¹⁴ If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die. Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?”

⁴ “Please, come closer,” he said to them. So they came closer. And he said again, “I am Joseph, your brother, whom you sold into slavery in Egypt. ⁵ But don’t be upset, and don’t be angry with yourselves for selling me to this place. It was God who sent me here ahead of you to preserve your lives. ⁶ This famine that has ravaged the land for two years will last five more years, and there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. ⁷ God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors.^{[a] 8} So it was God who sent me here, not you! And he is the one who made me an adviser^[b] to Pharaoh—the manager of his entire palace and the governor of all Egypt.

²² The Lord will not abandon his people, because that would dishonor his great name. For it has pleased the Lord to make you his very own people.

²⁰ “At that time Moses was born—a beautiful child in God’s eyes. His parents cared for him at home for three months. ²¹ When they had to abandon him, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and raised him as her own son. ²² Moses was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was powerful in both speech and action.

²³ “One day when Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his relatives, the people of Israel. ²⁴ He saw an Egyptian mistreating an Israelite. So Moses came to the man’s defense and avenged him, killing the Egyptian. ²⁵ Moses assumed his fellow Israelites would realize that God had sent him to rescue them, but they didn’t.

¹⁸ Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means ‘rock’),^[a] and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell^[b] will not conquer it.