Mistranslating Exodus 1:19

 

The Book of Exodus starts with the rise if a new pharaoh who begins to persecute the Jews after they had lived in peace for at least 70 years while Joseph was vizier of Egypt and for some 30 years thereafter.

As part of pharaoh’s plan: to undermine the growing Jewish population and encourage assimilation through marriage, the two Jewish midwives, Shiphrah and Puah (verse 15), were ordered to kill all male newborns during delivery -- so it would look as if the males were stillborn or otherwise died of complications.

 

טז  וַיֹּאמֶר, בְּיַלֶּדְכֶן אֶת-הָעִבְרִיּוֹת, וּרְאִיתֶן, עַל-הָאָבְנָיִם:  אִם-בֵּן הוּא וַהֲמִתֶּן אֹתוֹ, וְאִם-בַּת הִוא וָחָיָה.

16 and he said: 'When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, ye shall look upon the birthstool: if it be a son, then ye shall kill him; but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.'

                                                                                          http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0201.htm

 

When, Shiphrah and Puah did not follow the pharaoh’s orders, they were called before pharoah to explain the successful birth of Jewish males.  The pharaoh would certainly have been very upset and might well have been ready to order their deaths.  After all, they had failed to carry out a royal command.

 

So the midwives’ argument in their own defense and its exact wording is important, as the irate pharaoh forgave them. They were allowed to live.

 

What was their successful defense?

 

The Hebrew is clear and it is a very clever ruse.  

 

יט  וַתֹּאמַרְןָ הַמְיַלְּדֹת אֶל-פַּרְעֹה, כִּי לֹא כַנָּשִׁים הַמִּצְרִיֹּת הָעִבְרִיֹּת:  כִּי-חָיוֹת הֵנָּה, בְּטֶרֶם תָּבוֹא אֲלֵהֶן הַמְיַלֶּדֶת וְיָלָדוּ.

19 And the midwives said unto Pharaoh: 'Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwife come unto them.

                                                  http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0201.htm

 

The Hebrew text's use of the word   חָיוֹת  is the key to the midwives’ defense.חָיוֹת 

 

The Jewish Mechon-Mamre above, following the King James translation, uses “lively” as does the Hertz Chumash but the Art Scroll Chumash translates  חָיוֹת as "experts".

 

The Septuagint’s (3^rd century BCE) Greek translation politely leaves out this section and merely states :

19 And the midwives said to Pharao, The Hebrew women are not as the women of Egypt, for they are delivered before the midwives go in to them. So they bore children.

                                                            http://ecmarsh.com/lxx/Exodus/index.htm

 

Onkelos  (c. 35–120 CE) uses the term חכימן for “cunning/knowledgeable’ and Targum Jonathan uses “sturdy /’courageous” or “vivacious” (http://targum.info/onk/ExOnk1_5.htm; http://targum.info/pj/pjex1-6.htm).

 

The Latin Vulgate (done between 382 to 405 CE) translates the text:

19.  Quæ responderunt: Non sunt Hebreæ sicut ægyptiæ mulieres: ipsæ enim obstetricandi habent scientiam, et priusquam veniamus ad eas, pariunt.

  “ They responded: The Hebrews are not like the Egyptian women; for they have knowledge of obstetrics and give birth before we come to them.”         [my translation]

 

Of the 42 English Christian translations cited at Bible Gateway, the term “lively” from The King James Version (completed 1611)  is used most often, or ”vigorous”, but “strong” (NLV; NIRV); “so healthy” (NOG; GW); “knowledge of the craft of midwifing”  (WYC) ; “skillful in the office       of a midwife” (DRA); and “hearty and energetic ”(VOICE)  are also used. (http://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Exodus%201:19 )

 

 

Unfortunately, the simple or Pshat reading of  חָיוֹת –one any child familiar with basic Modern or Biblical Hebrew (from Genesis 2:24-25 onward)  knows – is that  חָיוֹת  means “animals” or “beasts”.

 

Put simply, the midwives’ defense was that the Hebrew women were ‘wild beasts’ unlike the normal, human Egyptians.

 

And wording the parallel as a metaphor rather than a simile makes the claim -- “they are animals” -- even more emphatic.

 

The midwives’ word choices - כִּי-חָיוֹת הֵנָּה  - are unflinching, derogatory in tone and,  I suggest, were chosen to play into pharaoh’s prejudices.

 

How could he blame them if the Hebrew women -- like wild animals -- did not need normal assistance and thereby prevented the midwives from complying with pharaoh’s orders: to secretly kill the male newborns?

 

The crude, defamatory and shocking reference to חָיוֹת helped save the midwives.

 

P.S.  Yes, Rashi  (1040-1105) , after preferring a reading of “expert midwives” following Onkelos, and seeing חָיוֹת as a word-play on the Aramaic for midwife as used by Onkelos, acknowledges that the Rabbis did read the text as “animals of the field.” However, Rashi gives numerous examples where parallels to animals are laudatory and a positive: as in Jacob’s blessings to his sons, Genesis 49, where they are compared to various animals such as a lion or deer.   

In the context of the meeting with pharaoh, it is highly unlikely that the midwives would have put such a ‘spin’ on the word חָיוֹת. After all, their lives were on the line as they faced pharaoh’s anger and certain death.

 

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Again, relying on the translations puts the reader at the mercy of pious or other ‘interpolations’ which, at times, are designed to protect the reader and his or her sensibilities.

Wherever possible, it is important to read the original.