Exodus 1

Israel multiplies in Egypt

These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: ²Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; ³Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; ⁴Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher.

⁵The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt. ⁶Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, ⁷but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.a

A king who did not know Joseph

⁸Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.b ⁹“Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. ¹⁰Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” ¹¹So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.c

¹²But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelitesd ¹³and worked them ruthlessly. ¹⁴They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.

¹⁵The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, ¹⁶“When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” ¹⁷The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.e

¹⁸Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?” ¹⁹The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” ²⁰So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous.

²¹And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.f ²²Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”