughout Scripture. Ruth’s gleaning leads to David’s line and to the birth of the Messiah (Ruth 2:3; Matthew 1:5). A boy’s lunch in the hands of Jesus feeds thousands and teaches disciples to depend on the Lord who multiplies small offerings (John 6:9–11). We do not always see how our choices fit into God’s tapestry, but we know the One who weaves it, and we can take courage that He wastes nothing done in His fear and love (1 Corinthians 15:58; Galatians 6:9).
Finally, the narrative calls God’s people to resist the snare of fear and to cultivate the fear that frees. Fear of man narrows vision and breeds compromise; the fear of the Lord enlarges the heart and steadies the will (Proverbs 29:25; Psalm 34:9). Shiphrah and Puah did not know how their story would unfold. They only knew the name they must honor. God met them with kindness in this life and built into their labor the preservation of a nation and the preparation for a redeemer. “Those who honor me I will honor,” the Lord says, and though that promise does not guarantee ease, it does guarantee His nearness and help (1 Samuel 2:30; Psalm 46:1). In a world that confuses power with worth, their names ring like a bell in Scripture, reminding us whose praise matters and whose smile steadies the soul.
Conclusion
The midwives’ story is brief, but its reach is long. It begins with a command that stings the conscience and ends with a blessing that warms the heart. Between those lines stands the fear of God, which led two women to let boys live when a king wanted them dead. Their courage did more than save lives in the moment; it served God’s plan to preserve Israel in Egypt until the time came to bring them out with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm (Exodus 12:51; Deuteronomy 26:8). Their names endure while Pharaoh’s does not in this chapter, because the Spirit wants readers to feel the weight of heaven’s verdict on what greatness is (Exodus 1:15–17).
For the church, this passage is Scripture written to teach and steady, not to erase Israel’s story but to learn from it with gratitude and humility (Romans 15:4). We see how God upholds life, resists pride, rewards reverence, and moves His promises forward through unlikely servants. We hear again the voice that anchors all holy boldness: “We must obey God rather than human beings” (Acts 5:29). And we are invited to answer with the fear that frees, the love that acts, and the hope that looks for God’s help. The Lord who named Shiphrah and Puah knows every act done for His sake, and He delights to write ordinary faithfulness into the story of His redeeming grace (Hebrews 6:10).
So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. (Exodus 1:20–21)
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