Exodus 1:8–2:10

⁸A new king, who had not known Joseph, came to power in Egypt. ⁹He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we are. ^g10Let us deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further, and if war breaks out, they may join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.” ^h11So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. ⁱThey built Pithom and Rameses as supply cities ^jfor Pharaoh. ¹²But the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread so that the Egyptians came to dread ^kthe Israelites. ¹³They worked the Israelites ruthlessly ^l14and 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. ^m

¹⁵Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ¹⁶“When you help the Hebrew women give birth, observe them as they deliver. ⁿIf the child is a son, kill him, but if it’s a daughter, she may live.” ¹⁷The Hebrew midwives, however, feared God ^oand did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; ^pthey let the boys live. ¹⁸So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this and let the boys live?”

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

²⁰So God was good to the midwives, ^rand the people multiplied and became very numerous. ²¹Since the midwives feared God, He gave them families. ^s22Pharaoh then commanded all his people: “You must throw every son born to the Hebrews ^tinto the Nile, but let every daughter live.” ^u

Moses’ Birth and Adoption

2Now a man from the family of Levi married a Levite woman. ^v2The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son; when she saw that he was beautiful, ^wshe hid him for three months. ^x3But 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. ⁴Then his sister ^ystood at a distance in order to see what would happen to him.

⁵Pharaoh’s daughter went down to bathe at the Nile while her servant girls walked along the riverbank. Seeing the basket among the reeds, she sent her slave girl to get it. ⁶When she opened it, she saw the child—a little boy, crying. She felt sorry for him and said, “This is one of the Hebrew boys.”

⁷Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Should I go and call a woman from the Hebrews to nurse the boy for you?”

⁸“Go,” Pharaoh’s daughter told her. So the girl went and called the boy’s mother. ⁹Then 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. ¹⁰When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.” ^z