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The Israelites Oppressed
These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family:
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Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah;
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Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin;
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Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher.
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The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt.
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Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died,
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but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.
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Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.
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Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”
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So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.
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But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites
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and worked them ruthlessly.
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They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
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The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah,
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“When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.”
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The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.
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Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”
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The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”
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So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous.
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And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
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Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”
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The Birth of Moses
Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman,
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and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.
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But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
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His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.