Shiphrah and Puah

Two women. Seven verses. One act of defiance that saved a generation.

The king of Egypt is not named. Two Hebrew midwives are named twice. Before Moses is born, before the burning bush, before the plagues and the sea - two women stand at the birthstool of the Hebrew community and receive a command from the most powerful man in the ancient world: kill the sons. They fear God more than Pharaoh. They let the boys live. What happens next is the Exodus.

This book is the full theological reckoning with what those two women did, why they did it, and why the church has been walking past them for two thousand years. Shiphrah and Puah traces the theology of the fear of God from the birthstool in Egypt through the entire biblical narrative - through the furnace in Babylon, through Daniel's prayer room, through the brush arbors of the antebellum South, through the Letter from Birmingham Jail, and into the twenty-first century, where the same question the midwives answered with their lives is being asked again: when the command of the surrounding culture conflicts with the character of the God we serve, which authority is ultimate?

The fear of God was enough at the birthstool in Egypt. It is enough now.

Volume Eight of the Joy and Crown series - recovering the women of Scripture whose recorded verses were few and whose impact on redemptive history was extraordinary.