The Birth of Miriam and Aaron and Pharaoh's Decree Against the Infants
In the darkest years of the bondage Miriam and Aaron are born, and Pharaoh orders every newborn Hebrew boy thrown into the Nile.
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.
How we know
Sources
Tanakh
- Shemot 1:15–22 — the midwives who refused to carry out the order, and the decree to cast the sons into the Nile
- Shemot 2:1–4 — the family of Amram and Yocheved; Miriam watching her brother’s basket
- Shemot 7:7 — Aharon was 83 at the Exodus — hence the year of his birth
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Sotah 11b–12a — Shifrah and Puah are Yocheved and Miriam; Amram’s divorce and the argument of six-year-old Miriam
- Shemot Rabbah 1 — the names of the midwives and Aharon’s birth “in the year when one could still give birth”
Basis: stated in the Tanakh.
People and places
Amram · Jochebed · Aaron · Miriam · Egypt (Goshen)