BRAGADAYJAH 165

The new King of Egypt, as has been said above was troubled by the huge horde that the 70 descendants of Israel had become. The King felt they were a potential threat for said he, “Less as they multiply and in the event of an outbreak of war they should side with the enemy and by so doing overcome us and take over our land.” The solution, therefore, was to divide them up into small work groups and set taskmasters over each group and to give them onerous task to perform. To this end the Israelites were used as hard laborers to build cities for the Pharaoh. Overworking them and underfeeding them the King felt sure, was bound to stunt their growth. However, the more the Israelites were afflicted, the more they increased and grew in every respect. Seeing the way they continued to prosper, the Egyptians made their tasks even more rigorous; but nothing seemed to work. The king had an idea; if hard work could not stop or kill these people what about genocide? The adults were needed for the king’s work so he resorted to limited genocide, that is to say, killing only the infants born to the Hebrews. Therefore, the king gave orders to the two Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, to kill all the male children born to the Hebrew women; but the midwives feared God and did not do as the King commanded them. When the King saw that sons of Hebrew women were being spared and not being killed as the king had commanded, he called the two midwives and demanded an explanation. Accordingly they had an answer prepared for the King. They told the king that the Hebrew women were not like Egyptian women. The Hebrew women, they told the King, were strong and would born their children without help of midwife; so that by the time they got the news that a birth was on its way, the child would be long born before the midwife could arrive at the scene, by which time it was too late to smother it. And so it was that God blessed and prospered the two Hebrew midwives because they had acted out of fear of God. And the Hebrews continued to grow into larger and larger numbers. At that stage the King became desperate; whereas the midwives were to kill the infant males while being delivered, to make them look like still-born births, the king now ordered all his people that every Hebrew male child that is born should be cast into the river, saving only the female new born only. More