Topic
Midwife
6 passages cited, from 2 classic reference works.
These works date from 1897–1915 and are in the public domain. They reflect the Protestant scholarship of their time: their history, archaeology and dates can be out of date, and where they interpret, other traditions read the text differently. The verses are shown in the King James Version, the wording these works were written against.
The verses
The passages the works cite, those cited by more of them first.
- Genesis 35:17ISBE
And it came to pass, when she was in hard labour, that the midwife said unto her, Fear not; thou shalt have this son also.
- Genesis 38:28ISBE
And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first.
- Exodus 1:15Easton
¶ And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah:
- Exodus 1:15–22ISBE
¶ And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, 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…
- 1 Samuel 4:20ISBE
And about the time of her death the women that stood by her said unto her, Fear not; for thou hast born a son. But she answered not, neither did she regard it.
- Ezekiel 16:4ISBE
And as for thy nativity, in the day thou wast born thy navel was not cut, neither wast thou washed in water to supple thee; thou wast not salted at all, nor swaddled at all.
In the reference works
Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897) · 1 references
The two midwives mentioned in Ex. 1:15 were probably the superintendents of the whole class.
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915) · 6 references
mid'-wif (meyalledheth): Those who in patriarchal times attended mothers at childbirth are so named in Ge 35:17; 38:28; Ex 1:15-22. Such attendants were probably then (1Sa 4:20), as they usually are now, the older female relatives and friends of the mother. The duties which they had to perform are enumerated in Eze 16:4: division of the cord, washing the infant in water, salting with salt and swathing in swaddling clothes. During the Egyptian bondage there were two midwives who attended the Hebrew women; from their names, they were probably Hebrews, certainly they were not Egyptians. From this passage it appears that they used a certain double-round form of birthstool called 'obhnayim, concerning which there are several rabbinical comments. It probably was like the kuru elwiladeh, or "birth-seat," still used by the Egyptian fellahin. I have not found any record of its use among the Palestinian fellahin. There is a curious passage in the Talmud (Cotah 2 b) in which it is said that the two midwives had different duties, Shiphrah being the one who dressed the infant, Puah, the one who whispered to it. One Jewish commentator on this supposes that Puah used artificial respiration by blowing into the child's mouth. The midwives must have had considerable skill, as a case like that of Tamar required some amount of operative manipulation.
The English word means originally the woman who is "with the mother" (compare "the women that stood by," in 1Sa 4:20), but very early became applied to those who gave skilled assistance, as in Raynold's Birth of Mankind, 1565.
Alexander Macalister
Texts: Easton's Bible Dictionary (1897); International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1915), from the CrossWire SWORD modules (public domain). Verse references were parsed from the works' own markup and checked against the KJV verse list.