Pharaoh confronts the midwives. Why are you letting the boys live? And Shifra and Puvah — in the Targum's Aramaic, Jokheved and Miriam — give an answer so audacious it borders on theology.
"The Jewish women are not as the Mizraite, for they are sturdy and wise-minded. Before the midwife cometh to them they lift up their eyes in prayer, supplicating mercy before their Father who is in heaven, who heareth the voice of their prayer, and at once they are heard, and bring forth, and are delivered in peace."
This is one of the most beautiful expansions in the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (1:19). The Hebrew text gives a physical explanation — Hebrew women are chayot, vigorous, birthing fast. The Targum replaces the biology with a theology of prayer. The reason Hebrew labor is so swift is that Hebrew women, in their pain, look up. They pray. And the Holy One answers before the midwife can even climb the stairs.
Notice what the midwives are smuggling into Pharaoh's ear. Not a medical report. A statement of faith. They are telling the tyrant: your soldiers cannot reach the room in time, because our prayer gets there first.
The sages understood these two women as among the first righteous converts and teachers of prayer. Shifra means "to make beautiful." Puvah, the sages say, "cooed" to calm laboring women. Their whole vocation was presence and voice. Now they turn both weapons on the king.
Beloved, when the powers of the world come for your children, remember: the fastest-moving thing in the universe is not a soldier. It is a mother's cry to heaven.