Midwives of Hope | August 23, 2026

When Pharaoh calls Shiphrah and Puah into his court and gives them a direct order to kill all the infant Hebrew boys as a form of population control and oppression, Shiphrah and Puah refuse to conform. In her book, Womanist Midrash, Wilda Gafney imagines Shiphrah and Puah going back to the rest of the Hebrew midwives and laying the groundwork for a resistance movement. After all, who better to do this work than midwives? Midwives are uniquely trained and practiced in welcoming and facilitating new life coming into the world. They know how to protect the vulnerable. They know how to stay calm in the midst of danger. In many ways, they had been born and equipped for a time such as this.