Exodus - Chapter 1 | New International Version

  • 1. These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family:
  • 2. Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah;
  • 3. Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin;
  • 4. Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher.
  • 5. The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt.
  • 6. Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died,
  • 7. but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them.
  • 8. Then 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.
  • 10. 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."
  • 11. So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.
  • 12. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites
  • 13. and worked them ruthlessly.
  • 14. 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.
  • 15. The 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.
  • 17. The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.
  • 18. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, "Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?"
  • 19. The midwives answered Pharaoh, "Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive."
  • 20. So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous.
  • 21. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
  • 22. 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."
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