Exodus 1:1–14

Jacob’s Family Grows Strong

1When Jacob ⁿ went to Egypt, he took his sons, and each son took his own family with him. These are the names of the sons of Israel: ²Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, ³Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, ⁴Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. ⁵There was a total of seventy people who were descendants of Jacob. Jacob’s son Joseph was already in Egypt.

⁶Some time later, Joseph and his brothers died, along with all the people who had lived at that same time. ⁷But the people of Israel had many children, and their number grew greatly. They became very strong, and the country of Egypt was filled with them.

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.