Do you fear God enough to use you to make alive some targeted destinies, by protecting who God has placed in your care?
I recently came across these two women in one of my devotions both of whom I have never heard anyone talked or preached about. This makes me wonder why they have been overlooked or maybe it has been an oversight. In my opinion, what they both did was so significant that they should be talked about, and this should also make them very prominent and popular, as it contributed to the fulfillment of God’s covenant in the Jewish history. In fact their names should be among the women heroes of the Bible. Shiphrah and Puah were Hebrew women, and they were both midwives living in Egypt.
Midwives, as we know, care for women and their babies during pregnancies, labour and birth with little intervention. From my own perspective, I believe midwives are in a position where they have the capacity to tamper with babies lives either to safe it or cut it short-( the wolves in sheep’s clothing) not only in midwives do we have the bad egg but in all facet of lives. It’s all in their capacity to do and undo.
No wonder Pharaoh was thinking he could get the bad egg among the Hebrews’ midwives to carry out his evil agenda of killing all the Hebrew male infants, because he was angry they were too many, and feared they might take over his territory. Unfortunately for him, he asked Shiphrah and Puah, the two Hebrew midwives to help him in carrying out his evil agenda.
Pharaoh understood the importance of the midwives and how vital their input is in bringing new born babies into the world. Hardly is there anyone whose birth doesn’t go through the midwives delivery, even now and in those days. Pharaoh knew this truth, and that is the reason he asked the two Hebrew midwives to assist in carrying out his evil agenda, he wanted the midwives who knew their own people so well enough to hurt them.
But thanks be to God, Shiphrah and Puah feared God.
“The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” and it was this fear that made Shiphrah and Puah stand up to Pharaoh when they were being asked why there were still many male Hebrew babies. They responded in verse 19 “the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptians, they are vigorous and they don’t need the midwives because before we gets there they already had their babies”. These ladies had the options of doing the bad job, but they refused to do it because they ‘feared God’ verse 21. How amazing what the fear of God could do in our lives or make us do. When Pharaoh discovered that he could not influence these Hebrew women, he decided to use his own people.
The lessons here are: you might not be a midwife like Shiphrah and Puah, but you might be that one person God has placed in a position of influence. People’s lives might depend on you. Do you fear God enough to use you to make alive some targeted destinies, by protecting what / who God has placed in your care?
God rewarded Shiphrah and Puah by establishing their own families. Who knows what your own reward would be?
