Matthew Henry on Exodus 1:15–end
The Egyptians' indignation at Israel's increase, notwithstanding the many hardships they put upon them, drove them at length to the most barbarous and inhuman methods of suppressing them, by the murder of their children. It was strange that they did not rather pick quarrels with the grown men, against whom they might perhaps find some occasion: to be thus bloody towards the infants, whom all must own to be innocents, was a sin which they had to cloak for. Note, 1. There is more cruelty in the corrupt heart of man than one would imagine, Rom 3:15, Rom 3:16. The enmity that is in the seed of the serpent against the seed of the woman divests men of humanity itself, and makes them forget all pit…
Read the whole note in the consoleJamieson-Fausset-Brown on Exodus 1:20
God dealt well with the midwives--This represents God as rewarding them for telling a lie. This difficulty is wholly removed by a more correct translation. To "make" or "build up a house" in Hebrew idiom, means to have a numerous progeny. The passage then should be rendered thus: "God protected the midwives, and the people waxed very mighty; and because the midwives feared, the Hebrews grew and prospered."
Next: Exodus Chapter 2
Adam Clarke on Exodus 1:22
Ye shall cast into the river - As the Nile, which is here intended, was a sacred river among the Egyptians, it is not unlikely that Pharaoh intended the young Hebrews as an offering to his god, having two objects in view:
1. To increase the fertility of the country by thus procuring, as he might suppose, a proper and sufficient annual inundation; and
2. To prevent an increase of population among the Israelites, and in process of time procure their entire extermination.
It is conjectured, with a great show of probability, that the edict mentioned in this verse was not made till after the birth of Aaron, and that it was revoked soon after the birth of Moses; as, if it had subsisted in its rigo…
Read the whole note in the consoleJohn Gill on Exodus 1:22
