Pharaoh's covert instructions to the midwives represent a cunning shift in his campaign against the Israelites. Moving away from the overt brutality of forced labor, the Egyptian monarch initiated a strategy of disguised murder and cultural assimilation. By speaking directly to the midwives, the king sought to flatter and entice them into cooperation. He framed his directive not as a public royal edict, but as a confidential piece of advice, likely driven by a sense of shame or the fear of sparking a rebellion [מלבי״ם, אדרת אליהו].
The instructions were to be carried out specifically while assisting women of the Hebrew faith or lineage during childbirth [אבן עזרא, רש״י, ביאור יש״ר]. The primary approach among commentators is that the location of this act refers to the birthing stool. Some draw a parallel between this seat and a potter's wheel, noting the physical posture of the mother with the child emerging in the center [רשב״ם, בעל הטורים, תורה תמימה]. This imagery gains deeper meaning in light of ancient Egyptian beliefs, which held that God formed humanity upon a potter's wheel [קאסוטו]. Other perspectives offer physiological explanations, suggesting that during labor, the mother's thighs grow cold and rigid like stone [בעל הטורים, תורה תמימה, צאינה וראינה], or that the term stems linguistically from the root word for children [אבן עזרא, תולדות יצחק]. Alternatively, it may refer to two physical stones upon which the newborn was washed [שד״ל].
The order to eliminate the male infants demanded silent and precise execution. The goal was to end their lives secretly at the exact moment of birth, before they could even let out a cry. This way, the exhausted mother would assume she had suffered a stillbirth and would not suspect the midwife of foul play [אור החיים, רלב״ג, בכור שור]. To streamline this dark task, Pharaoh provided the midwives with early indicators to determine the child's gender before full delivery, such as the position of the baby's face or the mother's body heat [חזקוני, הדר זקנים]. Identifying and ending the life of the fetus before the head fully emerged also served to ease the midwives' conscience, as this was legally considered a lesser offense rather than outright murder [תורה תמימה]. The act itself could be accomplished through a subtle, imperceptible movement or simply by withholding essential medical assistance from the newborn [העמק דבר].
Targeting only the male infants raises a practical question. If Pharaoh merely wanted to curb the population, eliminating the females would have been far more effective, as a single male can begin families with many women. Consequently, many commentators agree that this specific decree was triggered by the predictions of Pharaoh's astrologers, who foresaw the birth of a male savior for the Israelites [רש״י, מזרחי, גור אריה, חומש קה״ת]. Furthermore, since men are the ones who wage war, the king specifically feared that an expanding male population might ally with Egypt's enemies in a future conflict [חזקוני].
Sparing the female infants carried its own sinister, hidden motives. On a practical level, Pharaoh understood that if every child died, the Hebrew women would entirely stop calling for midwives. Allowing the girls to live preserved a sliver of hope for the expectant mothers and deflected suspicion away from the royal conspiracy [אור החיים, אדרת אליהו]. More insidiously, this was the core of a long-term plan for total assimilation. Stripped of Hebrew men, the surviving women would inevitably be forced to marry Egyptian men, thereby erasing the nation's distinct identity and compromising its sanctity [אור החיים, ביאור יש״ר, שטיינזלץ, חומש קה״ת]. Furthermore, engineering a severe demographic imbalance with a surplus of women was intended to sow jealousy, competition, and internal discord within Hebrew families, fracturing the nation from the inside [אדרת אליהו]. Ultimately, the instruction to let the girls live did not demand any special medical effort from the midwives to ensure their survival; it simply meant allowing nature to take its course [העמק דבר].