“And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.”
Pharaoh's instruction to the midwives is explicit: when you assist Hebrew women in childbirth and see the baby is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live. The command is both calculated and monstrous — targeting male infants to suppress the growth of the population while preserving female labor. This is the first recorded instance of state-sanctioned genocide in Scripture, and its echoes are felt in Herod's massacre of the innocents in Matthew 2:16, where another ruler attempts to eliminate a perceived threat by killing Israel's sons. The specificity of the order — on the birthstool, at the moment of delivery — reveals Pharaoh's willingness to corrupt even the most intimate human moment. Yet the very act of issuing this order through intermediaries suggests a limit to his power: he cannot be everywhere, and he knows it.
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