Exodus 1:8–2:10

⁸And a new king rose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. ⁹And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the Israelites^e are greater and more numerous than us. ¹⁰Come, we must deal shrewdly with them, lest they become many, and when war happens, they also will join our enemies and will fight against us and go up from the land.” ¹¹And they appointed commanders of forced labor over them in order to oppress them with their forced labor,^f and they built storage cities for Pharaoh—Pithom and Rameses. ¹²And as he oppressed them, so they became many, and so they spread out, and the Egyptians were afraid because of the presence of the Israelites.^{g 13}And the Egyptians ruthlessly compelled the Israelites^h to work. ¹⁴And they made their lives bitter with hard work with mortar and with bricks and with all sorts of work in the field—with all their work in which they ruthlessly enslaved them.

¹⁵And the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives—of whom the name of the one was Shiphrah and the name of the second was Puah—¹⁶and he said, “When you help the Hebrews give birth, you will look upon the pairs of testicles; if he is a son, you will put him to death, and if she is a daughter, she will live.” ¹⁷But the midwives feared God, and they did not do as the king of Egypt had said to them. They let the boys live. ¹⁸And the king of Egypt summoned the midwives, and he said to them, “Why have you done this thing and let the boys live?” ¹⁹And the midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, because they are vigorous; before the midwife comes to them, they have given birth.” ²⁰And God did the midwives good, and the Israelite people became many and were very numerous. ²¹And soⁱ because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.^{j 22}And Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born you will throw into the Nile, and every daughter you will let live.”

The Birth and Early Life of Moses

2And a man from the family^a of Levi went, and he took a descendent of Levi.^{b 2}And the woman conceived, and she gave birth to a son, and she saw him, that he was a fine baby, and she hid him three months. ³But when she could no longer hide him, she got a papyrus basket for him, and she coated it with tar and with pitch, and she placed the boy in it, and she placed it among the reeds on the bank of the Nile. ⁴And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. ⁵And the daughter of Pharaoh went down to wash at the Nile, while her maidservants were walking alongside the Nile, and she saw the basket in the midst of the reeds, and she sent her slave woman for it and took it ⁶and opened it and saw him—the boy—and it was a lad weeping, and she had compassion for him and said, “This must be from the boys of the Hebrews.”^{c 7}And his sister said to the daughter of Pharaoh, “Shall I go and call for you a woman from the Hebrews who is nursing so that she will nurse the boy for you?” ⁸And the daughter of Pharaoh said to her, “Go.” And the girl went, and she called the mother of the boy. ⁹And the daughter of Pharaoh said, “Take this boy and nurse him for me, and I myself will give you wages, and the woman took the boy, and she nursed him. ¹⁰And the boy grew, and she brought him to the daughter of Pharaoh, and he became her son, and she called his name Moses, and she said, “Because I drew him out from the water.”