The Courage of People Who Refuse an Unjust Order

When your work is turned against the people you serve

Someone with authority tells you to harm the people your work is supposed to protect. The instruction is clear. The person giving it can make your life difficult. You may even be told that loyalty requires silence. What remains of obedience when carrying out an order would betray your responsibility?

Exodus introduces that pressure through two women, Shiphrah and Puah. Pharaoh wants midwives to kill newborn boys. People who assist at the beginning of life are instructed to become agents of death. The women refuse. Their decision matters before Moses has been born, before the burning bush and before anyone stands before Pharaoh asking for release. ¹

This is a story about children, courage and the limits of human authority. Its hardest detail is the answer the women give when questioned. That detail deserves attention. Yet starting there can obscure the larger question: will the power of a ruler determine whether vulnerable people are allowed to live?

The fear that makes cruelty sound reasonable

The king describes the Israelites as a possible military danger. He imagines a future war in which they might join an enemy and leave the land. Exodus reports his fear and his accusation; it does not report an Israelite conspiracy that proves the accusation true. His imagined danger becomes a reason to impose actual suffering. ³

The sequence grows more severe. Taskmasters impose burdens. Labour makes life bitter. When oppression fails to halt the people’s growth, the king orders the midwives to kill boys. When their resistance defeats that plan, he commands his people to cast newborn sons into the river. The escalation is visible in the narrative itself. ^{1 2}

These acts injure mothers as well as children. The threat cannot be understood only as a contest between powerful men. Women must face the ruler’s command, the loss he intends and the responsibility of keeping others alive. Reading their position carefully restores people whom a broad account of political power can overlook. ⁴

The book remembers Shiphrah and Puah by name while leaving this king unnamed. Scholars disagree about the reason for the royal anonymity. A proposal that it deliberately erases the rulers’ memory is one explanation, not a demonstrated record of the author’s intention. The contrast is clear even while its historical origin remains disputed. ⁵

We know their names, but not everything about them

Were the midwives Hebrew women or Egyptian women serving Hebrew families? The KJV calls them Hebrew midwives. That remains the straightforward reading of the received, vocalized Hebrew text. Older translation traditions and narrative arguments, however, have led readers to propose an Egyptian identity. The debate needs more care than the claim that grammar leaves every possibility equally likely. ⁷

One proposed reading identifies Egyptian midwives, partly because Pharaoh entrusts them with killing Hebrew children and allows them to answer his questioning. These observations make a case worth considering; they do not provide full proof or settle the women’s nationality. ⁶

Josephus also describes Egyptian midwives in his retelling. His account is evidence that such an interpretation existed in antiquity. It includes material beyond the account in Exodus, so it cannot simply be substituted for the biblical narrative as a recovered transcript of what happened. ⁸

Their moral allegiance is clearer than their ancestry. They choose God’s claim over Pharaoh’s demand. That distinction allows us to honour their courage without first turning them into representatives of our preferred ethnic group. The narrative does not make the reader’s certainty about their nationality a condition of recognizing their faithfulness. ⁹

We also cannot reconstruct the entire profession from two names. Their summons before Pharaoh has prompted proposals that they held a senior or representative position among other midwives. Such a role is possible, but the text gives no organizational chart. Their responsibility and refusal are explicit; their precise rank is inferred. ¹⁹

Reverence becomes a decision

The Hebrew verb in verse 17 refers to what the midwives feared, with God as its object. The lexicon recognizes a sense of reverence and honour, explicitly including this passage. That sense belongs to the context: fear of God results in a refusal to kill. It is not a hidden meaning unlocked by a word’s supposed root. ^{10 11}

The same motivation appears again in verse 21. The repetition connects their treatment of children with their reverence. Worship reaches into conduct. They cannot divide religious devotion from the work Pharaoh wants them to perform, as though God mattered in prayer but had no claim at a birth. ¹²

Reverence here means taking God seriously enough for that relationship to govern action. It need not mean that their hands never shook or that they experienced no dread. Courage is measured by their refusal to cooperate with the killing, not by an invented description of their private feelings. ¹³

The KJV says they “saved the men children alive.” In this older wording, men children means boys. The sentence records a concrete result. The women do more than hold a disapproving opinion of the king. Their care gives children a future his command would have taken away. ¹

Does their answer make deception right?

