Exodus 1:1–14

Israel Multiplies in Egypt

¹Now these are the ^anames of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob; they came each one ¹with his household:

²Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah;

³Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin;

⁴Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.

⁵And all the ¹persons who came from the loins of Jacob were ^aseventy ²in number, but Joseph was already in Egypt.

^6aThen Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation.

⁷But the sons of Israel ^awere fruitful and ¹increased and multiplied and became exceedingly ²mighty, so that the land was filled with them.

⁸And a new ^aking arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.

^9aAnd he said to his people, “Behold, the people of the sons of Israel are ¹more and mightier than we.

¹⁰“Come, let us ^adeal wisely with them, lest they multiply and it be ¹in the event of war, that they also join themselves to those who hate us and fight against us and ^bgo up from the land.”

¹¹So they appointed ^ataskmasters over them to afflict them with ^1bhard labors. And they built for Pharaoh ^cstorage cities, Pithom and ^dRaamses.

¹²But the more they afflicted them, ^athe more they multiplied and the more they ¹spread out, so that they were in dread of the sons of Israel.

¹³So the Egyptians brutally compelled the sons of Israel ^ato slave labor;

¹⁴and they made ^atheir lives bitter with ¹hard slave labor in mortar and bricks and in all kinds of slave labor in the field, all their slave labor which they brutally ²compelled them to do.