Shiphrah and Puah
Shiphrah and Puah were two midwives who briefly prevented a genocide of children by the Egyptians, according to Exodus 1:15–21. According to the Exodus narrative, they were commanded by the King of Egypt, or Pharaoh, to kill all male Hebrew babies, but they refused to do so. When challenged by the Pharaoh, they told him Hebrew women's labour was short-lived because they were 'lively' or 'vigorous', and the babies had been born before the midwives arrived. God "dealt well with the midwives" and "made them houses".
Exodus 1:15–1:21
Interpretations
The Babylonian Talmud, tracate Sotah 11b, identifies Shiphrah with Jochebed, the mother of Moses, and Puah with Miriam, Moses' sister, making the two midwives mother and daughter, respectively. See, for example, Judah Loew ben Bezalel's Gur Aryeh: Sifrei Chachamim."The midwives feared God"
The Torah has no word for religion. The closest related concept found in the Torah is what it calls "the fear of God" in Exodus 1:17. The midwives apparently believed that God's moral demands outweighed Pharaoh's legal demands. For this reason, author Francine Klagsbrun said that the midwives' refusal to follow the Pharaoh's genocidal instructions "may be the first known incident of civil disobedience in history." Theologian Jonathan Magonet agrees, calling them "the earliest, and in some ways the most powerful, examples, of resistance to an evil regime".The "fear of God" theme is reversed a few verses later when Pharaoh commands the Egyptian people to carry out the genocide. The Egyptians apparently feared Pharaoh more than they feared God, and therefore, participated in the crime. Joseph Telushkin compared Shiphrah and Puah's defection with the rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust, many of whom had been religious. Those who aided the Nazis, on the other hand, feared the Nazis' power more than they feared God's judgment.