1: These are the names of the Israelites who went to Egypt with Jacob, each bringing his family members:
2: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,
3: Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin,
4: Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.
5: Seventy persons in all generated by Jacob's seed. Joseph was already in Egypt.
6: Then Joseph died, and all his brothers-that whole generation.
7: But the children of Israel kept on reproducing. They were very prolific--a population explosion in their own right--and the land was filled with them.
8: A new king came to power in Egypt who didn't know Joseph.
9: He spoke to his people in alarm, "There are way too many of these Israelites for us to handle.
10: We've got to do something: Let's devise a plan to contain them, lest if there's a war they should join our enemies, or just walk off and leave us."
11: So they organized them into work-gangs and put them to hard labor under gang-foremen. They built the storage cities Pithom and Rameses for Pharaoh.
12: But the harder the Egyptians worked them the more children the Israelites had--children everywhere! The Egyptians got so they couldn't stand the Israelites
13: and treated them worse than ever, crushing them with slave labor.
14: They made them miserable with hard labor--making bricks and mortar and back-breaking work in the fields. They piled on the work, crushing them under the cruel workload.
15: The king of Egypt had a talk with the two Hebrew midwives; one was named Shiphrah and the other Puah.
16: He said, "When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the sex of the baby. If it's a boy, kill him; if it's a girl, let her live."
17: But the midwives had far too much respect for God and didn't do what the king of Egypt ordered; they let the boy babies live.
18: The king of Egypt called in the midwives. "Why didn't you obey my orders? You've let those babies live!"
19: The midwives answered Pharaoh, "The Hebrew women aren't like the Egyptian women; they're vigorous. Before the midwife can get there, they've already had the baby."
20: God was pleased with the midwives. The people continued to increase in number--a very strong people.
21: And because the midwives honored God, God gave them families of their own.
22: So Pharaoh issued a general order to all his people: "Every boy that is born, drown him in the Nile. But let the girls live."