Two Midwives and the Job You Are Told to Do

It is easy to miss what a strange thing the writer of Exodus does in chapter 1. The most powerful man in the known world is called simply the king of Egypt. Two midwives are named: Shiphrah and Puah. The text wants us to remember them and not him.

What they did was not dramatic. They were given an instruction by their employer, in effect, that they could not carry out and remain faithful to God. So they did not carry it out. They kept delivering babies, they kept the boys alive, and when questioned they gave an answer that protected the children. The passage says they feared God, and that God was kind to them and gave them families of their own.

Most of us will never face an order like theirs. But nearly all of us face smaller versions: the report we are asked to shade, the customer we are told to mislead, the corner that everyone cuts. The lesson for an ordinary week is that faithfulness at work is mostly a matter of quiet refusals and steady competence. You do the job well, and you decline the part of it that God forbids, and you leave the consequences with him. Nobody may write your name down. He will.