EXODUS 1 (NIV)
- These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family:
- Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah;
- Issachhar, Zebulun and Benjamin;
- Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher.
- The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt.
- Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died,
- but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous so that the land was filled with them.
- Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt.
- "Look," he said to his people, "the Israelites have become much too numerous for us.
- Come, 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."
- So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.
- But the more they were oppressed the more they multipliled and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites
- and worked them ruthlessly.
- They 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.
- The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives whose names were Shiphrah and Puah,
- "When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live."
- The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.
- Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, "Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?"
- The midwives answered Pharaoh, "Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive."
- So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous.
- And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
- Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: "Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live."