The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,
They made their lives bitter by hard service with mortar and bricks and by all kinds of service in the fields. Every kind of service the Israelites were required to give was rigorous.
“When you assist the Hebrew women in childbirth, observe at the delivery: If it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she may live.”
He said to them, “I am a Hebrew! And I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”
(Now she had taken them up to the roof and had hidden them in the stalks of flax she had spread out on the roof.)