The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 1:17

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

The midwives feared God. The midwives had a sense of religion, feared God sufficiently to decline imbruing their hands in the innocent blood of a number of defenceless infants, and, rather than do so wicked a thing, risked being punished by the monarch.

They were not, as appears by Exodus 1:19, highly religious—not of the stuff whereof martyrs are made; they did not scruple at a falsehood, believing it necessary to save their lives; and it would seem that they succeeded in deceiving the king.

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