Exodus 1:16

Summary

Pharaoh instructs the Hebrew midwives on how to act during childbirth: they are to observe the child at the birthstool, and if it is a son they must kill him, but if it is a daughter she may live. The verse is structured as direct speech introduced by va-yomer ("and he said", H0559), containing two parallel conditional clauses.

Key words

• 'iv.ri.Yot ("Hebrew [women]", H5680) — feminine plural gentilic noun, marking the ethnic identity of the women the midwives assist, preceded by the definite article ha (H9009) and the object marker 'et (H0853).
• 'a.ve.Na.yim ("stones", H0070) — masculine dual noun, literally "two stones/a pair of stones," referring to the birthstool; the dual form indicates a paired object rather than a single item.
• ya.led ("assist as midwife", H3205) — piel infinitive, an intensive stem denoting the professional, causative act of helping in delivery, distinct from the simple qal sense "to bear."
• ha.mi.Ten ("you will kill", H4191) — hiphil sequential perfect, second person feminine plural; the hiphil stem is causative ("cause to die"), and the sequential perfect form continues the command begun by the initial imperative-like clause.
• Cha.yah ("she will live", H2421) — qal sequential perfect, third person feminine singular, continuing the same syntactic chain but describing a state (life) rather than a caused action.

What the text says

The verse opens with va-yomer ("and he said", H0559), a narrative qal verb that introduces Pharaoh's direct speech without naming the speaker again (he is understood from the preceding verse). The instruction itself is built on two temporal/conditional clauses using be- ("when", H9003) with the infinitive ya.led.khen ("in your assisting," H3205 + suffix), followed by the sequential perfect re.'i.Ten ("and you will look/observe," H7200G). This construction — infinitive clause followed by sequential perfects — extends the force of a command through the rest of the sentence: each subsequent perfect verb (re.'i.Ten, ha.mi.Ten, Cha.yah) carries imperative weight despite being morphologically perfect rather than imperative.

The two outcomes are framed by parallel 'im ("if", H0518A) clauses: 'im-ben hu' ("if he is a son," H1121A + H1931) and ve-'im-bat hi' ("and if she is a daughter," H1323G + H1931). The pronouns hu' and hi' agree grammatically with the nouns ben (masculine) and bat (feminine), reinforcing the binary structure. The verb ha.mi.Ten (H4191), a hiphil causative, expresses an action performed upon the object marked by 'oto (H0853 + suffix, "him"), while Cha.yah (H2421), a qal verb, expresses a simple state without an object — the text says the daughter "will live," not that the midwives will "let her live" as a direct action.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the second clause elliptically, giving only "ἐὰν δὲ θῆλυ, αὐτό" ("but if female, it") without a finite verb, where the Hebrew has the qal verb Cha.yah ("she will live"). The Vulgate supplies "reservate" ("preserve/keep"), an active causative verb, differing from the Hebrew's stative Cha.yah. The Hebrew 'a.ve.Na.yim ("stones", H0070) is rendered by the LXX as πρὸς τῷ τί (a general reference to the act of birth) and by the Vulgate as "partus tempus advenerit" ("the time of birth arrives"), both losing the concrete image of the paired birthstool present in the Hebrew dual noun.