Shemot 1:7 records that the Jewish people were proliferating in Egypt. This population growth worried Pharaoh since in the event of war the Jewish people could side with Egypt's enemy (a "fifth column") and leave the country, 1:8-10. Accordingly, he decided to deal wisely with the Jewish people, so he placed taskmasters over the Jewish people to have the people build large storehouses (cities?), 1:11. What is the connection between the taskmasters and the Jewish population growth?
Ibn Ezra and Hizkuni (on 1:11) explain that the goal was that the work would somehow stop the Jewish people from procreating or from procreating successfully. Ramban (on 1:10) claims that really the goal was genocide but Pharaoh knew that the Egyptians would not immediately accept this, so the slavery was a slow way of building up to the genocide. According to both of these approaches, the main idea was to reduce the population of the Jewish people. Yet, if the goal was to reduce the Jewish population, why would Pharaoh be upset if the Jewish people left Egypt? Why did Pharaoh not throw the Jewish people out of Egypt instead of killing them?
Pharaoh wanted to benefit from the Jews, so he did not want them to leave. Maybe the Jewish people were slaves even before the decree of the taskmasters, or maybe he now wanted them to be slaves. With either possibility, he wanted them to work for him, but he was afraid that due to their population growth they would be able to leave on their own if there was a war. His response was the taskmasters who would control the Jews, and they would also force the Jewish people to work as slaves, which would benefit Egypt. The goal then was not per se to stop the population growth of the Jewish people but to ensure that the Jewish people would benefit Pharaoh and Egypt.
1:12 records that the Jewish people continued to proliferate and the Egyptians loathed the Jewish people. 1:13,14 then records that the Egyptians made the Jews work much harder. While many (see Ramban on 1:13,14) understand that this increase in the workload was a decree from Pharaoh, the Torah does not relate this action to Pharaoh. Instead, it was the Egyptians on their own who were cruel to the Jews because they loathed the Jews. A proof of this is from the incident recorded in 2:11, which records that an Egyptian was just beating a Jew with no indication at all that the Egyptian was acting on orders from Pharaoh. 1:13,14 are very important verses because they show that the majority of the Egyptian population participated in the enslavement of the Jewish people, and they were not just following orders.
1:15,16 then record that Pharaoh ordered the midwives to secretly kill the male Jewish children at birth. However, the midwives refused to kill the male newborns, 1:17-21 and the Pharaoh ordered the entire population to kill the male Jewish children, 1:22. (Note, as pointed out by Rashi technically 1:22 would include the killing of Egyptian male new born, but it would seem that the verse should be understood as only referring to the Jewish male newborns.)
Both by the order to the midwives and to the entire population, the goal was only to kill the male newborn children. Why only the boys and why only newborns? If the goal was genocide, then the order should have been to kill everybody. Philo (quoted in Kugel, 1997, p. 289) explains that since females are not as strong as men, the goal was to reduce the strength of the Jewish population by killing the men. This would accord with the fear that the people would become a fifth column, but then why only were the newborn males killed and not the young men? Also, why did Pharaoh not initially kill the males if he was worried about the problem of the fifth column? Why only after the continued increase of the population did Pharaoh decide to kill the male Jewish newborns?
One possibility for the delay in killing the Jews was that he was not sure if the population would agree to such a policy (see Ramban on 1:10), and it was only when he saw how much the Egyptians loathed and made the Jews suffer with hard work, that he thought that his plan to kill the Jewish babies would be accepted. Yet, still why only kill the male babies?
A second possibility is again that Pharaoh wanted to benefit from the Jewish people. Initially, Pharaoh did not want to kill the young men since that would reduce the number of slaves, and he thought that with his taskmasters, he would have control over the Jewish population. However, the continued increase in the Jewish population was threatening the taskmasters' control of the Jewish people. Thus, he decided to have the male Jewish newborns killed since this would stop the males, from whom there was a fear of a fifth column, from becoming a problem in the future. (Note, with this idea, this decree was unrelated to the Egyptians making the Jews work extra hard, 1:13,14, or one can combine both ideas.) Yet, what would happen to the future workforce if all the male newborns were killed?
We know that Jewish male newborns were killed, as Moshe's mother had to hide Moshe from being killed, 2:2,3. Yet, if the Egyptians were killing every newborn male, how could the Jewish people still have numbered 600,000 men (12:37) when they left Egypt? (Note Moshe was born 80 years before the people left Egypt, 7:7.)
Ramban (on 1:10) argues that the decree must have been temporary since we do not read about the decree when Aharon was born three years before Moshe (7:7). He writes that the decree was abolished after Moshe was born for two possible reasons. One, maybe Pharaoh's daughter convinced him to stop the decree as she saved Moshe, or following the Talmud (Sotah 12b), that after Moshe's birth Pharaoh's advisors told Pharaoh to stop killing the male newborns since they no longer saw that the savior of the Jewish people would be killed through water. Ramban's idea that the decree was temporary makes sense, but we believe that there was a different reason for why it was temporary.
Pharaoh's goal was to maintain the male Jewish population at certain level since if it was too small he would not have enough slaves, but if it was too large, then he could lose control of the population and the people would leave. How could Pharaoh maintain a steady state male Jewish population? The answer is a temporary recurring decree to kill the male Jewish population. The decree could exist for some period, and afterwards the male Jewish children would be allowed to live, which would allow the male Jewish population to grow again. Once the male Jewish population reached a threshold level, then the decree would be re-instituted until the population had fallen sufficiently and the decree would be relaxed. Thus, Aharon would have been born when the decree was not in effect, while Moshe was born when the decree had been re-instituted. This temporary recurring decree allowed Pharaoh to maintain the level of slaves he thought he could control and also benefit from the Jews.
Bibliography:
Kugel, James L. 1997, The Bible As it Was, Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
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