Shiphrah is Jochebed; Puah is Miriam (Sotah 11b).

"They saved the male children alive" (Exodus 1:18). Shiphrah and Puah collected water and food from the houses of the rich women and gave it to the poor women, who thus sustained their children. In addition, they prayed before the Holy One, Blessed is He, that the babies be born unblemished (Shemot Rabbah 1:15). "And He made of them houses" (Exodus 1:21). Pharaoh attempted to kill them, but the Holy One, Blessed is He, concealed them by covering them like two beams of a house (Midrash HaGadol, Shemot 1:21).

Why some women in the Bible are un-named, or named after the fact, is an age-old conundrum. The rabbis of the Talmud and Midrash were quick to provide missing appellations: thus Potiphar’s wife of "no-name" becomes Zuleika; Lot’s salinized spouse is called Edit; and here, even more significantly, Moses’s mother is equated with the Biblical midwife, Shiphrah.

The rabbis were clever to confer the names of the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, upon Moses’s mother and her daughter, Miriam. To do less would diminish their roles, particularly that of the mother of the Jewish world’s most important personage. If the Biblical story is heeded literally, Miriam is the protagonist, and her mother the passive nursemaid. But attaching her destiny to that of the midwife Shiphrah activates her character. Suddenly she acquires courage, cunning, and faith in her ability to preserve the future of the Jewish people. Before the Talmud was written, Shiphrah had practiced the rabbinic principle that "the saving of a single life was the equivalent of saving the entire world" (Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5).

Why Shiphrah ("beautiful")? The rabbis, always quick to resort to linguistic word-play, suggest that when Moses was born she "cleansed" him. Because of her heroism the people of Israel "multiplied" at her hand; her deeds were "pleasant" before God; and she "appeased" Pharaoh for Miriam’s haughtiness.

Why Jochebed ("God’s honor")? At last, we exhume a Biblical reference. Exodus 6:20 asserts: "And Amram took him Jochebed his father’s sister to wife; and she bore him Aaron and Moses. Jochebed’s face had a semblance of the divine radiance. Because Jochebed feared the Holy One, she merited the birth of Moses.

Whatever name we employ, we learn the intent of the text. Moses had a noble lineage. Jochebed was a daughter of Levi. When she and Puah, God-fearing midwives, were rewarded with "houses," these were not buildings. Because of their devotion to the Jewish people, they were rewarded with grand dynasties. Jochebed/Shifrah becomes the ancestress of the Kohanim (the "priests") and the Levites; Miriam/Puah becomes an ancestress of David. How noble was their calling.