1Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came into Egypt with Jacob, each man and his household who came:
2Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah;
3Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin;
4Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.
5All the persons descended from the loins of Jacob were seventy persons, and Joseph was already in Egypt.
6Then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation.
7But the sons of Israel were fruitful and swarmed and multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty, and the land was filled with them.
8Now a new king arose over Egypt, who had not known Joseph.
9And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the sons of Israel are more numerous and mightier than we.”
10“Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen that, if war breaks out, they too join our enemies and fight against us and go up from the land.”
11So they set over them taskmasters of forced labor in order to oppress them with their burdens; and they built store-cities for Pharaoh, Pithom and Rameses.
12But as they oppressed them, so they multiplied and so they spread out, and they came to dread the sons of Israel.
13And the Egyptians made the sons of Israel serve with harshness,
14and they made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and in bricks and in all kinds of service in the field—all their service in which they made them serve with harshness.
15Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of the one was Shiphrah and the name of the second was Puah,
16and he said, “When you deliver the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, then you shall put him to death, but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.”
17But the midwives feared God, and they did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them; and they let the boys live.
18So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, that you have let the boys live?”
19And the midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous—before the midwife comes to them, they have given birth.”
20So God did good to the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very mighty.
21And it came about, because the midwives feared God, that he made households for them.
22Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born you shall throw into the Nile, but every daughter you shall let live.”
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