Shiphrah and Puah were two midwives who briefly prevented a genocide of children by the Egyptians, according to Exodus 1:15–21. According to the Exodus narrative, they were commanded by the King of Egypt, or Pharaoh, to kill all male Hebrew babies, but they refused to do so. When challenged by the Pharaoh, they explained that Hebrew women's labour was short-lived because they were 'lively' or 'vigorous', and therefore the babies had been born before the midwives arrived. God "dealt well with the midwives" and "made them houses".
Interpretations
The 11th century rabbi Rashi's Talmud commentary on the passage from Exodus identifies Shiphrah with Jochebed, the mother of Moses, and Puah with Miriam, Moses' sister, making the two midwives mother and daughter respectively.
"The midwives feared God"
The Torah has no word for religion. The closest related concept found in the Torah is what it calls "the fear of God". The midwives apparently believed that God's moral demands outweighed Pharaoh's legal demands. For this reason, author Francine Klagsbrun said that the midwives' refusal to follow the Pharaoh's genocidal instructions "may be the first known incident of civil disobedience in history." Theologian Jonathan Magonet agrees, calling them "the earliest, and in some ways the most powerful, examples, of resistance to an evil regime". The "fear of God" theme is reversed a few verses later when Pharaoh commands the Egyptian people to carry out the genocide. The Egyptians apparently feared Pharaoh more than they feared God, and therefore, participated in the crime. Rabbi Joseph Telushkin compared the Shiphrah and Puah's defection with the rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, many of whom had been religious. Those who aided the Nazis, on the other hand, feared the Nazis' power more than they feared God's judgment.
"Made Houses"
Commentators have interpreted Exodus 1:20–21 in various ways. Some scholars argue that the two halves of each verse are parallel, so that it is the Israelites for whom God 'made houses'. This fits with the reference in Exodus 1:1 to the children of Israel coming down to Egypt, each with his "house". However, Magonet notes that the more common view is that the houses are for the midwives - "houses" here being understood as 'dynasties'. Rabbinic thought has understood these as the houses of kehunah, leviyah, and royalty – the latter interpreted as coming from Miriam.
Names
The name Shiphrah is found in a list of slaves in Egypt during the reign of Sobekhotep III. This list is on Brooklyn 35.1446, a papyrus scroll kept in the Brooklyn Museum. The name is written šp-ra and means "to be fair" or "beautiful". The name may be related to or even the same as the Aramaic Sapphira and as Siphrah, the name of the Hebrew midwife. The name of the second midwife, Puah, is a Canaanite name which means "lass" or "little girl".
