Exodus 1:21

Summary

The verse states that because the midwives feared God, "he" caused households to be built for them. It closes the narrative unit introduced by the two midwives' actions in defying Pharaoh's order, linking their fear of God to a subsequent divine or narrative consequence.

Key words

• y.Hi ("it was", H1961) — qal narrative form (wayyiqtol) that opens the clause, typical of Hebrew storytelling to mark a new narrative event ("and it happened that...").
• ya.re.'U ("they feared", H3372H) — qal perfect, third person plural, describing a completed action attributed to the midwives as the cause clause introduced by ki- ("that/because", H3588A).
• m.ya.le.Dot ("midwives", H3205) — piel participle, feminine plural, literally "the ones who deliver [children]," used here as a professional designation rather than a finite verb.
• 'E.lo.Him ("God", H0430G) — masculine plural noun form, functioning as the object of "feared" via the object marker 'et- (H0853), referring to a singular deity despite the plural noun form.
• i.Ya.'as ("he appointed/made", H6213I) — qal narrative (wayyiqtol), third person masculine singular, continuing the narrative chain; no explicit subject noun is given in this clause, only the verb's own person marking.

What the text says

The sentence is built as two linked narrative clauses joined by the vav-consecutive pattern typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling: va-yehi ("and it was") introduces a causal subordinate clause with ki- ("that/because"), stating that the midwives (ha-meyalledot) feared God (et-ha-elohim). This is followed by a second narrative verb, va-yaas ("and he made/appointed"), whose subject is not named by a noun but only marked grammatically as third-person masculine singular ("he"). The preposition la-hem ("for them") plus battim ("households/houses") completes the clause, indicating that households were established for the midwives.

Because the subject of va-yaas is expressed only through verb morphology and not a separate noun, the Hebrew leaves the referent of "he" to be inferred from context rather than stated explicitly within this verse. The noun battim (plural of "house") is a common Hebrew idiom that can denote physical houses or, more broadly, family lines/households.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders battim as "domos" ("houses"), and the LXX as "οἰκίας" ("houses"), both matching a literal architectural sense. The BSB instead translates battim as "families of their own," and the SBLIBRE Spanish version renders it as "sus propias familias" ("their own families"), showing a semantic shift from the literal "houses" to the extended sense of "households/family lines." The LXX text as given also shows a repeated verb, "ἐφοβοῦντο ἐφοβοῦντο" ("they feared... they feared"), duplicating the verb form present once in the Hebrew.