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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Exodus 1:15 - 1:15
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As the first plan miscarried, the king proceeded to try a second, and that a bloody act of cruel despotism. He commanded the midwives to destroy the male children in the birth and to leave only the girls alive. The midwives named in Exo 1:15, who are not Egyptian but Hebrew women, were no doubt the heads of the whole profession, and were expected to communicate their instructions to their associates. וַיֹּאמֶר in Exo 1:16 resumes the address introduced by ויאמר in Exo 1:15. The expression עַל־הָאָבְנַיִם, of which such various renderings have been given, is used in Jer 18:3 to denote the revolving table of a potter, i.e., the two round discs between which a potter forms his earthenware vessels by turning, and appears to be transferred here to the vagina out of which the child twists itself, as it were like the vessel about to be formed out of the potter's discs. Knobel has at length decided in favour of this explanation, at which the Targumists hint with their מַתְבְרָא. 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. וָחָֽיָה for חָיְיָה rof וָ from חָיַי, see Gen 3:22. The w takes kametz before the major pause, as in Gen 44:9 (cf. Ewald, §243a).