Keluaran 1:17

1:17 But ¹  the midwives feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live. ² 

Keluaran 8:7

8:7 The magicians did the same ³  with their secret arts and brought up frogs on the land of Egypt too. ⁴ 

[1:17]  ¹ tn Heb “and they [fem. pl.] feared”; the referent (the midwives) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:17]  ² tn The verb is the Piel preterite of חָיָה (khaya, “to live”). The Piel often indicates a factitive nuance with stative verbs, showing the cause of the action. Here it means “let live, cause to live.” The verb is the exact opposite of Pharaoh’s command for them to kill the boys.

[8:7]  ³ tn Heb “thus, so.”

[8:7]  ⁴ sn In these first two plagues the fact that the Egyptians could and did duplicate them is ironic. By duplicating the experience, they added to the misery of Egypt. One wonders why they did not use their skills to rid the land of the pests instead, and the implication of course is that they could not.