Exodus
Israel’s enslavement in Egypt
1
📚Now these are the names of the children of Israel who came into Egypt, each man and his household coming with Jacob: 2 📚Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, 3 📚Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, 4 Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 5 📚All the persons who came from the loins of Jacob totaled seventy persons. But Joseph was already in Egypt.6 📚And Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation. 7 📚And the children of Israel 📖 were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and grew in number, and became exceedingly powerful, and the land was filled with them.
8 📚Now there arose a new king over Egypt who had not known Joseph. 9 📚And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the children of Israel are more than we, and more powerful. 10 📚Come on, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they may increase in number, and it may happen, if any war breaks out, that they too will join our enemies and fight against us, and so get themselves out of the country”.
11 📚Therefore they put slave drivers over them to oppress them with their hard labour. And for Pharaoh they built treasure cities, Pithom and Rameses. 12 📚But the more they oppressed them, the more they increased in number and grew. And they were in dread because of the children of Israel. 13 📚And the Egyptians forced the children of Israel to serve rigorously, 14 📚and made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, in brick, and in all kinds of labour in the field. All their service which they forced them to do was harsh.
1:11-14 Long before, God told Abraham that this would happen – Gen 15:13. Sometimes the people of God are much mistreated, hated, afflicted, and persecuted in this world (Matt 10:21-23, 34-39; John 16:33; Acts 14:22; Rom 8:17; Heb 11:35-38; 1 Pet 4:1, 12-19; 1 John 5:19). But see notes at Gen 50:20; Ps 66:10-12; Rom 8:28.⚜
15 And the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew 📖 midwives (the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah), 16 📚and he said, “When you assist the Hebrew women to give birth, and see them on the delivery stools, if it is a son, then you must kill him; but if it is a daughter, then let her live”. 17 📚But the midwives feared God 📖, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the boys alive. 18 📚And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, saving the boys alive?”
19 📚And the midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives go in to them”.
20 📚Therefore God was good to the midwives, and the people increased in number and became very strong. 21 📚And it came about, because the midwives feared God, that he enabled them to have families of their own.
22 📚And Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every Hebrew son that is born you must throw into the river, and every daughter you must save alive”.