Knobel has at length decided in favour of this explanation, at which the Targumists hint with their מתברא. When the midwives were called in to assist at a birth, they were to look carefully at the vagina; and if the child were a boy, they were to destroy it as it came out of the womb. וחיה for חייה rof ו from חיי, see Gen 3:22. The w takes kametz before the major pause, as in Gen 44:9 (cf. Ewald, §243a).
Verse 17
But the midwives feared God (ha-Elohim, the personal, true God), and did not execute the king's command.
verses 18-19
When questioned upon the matter, the explanation which they gave was, that the Hebrew women were not like the delicate women of Egypt, but were חיות “vigorous” (had much vital energy: Abenezra), so that they gave birth to their children before the midwives arrived. They succeeded in deceiving the king with this reply, as childbirth is remarkably rapid and easy in the case of Arabian women (see Burckhardt, Beduinen, p. 78; Tischendorf, Reise i. p. 108).
verses 20-21
God rewarded them for their conduct, and “made them houses,” i.e., gave them families and preserved their posterity. In this sense to “make a house” in 2Sa 7:11 is interchanged with to “build a house” in 2Sa 7:27 (vid., Rth 4:11). להם for להן as in Gen 31:9, etc. Through not carrying out the ruthless command of the king, they had helped to build up the families of Israel, and their own families were therefore built up by God. Thus God rewarded them, “not, however, because they lied, but because they were merciful to the people of God; it was not their falsehood therefore that was rewarded, but their kindness (more correctly, their fear of God), their benignity of mind, not the wickedness of their lying; and for the sake of what was good, God forgave what was evil.” (Augustine, contra mendac. c. 19.)
Verse 22
The failure of his second plan drove the king to acts of open violence. He issued commands to all his subjects to throw every Hebrew boy that was born into the river (i.e., the Nile). The fact, that this command, if carried out, would necessarily have resulted in the extermination of Israel, did not in the least concern the tyrant; and this cannot be adduced as forming any objection to the historical credibility of the narrative, since other cruelties of a similar kind are to be found recorded in the history of the world. Clericus has cited the conduct of the Spartans towards the helots. Nor can the numbers
