Are there laws we are morally bound to disobey? The Bible says yes. It gives us history’s first recorded example. Its heroes are the midwives Shifra and Puah, and their story unfolds in the Book of Exodus.

In Exodus 1:16 Pharaoh says to them, “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” This was a slow and deliberate genocide of the Jewish people.

The midwives, however, did not comply. When Pharaoh confronted them, they told him the Hebrew women gave birth too quickly, and they could not arrive in time to take the boys.

Why Did They Disobey? 

What motivated the midwives to act in this way? Were they Hebrew women unafraid of Pharaoh? Or perhaps they were Egyptian women who could not bear to take a child’s life?

The Bible is ambiguous on their identities. They could have been Egyptians or Hebrew. I believe the ambiguity is deliberate. 

Their actions emerged out of a morality and sense of justice that transcends nationality, religion or culture. Their faith rested in a higher power. In defying the Pharaoh, they become,  as Jonathan Sacks puts it, “heroines of the spirit, grants in in the story of humankind.”

Their legacy is our blessing.