Exodus 1 / 40
- 1These 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 fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them.
- 8Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt.
- 9"Look," he said to his people, "the Israelites have become much 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.
- 12But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites
- 13and worked them ruthlessly.
- 14They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.
- 15The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah,
- 16"When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it 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.
- 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.
- 22Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: "Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live."