When Pharaoh demands an explanation, the midwives say the Hebrew women give birth before they arrive. Readers have treated this as deception, evasion or a report that may contain truth. Exodus does not give the independent childbirth observations needed to verify every part of their answer. It does state why they refused the order. ¹

One enduring Christian position prohibits lying even when it appears useful. The concern is that a worthy purpose cannot by itself make false speech morally sound. That argument takes the integrity of speech seriously, and the difficult case of protecting a life cannot be answered merely by dismissing it. ¹⁴

Augustine interprets the women’s reward as recognition of their mercy, not approval of deceit. In his account, God can honour benevolence while forgiving a fault. This is his theological interpretation of the story, rather than an additional explanation that Exodus itself puts into the narrator’s mouth. ¹⁵

Aquinas similarly distinguishes their fear of God and goodwill from the lie he thinks they told. His argument also distinguishes concealing a truth prudently from uttering a falsehood. Those distinctions show why refusing a murderous command and defending every method of refusal are separate ethical questions. ¹⁶

Christian reception has not been uniform. Cassian permits exceptional deception in grave danger, while warning against treating it as ordinary practice. His example concerns Rahab. Comparing his argument with Augustine’s identifies a real historical disagreement; it does not establish a rule that any helpful lie is automatically right. ¹⁷

The article’s conclusion can be firmer where the passage is firmer. Pharaoh’s instruction to kill is wrong. The midwives are right to preserve life. Verse 21 explicitly connects God’s favour with their fear of him. Honest interpretation should preserve that clarity without pretending the difficult question of their reply has vanished. ¹

A blessing is not a formula for personal success

Exodus says God deals well with the women and makes them houses. Households or continuing families are a common interpretation of that expression, although its precise meaning has been disputed. The narrative recognizes God’s favour. It gives too little detail to reconstruct either woman’s later family, property or career. ¹⁸

Turning this reward into a promise of guaranteed wealth would change the story’s purpose. Neither the newborn boys nor their mothers are protected because they can increase the midwives’ income. Children are preserved because the women fear God. The account commends their faithfulness, not a calculation that courage is worthwhile only when it pays. ¹

The king’s final order also remains on the page. Resistance has saved lives, but the regime escalates its violence. A faithful act does not always end the danger immediately. Exodus therefore gives us reason to honour courage without burdening endangered people with the claim that continued suffering proves they did something wrong. ²¹

The next chapter widens the circle of courage

Moses’ mother protects her child. His sister watches and speaks. Pharaoh’s daughter recognizes a Hebrew baby and has compassion. The rescue depends on several people acting at different moments. Attending to the mother’s action alongside the earlier midwives keeps the story from becoming the achievement of a single isolated hero. ²⁰

The text does not tell us every motive, conversation or plan. We should not fill that silence with a confident screenplay. It does show that compassion can cross the very boundary a ruler uses to justify killing. The daughter sees a crying child where her father’s policy sees a threat. ¹

For readers in India, the pastoral significance is immediate without requiring an invented Indian parallel. Caring for children, elderly people and families under pressure is consequential work. The person protecting another’s dignity may never have a microphone or a public title. Exodus helps the church recognize service whose importance is larger than its visibility.

Pentecostal courage answers to God

Pentecostal Christians can read this account alongside the church’s prayer for boldness in Acts 4. The believers are filled with the Holy Ghost and speak the word of God boldly. In Acts 5, the apostles explain their refusal to stop bearing witness: “We ought to obey God rather than men.” These passages connect spiritual power with responsible allegiance. ¹

That connection cannot be turned into permission for every preacher to demand unquestioning loyalty. Pentecostal reflection on leadership has warned that attributing divine authority to a leader can suppress ethical responsibility and shelter abuse of power. Critical reflection and responsible participation belong inside the community’s spiritual life. ²²

We must also keep the biblical situations distinct. The apostles face an order against their witness to Christ; the midwives face an order to kill children. Neither episode makes every unwelcome instruction equivalent to persecution. Romans 13 describes authority in relation to doing good. Reading these texts together calls for moral discernment rather than automatic defiance. ¹

Prayer for the Spirit’s help should produce more than brave language. Galatians 5 includes goodness and gentleness among the Spirit’s fruit. A claim to spiritual courage must therefore face the question of what it does to other people. A bold refusal that protects the vulnerable has a different character from a performance that merely advertises our importance. ¹

The people entrusted to us are not expendable

The midwives do not present a complete manual for every conflict with an employer, a government or a religious leader. Their story does confront the excuse that another person’s authority removes our responsibility for the harm we cause. The order comes from Pharaoh. The decision to carry it out would still belong to them.

Our applications must be proportionate to that serious setting. An ordinary disagreement is not the same as an instruction to destroy life. Yet the passage can sharpen conscience when someone asks us to humiliate, exclude or harm a person entrusted to our care. We can seek trustworthy counsel, name the actual wrong and pray for courage without claiming the Bible supplies every detail of a contemporary procedure.

Daniel’s companions express a related resolve when they refuse the king’s image even if rescue does not come as they hope. Faithfulness answers to God before it knows the outcome. That is a stronger foundation for courage than a promise that every right decision will receive immediate public approval. ¹

Shiphrah and Puah leave us with a searching, hopeful picture. A ruler’s plan depends on ordinary people agreeing to perform its cruelty. Two women decline. Their skills become instruments of care, their reverence becomes protection, and the children remain alive. The next act of faithful courage may begin with the people already placed within our reach.