14. They made their lives bitter with back-breaking work in mortar and bricks and every kind of work in the fields. All the jobs the Egyptians gave them were brutally hard.
15. Then the king of Egypt told the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah,
16. “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth, look at the child when you deliver it. If it’s a boy, kill it, but if it’s a girl, let it live.”
17. However, the midwives feared God and didn’t obey the king of Egypt’s orders. They let the boys live.