The Hebrew for Hebrew midwives
could be translated either as Hebrew midwives
or as midwives of the Hebrews.
In the first case, they would be Hebrew; in the second, Egyptian. Additional arguments for each option are as follows:
Hebrew:
The vowels in the Hebrew should be read as
Hebrew midwives
(notably, the vowels were added several centuries after Christ lived on earth).The midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, have Hebrew names.
Pharaoh was very powerful and could easily harm those who disobeyed him. Thus, Hebrew midwives could be expected to kill their own people out of fear of Pharaoh.
Egyptian:
The Septuagint translates this as
midwives of the Hebrews.
The midwives are familiar with both Egyptian and Hebrew women and it seems they acted as midwife to both groups (Exodus 1:16, Exodus 1:19).
It is not impossible that an Egyptian would have a Hebrew-sounding name, as in the case of Hagar (Genesis 16:1).1
It would seem unlikely that Pharoah could expect Hebrew midwives to carry out his evil plan or that he would so easily believe their excuse when they failed to do so.
In Exodus 1:22, Pharaoh gives a command to
all his people,
which assumes that first he gave a command to only a few of his people, namely, the midwives.2
On balance, it seems more likely that these midwives were Egyptians who dared to disobey their king. In that case, as with Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:5–6), God used Egyptian women to help his people. If they were Israelite, Pharaoh’s plan takes on another disturbing dimension in that he expected these women to betray and murder their own people.
15 Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,