Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.” But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and let the male children live?” The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” So God dealt well with the midwives. And the people multiplied and grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”
Exodus 1:15-22
The overruling sovereignty of God is seen still more clearly in this part of the story as the pressures increased upon the Israelites. And God did not suffer them to be crushed or overwhelmed. This is the salient point. There are several lessons to be gathered here. For one thing, we are struck by the attitude of the Hebrew midwives; whatever may have been true of the people in general, they at least were in no wise low-spirited, and showed a commendable ability to rise above the misfortune and tragedy of their situation and resist with success the nefarious designs of the king. But there is something more important. It is the whole question of why God should allow such suffering and, associated with this, the more particular question why the people of Israel should have been called upon to suffer so much and so greatly down the history of the human race. One reason at least why God allows suffering to continue beyond, as we sometimes think, the bounds of human endurance, is that He gives evil its head in order to draw it out into the open and finally to destroy it. This is always true, whether on the universal scale or the particular, and is a necessary corollary of the divine sovereignty of God in human affairs. The most concise answer to the problem of Israel's sufferings - and we must remember that in spite of the most determined attempts of world-powers down the ages to exterminate the Jews, Israel is still even today recognizable as a nation because God has willed her to remain in existence - is that she is the chosen people of God through whom He has willed to reveal the mystery of redemption through suffering, and all who are associated with Him in the fulfilment of that redemptive purpose share, willingly or in spite of themselves, in the effects of man's revolt against God. This cost Him a Cross, and His people are necessarily involved in its shame and reproach.