1These are the names of Jacob's sons who came to Egypt, each with his household:
2Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,
3Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin,
4Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.
5In total, seventy descendants came from Jacob. Joseph was already in Egypt.
6Joseph died, and so did all his brothers and everyone else from that generation.
7The people of Israel had many children and grew in number. They multiplied and became very powerful, filling the land.
8Then a new king came to power in Egypt who did not know about Joseph.
9He said to his people, "Look, the people of Israel are too many and too strong for us."
10"Come, let's skillfully figure out what to do with them so they don't multiply further. Otherwise, if there's a war, they might join our enemies, fight against us, and then escape from the land."
11So they put slave drivers over them to make their lives hard with forced labor. The Israelites built storage cities for Pharaoh, named Pithom and Raamses.
12But the more the Egyptians made their lives difficult, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread out. The Egyptians became distressed because of the Israelites.
13The Egyptians brutally forced the Israelites to work,
14and they made their lives miserable with hard labor, preparing mortar and bricks, and doing all sorts of work in the fields. They were brutal in all the tasks they forced them to do.
15The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one named Shiphrah and the other Puah.
16He said, "When you help the Hebrew women give birth and see them on the birthing stool, if the baby is a boy, you must kill him; but if it's a girl, she may live."
17But the midwives respected God and did not follow the Egyptian king's order; instead, they let the baby boys live.
18The king of Egypt called for the midwives and asked them, "Why did you do this and let the boys live?"
19The midwives told Pharaoh, "The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; they are strong and give birth before a midwife even arrives."
20God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very powerful.
21Because the midwives respected God, he gave them their own families.
22Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, "Throw every newborn son into the river, but let every daughter live."