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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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Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin;
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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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“Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us.
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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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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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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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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.
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She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.
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Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him.
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When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”
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Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
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The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”
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“And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”
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Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage.
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Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”
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During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God.
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God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.
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So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
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There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up.
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When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.”
