The Children of Israel in Egypt[a]
Oppression of the Israelites[b]
Chapter 1
1 [c]These are the names of the children of Israel who entered Egypt with Joseph, each of them arriving with his family: 2 [d]Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5 The total number of those born to Jacob was seventy.[e] Joseph was already in Egypt.
6 [f]Now Joseph died and then all his brothers and all that generation. 7 The children of Israel multiplied and grew numerous and very powerful and filled the land.
Harsh Condition of the Children of Israel.[g] 8 Then a new king arose in Egypt who had not known Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Behold, the children of Israel are very numerous and more powerful than we are. 10 Let us deal wisely with them lest they continue to multiply. Otherwise, if there were a war, they would join our enemies and battle against us and then escape from the land.”
11 So taskmasters were set over the children of Israel to wear them down with forced labor. They built the supply cities[h] of Pithom and Raameses for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and grew beyond measure. The Egyptians began to dread the presence of the children of Israel 13 and therefore put them to work, treating them harshly. 14 They made their lives difficult and forced them to make clay bricks and to do all kinds of work in the fields. They forced them to do every type of harsh work.
15 Command to the Midwives. The king of Egypt said to the midwives of the Hebrews, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other named Puah, 16 “When you assist the Hebrew women who are in labor, look at the child while it is still on the birthing stool. If it is a boy, kill it. If it is a girl, you can let it live.” 17 But the midwives feared God. They did not do what the king of Egypt had ordered them to do. They let the babies live.
18 The king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this and let the babies live?” 19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptians. They are full of life. Before the midwife arrives, they have already given birth.”
20 God blessed the midwives. The people grew and became very numerous. 21 God gave the midwives numerous families because they had feared God. 22 Pharaoh therefore gave this command to all of his people: “Every male son who is born to the Hebrews is to be thrown into the Nile, but let the girl babies live.”
Footnotes
- Exodus 1:1 In this section, the Bible counterposes two peoples—the people of Pharaoh, who are cruel and oppressive, and the children of Israel, who are sorely oppressed. However, the more the latter are oppressed, the stronger they become. In their struggle to leave Egypt, the children of Israel will slowly become aware that they are a people chosen by God and set free to carry out an important task.
In carefully planning and preparing the salvation of the whole human race, the God of supreme love, by a special dispensation, chose for himself a people to whom he might entrust his promises. First, he entered into a Covenant with Abraham (see Gen 15:18) and, through Moses, with the people of Israel (see Ex 24:8). To this people that he acquired for himself, he so manifested himself through words and deeds as the one true and living God that Israel came to know by experience the ways of God with human beings, and with God himself speaking to them through the mouth of the Prophets, Israel daily gained a deeper and clearer understanding of his ways and made them more widely known among the nations (see Pss 22:28-29; 96:1-3; Isa 2:1-4; Jer 3:17). - Exodus 1:1 Scholars calculate that about three centuries separated the death of Joseph, with which Genesis ends, and the Exodus of the Hebrew people. From this lengthy period the Bible singles out only two facts that are important for linking the past with the coming religious history of Israel.
- Exodus 1:1 The children of Israel flourish in Egypt, fulfilling the promise God had made to the Patriarchs (Gen 12; 17; etc.). They lived in Egypt 430 years (see Ex 12:40). We pass from the story of the great ancestors to that of a people.
- Exodus 1:2 The sons of Jacob are given here according to their respective mothers (see Gen 29:31; 30:20; 35:16-26).
- Exodus 1:5 Seventy: Gen 46:27; Deut 10:22 have the same number. The Greek translation, however, and a manuscript from Qumran have “seventy-five,” as does Acts 7:14. The extra five persons are the descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh; they are mentioned in the Greek translation of Gen 46:27.
- Exodus 1:6 Scholars estimate that it was more than 200 years from the death of Joseph to the advent of the new king.
- Exodus 1:8 The Pharaoh, probably Rameses II (1298–1232 B.C.), becomes worried when he sees the proliferation of the Hebrews and takes various measures to exterminate this race and doubtless other Asiatic populations. The children of Israel who left Egypt are said to number 600,000, “not including children” (Ex 12:37). Works of the kind that the Hebrews are compelled to do are illustrated in Egyptian paintings of that period, even if these do not picture actual groups of the Patriarchs’ descendants.
- Exodus 1:11 Supply cities is a military term (see 1 Ki 9:19). Pithom and Rameses are in the eastern part of the Nile Delta; Rameses is identified with either Tanis or El Qantara. Pharaoh: a royal title rather than a personal name.