In Pharaoh’s sinister plot, the midwives were to secretly kill the baby boys as they were being born, giving the impression of a stillbirth. Pharaoh did not expect them to kill the boys after they were born and had been seen alive. Otherwise, he would not have accepted the midwives’ excuse that the Hebrew women gave birth before the midwife had arrived (Exodus 1:19).
16 “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.”