Exodus 1:16

World English Bible

Contextual Overview

¹⁵ The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah, ¹⁶ and he said, "When you perform the duty of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birth stool; if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live." ¹⁷ But the midwives feared God, and didn't do what the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the baby boys alive. ¹⁸ The king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said to them, "Why have you done this thing, and have saved the men-children alive?" ¹⁹ The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women aren't like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous, and give birth before the midwife comes to them." ²⁰ God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied, and grew very mighty. ²¹ It happened, because the midwives feared God, that he gave them families. ²² Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, "You shall cast every son who is born into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive."

Bible Verse Review
  from Treasury of Scripure Knowledge

and see them: Or, rather, "and ye see them by the stone-troughs;" for so ovnayim, from aven, a stone, seems to signify - compare Exodus 7:19, in which they washed the new-born infants. See this subject fully illustrated in Fragments to Calmet, Nos. 312, 313.

then ye shall: Exodus 1:22, Matthew 21:38, Revelation 12:4

Reciprocal: Exodus 18:11 - in the thing Numbers 20:15 - vexed us Deuteronomy 26:6 - General 2 Samuel 13:28 - commanded Psalms 105:25 - to hate Ecclesiastes 4:1 - and considered Jeremiah 31:2 - The people Daniel 3:10 - hast made Hebrews 11:23 - the king's

Cross-References

Genesis 1:7
God made the expanse, and divided the waters which were under the expanse from the waters which were above the expanse, and it was so.

Genesis 1:8
God called the expanse sky. There was evening and there was morning, a second day.

Genesis 1:9
God said, "Let the waters under the sky be gathered together to one place, and let the dry land appear," and it was so.

Genesis 1:12
The earth brought forth grass, herbs yielding seed after their kind, and trees bearing fruit, with its seed in it, after their kind: and God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:14
God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of sky to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years;

Deuteronomy 4:19
and lest you lift up your eyes to the sky, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of the sky, you are drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which Yahweh your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole sky.

Job 31:26
If I have seen the sun when it shined, Or the moon moving in splendor,

Job 38:7
When the morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shouted for joy?

Psalms 8:3
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, The moon and the stars, which you have ordained;

Psalms 19:6
His going forth is from the end of the heavens, His circuit to the ends of it; There is nothing hid from the heat of it.

Gill's Notes on the Bible

And he said, when ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women,.... Deliver them of their children:

and see [them] upon the stools; seats for women in labour to sit upon, and so contrived, that the midwives might do their office the more readily; but while they sat there, and before the birth, they could not tell whether the child was a son or a daughter; wherefore Kimchi h thinks the word here used signifies the place to which the infant falls down from its mother's belly, at the time of labour, and is called the place of the breaking forth of children, and takes it to be the "uterus" itself; and says it is called "Abanim", because "Banim", the children, are there, and supposes "A" or "Aleph" to be an additional letter; and so the sense then is, not when ye see the women on the seats, but the children in the place of coming forth; but then he asks, if it be so, why does he say, "and see them" there? could they see them before they were entirely out of the womb? to which he answers, they know by this rule, if a son, its face was downwards, and if a daughter, its face was upwards; how true this is, must be left to those that know better; the Jewish masters i constantly and positively affirm it: he further observes, that the word is of the dual number, because of the two valves of the womb, through which the infant passes:

if it be a son, then ye shall kill him; give it a private pinch as it comes forth, while under their hands, that its death might seem to be owing to the difficulty of its birth, or to something that happened in it. This was ordered, because what the king had to fear from the Israelites was only from the males, and they only could multiply their people; and because of the above information of his magicians, if there is any truth in that:

but if it be a daughter, then she shall live, be kept alive, and preserved, and brought up to woman's estate; and this the king chose to have done, having nothing to fear from them, being of the feeble sex, and that they might serve to gratify the lust of the Egyptians, who might be fond of Hebrew women, being more beautiful than theirs; or that they might be married and incorporated into Egyptian families, there being no males of their own, if this scheme took place, to match with them, and so by degrees the whole Israelitish nation would be mixed with, and swallowed up in the Egyptian nation, which was what was aimed at.

h Sepher Shorash. rad. אבן. i T. Bab. Sotah, fol. 11. 1. Niddah, fol. 31. 2.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Upon the stools - Literally, “two stones.” The word denotes a special seat, such as is represented on monuments of the 18th Dynasty, and is still used by Egyptian midwives.

Clarke's Notes on the Bible

Verse Exodus 1:16. Upon the stools — על האבנים al haobnayim. This is a difficult word, and occurs nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible but in Jeremiah 18:3, where we translate it the potter's wheels. As אכי signifies a stone, the obnayim has been supposed to signify a stone trough, in which they received and washed the infant as soon as born. Jarchi, in his book of Hebrew roots, gives a very different interpretation of it; he derives it from בן ben, a son, or בנים banim, children; his words must not be literally translated, but this is the sense: "When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and ye see that the birth is broken forth, if it be a son, then ye shall kill him." Jonathan ben Uzziel gives us a curious reason for the command given by Pharaoh to the Egyptian women: "Pharaoh slept, and saw in his sleep a balance, and behold the whole land of Egypt stood in one scale, and a lamb in the other; and the scale in which the lamb was outweighed that in which was the land of Egypt. Immediately he sent and called all the chief magicians, and told them his dream. And Janes and Jimbres, (see 2 Timothy 3:8). who were chief of the magicians, opened their mouths and said to Pharaoh, 'A child is shortly to be born in the congregation of the Israelites, whose hand shall destroy the whole land of Egypt.' Therefore Pharaoh spake to the midwives, &c."