See them upon the stools— The word אבנים abnim occurs only here, and Jeremiah 18:3. The LXX have not translated it.
If it be a son,—ye shall kill him— The order itself was inhuman enough; but it becomes, if possible, ten times more so, by making the midwives the executioners; thus obliging them not only to be savagely bloody, but basely perfidious in the most tender trust. Josephus says, that a prophecy of a child to be born of the Hebrew race, who should greatly annoy the Egyptians, determined Pharaoh to make this decree; but the sacred writer gives no hint of any such prediction, and refers us to a more satisfactory cause, Exodus 1:10. The reasons are evident, why the daughters were to be saved; from whom no wars could be feared.