The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives #– #the first, whose name was Shiphrah, and the second, whose name was Puah #– #
and made their lives bitter with difficult labour in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.
‘When you help the Hebrew women give birth, observe them as they deliver. If the child is a son, kill him, but if it’s a daughter, she may live.’
He answered them, ‘I’m a Hebrew. I worship the Lord, the God of the heavens, who made the sea and the dry land.’
But she had taken them up to the roof and hidden them among the stalks of flax that she had arranged on the roof.