Exodus 1:8–2:10

Trouble for the People of Israel

⁸Then a new king began to rule Egypt, who did not know who Joseph was. ⁹This king said to his people, “Look! The people of Israel are too many and too strong for us to handle! ¹⁰If we don’t make plans against them, the number of their people will grow even more. Then if there is a war, they might join our enemies and fight us and escape from the country!”

¹¹So the Egyptians made life hard for the Israelites. They put slave masters over them, who forced the Israelites to build the cities Pithom and Rameses as supply centers for the king. ¹²But the harder the Egyptians forced the Israelites to work, the more the Israelites grew in number and spread out. So the Egyptians became very afraid of them ¹³and demanded even more of them. ¹⁴They made their lives bitter. They forced the Israelites to work hard to make bricks and mortar and to do all kinds of work in the fields. The Egyptians were not merciful to them in all their painful work.

¹⁵Two Hebrew nurses, named Shiphrah and Puah, helped the Israelite women give birth to their babies. The king of Egypt said to the nurses, ¹⁶“When you are helping the Hebrew women give birth to their babies, watch! If the baby is a girl, let her live, but if it is a boy, kill him!” ¹⁷But the nurses feared God, so they did not do as the king told them; they let all the boy babies live. ¹⁸Then the king of Egypt sent for the nurses and said, “Why did you do this? Why did you let the boys live?”

¹⁹The nurses said to him, “The Hebrew women are much stronger than the Egyptian women. They give birth to their babies before we can get there.” ²⁰God was good to the nurses. And the Hebrew people continued to grow in number, so they became even stronger. ²¹Because the nurses feared God, he gave them families of their own.

²²So the king commanded all his people, “Every time a boy is born to the Hebrews, you must throw him into the Nile River, but let all the girl babies live.”

Baby Moses

2Now a man from the family of Levi married a woman who was also from the family of Levi. ²She became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw how wonderful the baby was, she hid him for three months. ³But after three months she was not able to hide the baby any longer, so she got a basket made of reeds and covered it with tar so that it would float. She put the baby in the basket. Then she put the basket among the tall stalks of grass at the edge of the Nile River. ⁴The baby’s sister stood a short distance away to see what would happen to him.

⁵Then the daughter of the king of Egypt came to the river to take a bath, and her servant girls were walking beside the river. When she saw the basket in the tall grass, she sent her slave girl to get it. ⁶The king’s daughter opened the basket and saw the baby boy. He was crying, so she felt sorry for him and said, “This is one of the Hebrew babies.”

⁷Then the baby’s sister asked the king’s daughter, “Would you like me to go and find a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby for you?”

⁸The king’s daughter said, “Go!” So the girl went and got the baby’s own mother.

⁹The king’s daughter said to the woman, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took her baby and nursed him. ¹⁰When the child grew older, the woman took him to the king’s daughter, and she adopted the baby as her own son. The king’s daughter named him Moses, ⁿ because she had pulled him out of the water.