Puah
Puah (meaning "splendid") is a name given to two persons in the Bible:
One of the two midwives who feared God, and helped prevent the murder of Hebrew male children by the Egyptians, and thus the genocide of the Hebrew people, according to Exodus 1:15-21. Her colleague was Shiphrah. According to the Exodus narrative, they were instructed by the King of Egypt, or Pharaoh, to kill all male babies, but they refused to do so. When challenged by the Pharaoh, they explained that Hebrew women's labour was short-lived because they were 'lively' or 'vigorous', and therefore the babies had been born (and protected) before the midwives arrived.
The son of Dodo and a descendant of Issachar. He had a son named Tola, who rose to become a Biblical judge. (Judges 10:1)
Puah and Shiphrah
The 11th century Jewish rabbi Rashi's Talmud commentary on the passage from Exodus identifies Shiphrah with Jochebed, the mother of Moses, and Puah with Miriam, Moses' sister, making the two midwives mother and daughter respectively. However, in Midrash Tadshe (on Exodus 1:15), it is assumed that Puah, as well as Shiphrah, was a proselyte, and that she was not identical with Miriam.
