Two Women Nobody Remembered — and the God Who Noticed Everything

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes not from overwork but from meaninglessness. You wake up, you get to work on time, you get home, you eat supper, you go to bed, and you do it again. The days blur together. Life feels less like a journey and more like a conveyor belt. If you have ever looked at the grand stories of Scripture — the burning bushes, the parted seas, the prison-to-palace promotions — and thought, "That is not my life," you are not alone.
But here is what those grand stories actually teach us when we look closely: they are built on the backs of ordinary people who simply chose to obey God in small, unremarkable moments. And the ripple effects of those moments stretched further than any of them could have imagined.

The World That Shiphrah and Puah Inherited
To understand the weight of what two women did in Exodus chapter 1, you have to understand the world they were living in. The Israelites had come to Egypt as honored guests, carried there by the extraordinary story of Joseph — a man sold into slavery by his own brothers who rose to become the second most powerful man in the nation. God had used a famine to reunite a broken family and plant an entire people in the fertile land of Goshen.
But generations passed. Joseph died. The Pharaoh who had honored him died. A new king rose to power, and to him, the Israelites were not a people with a history or a covenant with a living God. They were a threat. The Israelites had grown from 70 people to over two million in roughly 300 years — a staggering multiplication that terrified the most powerful ruler on earth.
Fear is a dangerous counselor. Pharaoh's fear drove him to enslave the Israelites, to oppress them with brutal labor, to make their lives bitter. And yet the more he oppressed them, the more they multiplied. So fear drove him further, to a decision so monstrous it reveals what unchecked, God-less fear ultimately produces: the command to kill every Hebrew baby boy at birth.
The order fell to the midwives. And two of them — Shiphrah and Puah — were called before Pharaoh himself and given the directive.

The Fear That Overruled a King
Shiphrah and Puah faced a choice that most of us will never have to face in such stark terms, but that all of us face in some form every single day: whose opinion matters more? Who has the real authority over your life?
Pharaoh was considered a god in Egyptian culture. He was worshipped as a son of Ra, the sun god. To disobey him was not merely a career risk — it was a death sentence. He held their livelihoods, their safety, and their lives in his hands.
And yet, Exodus 1:17 tells us that the midwives feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt commanded. They let the baby boys live.
This is the hinge point of the entire story, and it is worth sitting with. These women did not have a theological treatise on the nature of divine authority. They were not seminary-trained. They were ordinary women who had simply looked at the evidence of their lives — the God of Israel who had protected and blessed His people — and concluded that He was more to be feared than any earthly king.
In Luke 12:4-5, Jesus addresses this very tension directly. He tells His followers not to fear those who can only kill the body. The one to fear, He says, is the one who has authority over both body and soul. This is not merely a call to reverence or admiration. Jesus is drawing a clear line: the fear of God is the foundation of every decision you will ever make. It is the thing that reorders your priorities, straightens your spine, and keeps you from collapsing under the pressure of what other people think.
Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, arrives at the same conclusion in Ecclesiastes 12:13. After all his searching, all his wealth and wisdom and experience, he lands on this: fear God and keep His commandments. This is the whole duty of mankind.

What Fearing God Actually Looks Like
There is a comfortable, domesticated version of fearing God that the church sometimes settles for — the idea that it simply means reverence or awe. And while that is not wrong, it is incomplete. Fearing God means understanding that there are real consequences to disobedience, that God is not a permissive grandfather who winks at sin, and that His grace and mercy are not a blank check to continue doing what we know is wrong.
Fearing God means thinking twice before you sin. It means that when you hear the voice of the Holy Spirit saying "do not go there," you listen. It means that when you are tempted to throttle back your convictions because the person across from you might be offended, you remember who ultimately holds authority over your life.
This is not a fearful, cowering posture. It is actually one of the most liberating ways to live. When you fear God more than you fear people, you are freed from the exhausting performance of managing everyone else's opinion of you. You know where you stand. Your words and your actions line up. There is integrity — wholeness — in how you move through the world.

The Baby Nobody Knew Was Coming
Here is where the big picture snaps into focus. Shiphrah and Puah had no idea what they were doing. They were just two women who dragged their feet getting to a delivery, or who looked the other way, or who simply refused to carry out an evil command. They did not know that among the baby boys they protected was a child who would one day stand before another Pharaoh and say, "Let my people go." They did not know that their small act of obedience was woven into the story of an entire nation's liberation — a liberation that pointed forward to the ultimate redemption of all humanity.
His name was Moses.
God's plan of redemption rested, in part, on the courage of two ordinary women whose names most people have never heard. Jeremiah 32:40 records God's promise of an everlasting covenant — one in which He commits to never stop doing good to His people, and in which He promises to inspire them to fear Him. That covenant was being quietly kept in a delivery room in ancient Egypt, through two women who simply chose the right fear.
Your Small Obedience Matters More Than You Know
You are not being asked to part a sea or deliver a nation. You are being asked to influence your circle. To speak truth when it would be easier to stay quiet. To obey in the small thing, the daily thing, the thing no one will ever write a book about.
God works in the small things. He always has. And your seemingly small act of obedience today may be growing into something you will not see the fruit of for years — or perhaps ever, on this side of eternity.
When you cannot see the big picture, trust God and walk in obedience to what you already know to be true. His will is not revealed all at once. It is revealed one step at a time, on the path, as you walk it.
Every obedient step with Jesus is a great step. It is not always easy. But it is always worth it.