The Birth of Miriam and Aaron and Pharaoh's Decree Against the Infants

Amram, grandson of Levi, and his wife Yocheved have two children: a daughter, Miriam, and three years later a son, Aaron. Both are born before the death decree, and so both survive. Tradition ties Miriam's name to mar, bitter: she was born in the year the Egyptians began to embitter Israel's life, and her name is a date. Hard labour did not break the people, so Pharaoh changed method. First he ordered the midwives Shifra and Puah to kill the boys at birth, and received what may be history's first recorded refusal to obey a criminal order: the midwives feared God and let the children live. Then the decree went out to the whole nation — every newborn son is to be cast into the river. Pharaoh's astrologers had told him that Israel's saviour was about to be born and would fall by water. The people answered in the only way left to them: men separated from their wives rather than bear children for the Nile.