¹⁴ For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.”

⁴ Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.^{(A) 5} And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.^{(B) 6} For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. ⁷ God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. ⁸ So it was not you who sent me here but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.^(C)

²² For the Lord will not cast away his people, for his great name’s sake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself.^(A)

²⁰ At this time Moses was born, and he was beautiful before God. For three months he was brought up in his father’s house, ²¹ and when he was abandoned, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. ²² So Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his words and deeds.^(A)

²³ “When he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his kinfolk, the Israelites.^{(B) 24} When he saw one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian. ²⁵ He supposed that his kinsfolk would understand that God through him was rescuing them, but they did not understand.

⁹ For we are slaves; yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery but has extended to us his steadfast love before the kings of Persia, to give us new life to set up the house of our God, to repair its ruins, and to give us a wall in Judea and Jerusalem.^(A)