Psalm 81

A Call to Obedience

For the choir director: on the Gittith. Of Asaph.(A)

Sing for joy to God our strength;
shout in triumph to the God of Jacob.(B)
Lift up a song—play the tambourine,
the melodious lyre, and the harp.(C)
Blow the ram’s horn on the day of our feasts[a]
during the new moon(D)
and during the full moon.
For this is a statute for Israel,
an ordinance of the God of Jacob.(E)
He set it up as a decree for Joseph
when he went throughout[b] the land of Egypt.(F)
I heard an unfamiliar language:
“I relieved his shoulder from the burden;
his hands were freed from carrying the basket.(G)
You called out in distress, and I rescued you;
I answered you from the thundercloud.(H)
I tested you at the Waters of Meribah.(I)Selah
Listen, my people, and I will admonish you.
Israel, if you would only listen to me!(J)
There must not be a strange god among you;
you must not bow down to a foreign god.(K)
10 I am the Lord your God,
who brought you up from the land of Egypt.(L)
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.(M)

11 “But my people did not listen to my voice;
Israel did not obey me.(N)
12 So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts
to follow their own plans.(O)
13 If only my people would listen to me
and Israel would follow my ways,(P)
14 I would quickly subdue their enemies
and turn my hand against their foes.”(Q)
15 Those who hate the Lord
would cower to him;(R)
their doom would last forever.(S)
16 But he would feed Israel[c] with the best wheat.
“I would satisfy you with honey from the rock.”(T)

Footnotes

  1. 81:3 Lit feast
  2. 81:5 Or he gained authority over
  3. 81:16 Lit him

A new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we are.(A) 10 Come, let’s deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further, and when war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.”(B) 11 So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor.(C) They built Pithom and Rameses as supply cities(D) for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread so that the Egyptians came to dread[a] the Israelites. 13 They worked the Israelites ruthlessly(E) 14 and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.(F)

15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives—the first, whose name was Shiphrah, and the second, whose name was Puah— 16 “When you help the Hebrew women give birth, observe them as they deliver. If the child is a son, kill him, but if it’s a daughter, she may live.” 17 The midwives, however, feared God(G) and did not do as the king of Egypt had told them;(H) they let the boys live. 18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this and let the boys live?”

19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife can get to them.”(I)

20 So God was good to the midwives,(J) and the people multiplied and became very numerous. 21 Since the midwives feared God, he gave them families.(K) 22 Pharaoh then commanded all his people, “You must throw every son born to the Hebrews into the Nile, but let every daughter live.”(L)

Moses’s Birth and Adoption

Now a man from the family of Levi married a Levite woman.(M) The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son; when she saw that he was beautiful,[b] she hid him for three months.(N) But when she could no longer hide him, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with asphalt and pitch. She placed the child in it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. Then his sister(O) stood at a distance in order to see what would happen to him.

Pharaoh’s daughter went down to bathe at the Nile while her servant girls walked along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds, sent her slave girl, took it, opened it, and saw him, the child—and there he was, a little boy, crying. She felt sorry for him and said, “This is one of the Hebrew boys.”

Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Should I go and call a Hebrew woman who is nursing to nurse the boy for you?”

“Go,” Pharaoh’s daughter told her. So the girl went and called the boy’s mother. Then Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the boy and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses,[c] “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

Footnotes

  1. 1:12 Or Egyptians loathed
  2. 2:2 Or healthy
  3. 2:10 The name Moses sounds like “drawing out” in Hb and “born” in Egyptian.

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