aa5874

Rhutchin, the entire story is a lie. Pharoah could have killed any child he wanted. The story is absurd.

When Herod wanted to kill all the babies, didn't he just kill them! And even Herod's genocidal act cannot be traced in history.

The story of Exodus 1:15-22 is just downright ridiculous. These Biblical authors have the minds of six year old children.

Amaleq13

"Saved", obviously. That does not, as you would have it, suggest a passive allowing of the children to be born but an active effort on their part. IOW, they are not described as simply allowing the children to be born but actually saving them.

rhutchin

Let's look at what Exodus 1 says--

17 But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive.
18 So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, and saved the male children alive?”
19 And the midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are lively and give birth before the midwives come to them.”

The midwives claim that the Hebrew women give birth before the midwives come. This implies to me that they delay their arrival until after the child is born. When you say that the midwives actually save the boy babies, what do you think they actually do?

rhutchin

Whether the story is true is for each of us to decide.

The challenge here is to discover what the text is telling the reader.

Toto

Childbirth in Biblical times was full of danger, and was not undertaken alone. It is obvious from the context that the midwives were covering up their failure to kill the male babies with a little white lie.

Amaleq13

Yes and that claim conflicts with the previous statement that they had saved them.

I agree that is what their later claim implies but that is obviously at odds with the previous description we are given of what actually happened. We are told that they saved the children even though they claimed they weren't present for the birth. That they were lying to avoid being accused of disobeying Pharaoh is rather obvious.

Their jobs as midwives, obviously.

rhutchin

It is possible to read the statements as being in conflict but I see no a priori requirement to do this. We are told that the midwives saved the babies, so we should expect that they had a hand in accomplishing this. That the midwives are recorded to have told Pharaoh that they arrived after the baby was born allows for the midwives to have acted to delay their arrival until after the baby was born. The reader is not required to read this passage as requiring that the midwife delivered the baby and then lied to Pharoah about what had happened. The midwives did the only thing that was within their power to both obey Pharaoh and avoid killing the boy babies. They did not attend the birth of the baby but arrived afterward to see that all was going well.

rhutchin

Childbirth is a normal, natural activity that can occur with no one present to help the mother give birth. I don't see any reason to conclude that it was "full of danger" in Biblical times or non-Biblical times. There are reasons why a child or the mother might die in childbirth that would happen even if the midwife were present. About all a midwife would (or could) do is catch the baby and toss the afterbirth.

Anat

Childbirth and its complications is a serious source of morbidity and mortality for women in peasant societies and other preindustrial societies. Few women choose to give birth unassisted in such societies, and those who do are more often than not multiparous women.

The main source of complications is the relatively huge size of the head of the human newborn together with limitations on the width of the mother's pelvis imposed by upright walking. In other primate species the infant is born facing the mother, so she can pull it out (in some species the infant can actively hoist itself up once the arms are free), unwind the umbilical cord if it is wrapped around the neck and wipe the mucous from the infant's mouth. In human birth, with the infant usually born facing away from the mother such assistance has to be provided by another person. Midwives are essential for dealing with cord mishaps of all sorts, and for verifying no parts of the placenta have been retained (which might cause dangerous bleeding) and encourage (whether by mechanical or herbal means) the expulsion of such retained placenta remnants. These are just some of the ways midwives provide essential help at a birth in a pre-industrial society.

Toto

Glen Morton has an interesting comment here. quoting Wenda Trevathan