The Hebrew Midwives

The ninth command of the Ten Commandments does not address all deception in Exodus 20:16 and Deuteronomy 5:20.  The commandment in question is against false testimony rather than all forms of lying together.  Elsewhere, Leviticus 19:11 does label lying as evil outside of slander in particular (or else it would not be condemned), and yet there is a story very early in the Bible where two women are shown favor by God for lying.  Before Moses was born, adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, and tasked by I AM with returning to Egypt to free the Hebrews, the king of Egypt was desperate to control the Hebrews living in his land.  Oppressive labor does not stop them from multiplying (Exodus 1:8-14), so Pharaoh tells Shiphrah and Puah, who are midwives and Hebrews themselves, to kill any baby boys when they emerge from the wombs of their people (1:15-16).

The women, however, refuse to obey the ruler.  They arrive at a home, seemingly perform their service, and then allow any newborn boys to live.  To Pharaoh, who summons them when he learned how the male babies of the Hebrews were not being killed, they outright lie, claiming that Hebrew women give birth faster than Egyptian women (1:17-19).  If true, this would mean they would not have had the chance to directly fulfill Pharaoh's command since they were not present at the time of birth.  This is not what the text has already clarified as being their real actions beforehand.  They lie flagrantly to the king of Egypt, and Exodus 1 is not silent God's reaction to this.  It is not at all the typical reaction of God in many other circumstances, where lies are sins (Leviticus 19:11 again) that damn people to the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8, 22:15).

Not so with Shiphrah and Puah: in the wording of verses 20-21 in Exodus 1, "God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous.  And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own."  Like the Israelites at large, they were prosperous in the sense of multiplying in spite of the oppression around them.  Their glaring deception is rewarded by God, but not because deception is morally permissible under ordinary circumstances, such as when one is not trying to thwart a worse sin on the part of somebody else.  It is precisely because this lie is uttered in order to save innocent lives (there could be other such causes of equal or greater significance that would make lies the lesser evil) that it is not ultimately some grievous sin against truth.

For the sake of a greater truth than what they had really done with the Hebrew women in childbirth, Shiphrah and Puah are not guilty when they deceive Pharaoh.  On the contrary, God blesses them because of their deception, going as far as to give them families of their own, a fitting reward since they helped other Hebrews keep their male babies safe for a time.  At some point after hearing their lie, Pharaoh orders all of his people, now including the Egyptians, to kill every Hebrew boy that is born by throwing him into the Nile and to allow baby girls to live (1:22).  The story of how Moses escapes this fate is far more familiar to the masses than the role intentional deception played in sparing Hebrew babies for a time.

Later in the chronological sequence of Biblical narratives, Rahab lies to the servants of Jericho's king.  She insists that Israelite spies who in actuality stayed in her home, hidden away on the roof (Joshua 2:6), left her dwelling already (2:4-5).  Thus, she keeps the Israelite spies alive and arranges for her entire family to be spared when the massacre begins (2:12-20), and she and her family are indeed not killed (6:15-25) once the walls of Jericho fall.  Rahab is in fact listed as an example of righteousness in Hebrews 11:30-31 for sheltering the spies as she did.  The Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah are not the only Biblical figures who are guiltless, blessed, or commended for lying for the sake of a greater truth and to honor a greater obligation.  Only one of these examples would be enough to establish the Bible's clear stance on lying to prevent more severe sins, and still there are two.