Exodus 1:15

Summary

The verse introduces a speech by the king of Egypt directed to the Hebrew midwives, and names the two midwives: Shiphrah and Puah. It functions as an introduction to the direct speech that follows in verse 16.

Key words

• va-Yomer ("and he said", H0559) — qal verb with narrative vav, the standard form that opens reported speech in Biblical Hebrew narrative sequence.
• me-Lekh ("king of", H4428G) — masculine singular noun in construct state, linking directly to Mitzrayim ("Egypt", H4714G) to form "king of Egypt."
• m-yale-Dot ("midwives", H3205) — piel participle, feminine plural; the piel stem here conveys the professional/intensive activity of "the ones who deliver/midwife," rather than a simple action.
• ha-Ivri-Yot ("the Hebrew", H5680) — feminine plural gentilic with the article ha (H9009), agreeing in gender and number with m-yale-Dot, specifying the ethnic identity of the midwives.
• asher ("who/that", H0834A) — relative particle introducing the clause that identifies the two midwives by name.

What the text says

The verse opens with the narrative construction va-Yomer + subject (melekh Mitzrayim, "king of Egypt"), the typical Hebrew pattern for introducing speech within a narrative chain. The indirect object is marked by the preposition la ("to the", H9005) attached to m-yale-Dot ha-Ivri-Yot, "the Hebrew midwives" — a feminine plural participle modified by a feminine plural gentilic adjective with matching article, a construction that identifies the addressees by both occupation and ethnicity.

The second half of the verse shifts from narrative report to identification: the relative asher introduces a clause built on two parallel construct phrases, shem ha-achat ("the name of the one", H8034 + H0259) and ve-shem ha-sheni / ha-shenit ("and the name of the second", H8034 + H8145). Each construct chain is completed by a proper name — Shifrah (H8236) and Pu'ah (H6326) — functioning as a predicate noun without a copula, as is standard in Hebrew nominal clauses. The ordinal ha-achat...ha-shenit ("the one... the second") structure creates a symmetrical naming formula, distinguishing the two midwives individually rather than treating them as an undifferentiated group.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders melekh Mitzrayim ("king of Egypt") as ho basileus tōn Aigyptiōn ("the king of the Egyptians"), shifting from a geographic to an ethnic reference for the country's inhabitants. The LXX also structures the naming clause differently, using hē mia autōn ("the one of them") and introducing the first name with a relative pronoun (hē) before giving only Sepphōra, then adding to onoma tēs deuteras ("the name of the second") as a separate clause continuing into the next verse, whereas the Hebrew presents both names within a single verse using parallel construct-noun formulas. The Vulgate follows a structure closer to the Hebrew's dual naming pattern (quarum una vocabatur Sephora, altera Phua) but uses relative clauses with the verb vocabatur ("was called") rather than the nominal construct-and-apposition style of the Hebrew text.