28 Feb. The Egyptians plan to kill all the Hebrew baby boys
“Two Hebrew nurses, named Shiprah and Puah, helped the Israelite women give birth to their babies.”
“The king of Egypt said to the nurses, ‘When you are helping the Hebrew women give birth to their babies, watch! If the baby is a girl, let her live, but if it is a boy, kill him!’ But the nurses feared God, so they did not do as the king told them; they let all the boy babies live.”
“Then the king of Egypt sent for the nurses and said, ‘Why did you do this? Why did you let the boys live?’ The nurses said to him, ‘The Hebrew women are much stronger than the Egyptian women. They give birth to their babies before we can get there.’”
“God was good to the nurses. And the Hebrew people continued to grow in number, so they became even stronger. Because the nurses feared God, he gave them families of their own.”
“So the king commanded all his people, ‘Every time a boy is born to the Hebrews, you must throw him into the Nile River; but let all the girl babies live.”
(Exodus 1:15-22)
The Egyptians were fearful of the increasing number of Israelites, so the pharaoh ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill every male Hebrew baby that was born.
The midwives, however, were God-fearing women who were not about to slaughter their own race. So they disobeyed the king and gave him a lame excuse when brought before the king to explain their response.
As a result, the king decided to take more drastic action, and ordered that all Hebrew baby boys should be killed, by drowning them in the River Nile.
Amazingly, the archaeological excavations at Avaris (Raamses) appear to provide concrete evidence of this wholesale slaughter of Hebrew baby boys. Bietak’s excavations revealed that, during the Israelites’ ‘bondage’ period, Avaris was densely populated with large Egyptian-occupied houses containing servants’ quarters.
The remains of numerous tiny graves were found all over the city – innocent victims of a vicious slaughter. While infant graves normally make up around a quarter of all graves, here in Avaris, they represent about two thirds of all deaths. Furthermore, for every five adult female burials, the archaeologists found only three adult males – which corresponds vividly to the Biblical account of the slaughter of the Hebrew baby boys around the time of Moses’ birth in c.1528 BC.
The photo (by Hanay) shows a figurine from Egypt depicting a Semitic slave (now in the Hecht Museum in Haifa).
You can read more about the excavation of Avaris / Raamses @ https://www.thebiblejourney.org/biblejourney2/25-the-israelites-journey-from-egypt-to-mt-sinai/the-israelites-in-egypt/