MANIFESTED IN HUMAN SOCIETY 133 



appeared as had never been known in the history of the 

 tribe. 



" And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to 

 serve with rigour : 



" And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, 

 in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in 

 the field : all their service, wherein they made them 

 serve, was with rigour. 



" And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, 

 of which the name of the one was Shiprah and the name 

 of the other Puah : 



" And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to 

 the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools ; if 

 it be a son, then ye shall kill him : but if it be a daughter, 

 then she shall live. 



" But the midwives feared God, and did not as the 

 king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men 

 children alive. 



" And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and 

 said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have 

 saved the men children alive ? 



" 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 midwives come 

 in unto them." 



This liveliness is noteworthy. Evidently then, as now, 

 difficult confinements were among the privileges of the 

 ruling classes. Those were the spacious days when every 

 freeborn and independent Egyptian claimed the right 

 to wallop his own Hebrew. But the effect of oppression 

 was to make the Israelites fertile to an unprecedented 

 degree, "and the people multiplied, and waxed very 

 mighty." The king of Egypt was at last driven to 

 desperate measures. 



