Israel is oppressed

⁸ Now a new king came to power in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph. ⁹ He said to his people, “The Israelite people are now larger in number and stronger than we are. ¹⁰ Come on, let’s be smart and deal with them. Otherwise, they will only grow in number. And if war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and then escape from the land.” ¹¹ As a result, the Egyptians put foremen of forced work gangs over the Israelites to harass them with hard work. They had to build storage cities named Pithom and Rameses for Pharaoh. ¹² But the more they were oppressed, the more they grew and spread, so much so that the Egyptians started to look at the Israelites with disgust and dread. ¹³ So the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites. ¹⁴ They made their lives miserable with hard labor, making mortar and bricks, doing field work, and by forcing them to do all kinds of other cruel work.