Exodus 1:22, commentary and pictures

Pharaoh's decree was a more urgent and extensive nationwide command issued after earlier measures had failed, for hard bondage had not decreased Israel's numbers, and the Hebrew women from fear of God had disobeyed the order to kill the children at birth and had saved the male children alive. In anger Pharaoh hardened his heart and extended the order beyond the midwives to all his people, to all the Egyptians, charging them to keep strict watch to cast, throw, and drown every newborn Hebrew son into the river, into the Nile, while sparing and saving alive every daughter. The order sought to destroy the children, to reduce Israel's numbers and destroy its independence, and to prevent the deliverer from arising among them.

Behind the decree Satan was the mover, knowing that a deliverer was to be raised up among the Hebrews to rescue them from oppression and to lead them out. He thought that destroying the male children would turn aside the purposes of God, defeat His purpose, destroy the one God would raise up, reduce Israel's numbers, and destroy its independence. The command was an act of cruelty directed against helpless children. Under it the Hebrew male children were hunted and slain by being cast into the river, adding to the burden of their enslavement in Egypt.

The decree made Israelite lives a burden and sank the faith of many so that many lost hope of deliverance. While worshiping the God of Heaven they contrasted their slavery with the wealthy, prospering Egyptians who worshiped false gods of wood and stone and the sun, moon, and stars. They doubted why a just and merciful God above all gods left them as slaves to an idolatrous nation instead of making them free and exalting His greatness and power. Pharaoh boasted that he would like to see their God deliver them from his hands, and the Egyptians taunted that their own gods had given Israel into their hands to serve, oppress, and destroy them so they would be no people, making deliverance from slavery seem impossible.

The faithful still trusted that God would bring Israel out of Egypt and break its oppressive yoke. God mercifully delivered them in answer to their anguished prayers, after their children had been put to death in Egypt. The cruel decree was in full force when Moses was born. It forced his mother to hide him as long as she safely could and then to place him in a little pitch-sealed ark of bulrushes at the edge of the water, committing him to God's care with earnest prayers mingled with tears while his sister lingered nearby watching. Angels guarded the helpless infant from harm and directed Pharaoh's daughter to the very spot to find him in compassion and take him as her son.

The order did not defeat God's purpose, for God prospered the Hebrew women. Satan was defeated there when God overruled that very decree appointing the Hebrew children to death to place Moses in the royal family. There he had advantages to become a learned man eminently qualified to lead His people from Egypt, educated to stand at the head of the armies of Egypt and lead them to battle, a great favorite honored for conducting warfare with superior skill and wisdom with expectation of being exalted to the throne. This belongs to Israel's history whose experience is to be considered by God's people living in the last days.