²³ After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. Their cry for help rose up to God from their slavery.^(A)

⁴ Listen! The wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.^(A)

⁷ Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings,^{(A) 8} and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.^{(B) 9} The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them.^(C)

²⁰ Then the Lord said, “How great is the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah and how very grave their sin!^{(A) 21} I must go down and see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry that has come to me, and if not, I will know.”^(B)

³⁰ “Now when forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush.

⁶ When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us,^{(A) 7} we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression.^(B)

The Return from Egypt

¹⁹ When Herod died, an angel of the Lord suddenly appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, ²⁰ “Get up, take the child and his mother, and go to the land of Israel, for those who were seeking the child’s life are dead.”

²⁰ It will be a sign and a witness to the Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt; when they cry to the Lord because of oppressors, he will send them a savior and will defend and deliver them.^(A)