1 These are the names of the children of Israel who came into Egypt with Jacob, each man with his household:
2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah,
3 Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin,
4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.
5 The persons descended from Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was in Egypt already.
6 In time Joseph died, as did all his brothers and that whole generation.
7 But the children of Israel bore fruit and teemed; they increased and became very, very strong, until the land was full of them.
8 Then over Egypt there arose a new king, one who had not known Joseph.
9 He told his people, "See, the children of Israel are a people more numerous and stronger than we are.
10 Come, we must act wisely toward them, or they will keep multiplying; and should war come, they might side with our enemies, fight us and go up from the land."
11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Raamses as storage cities for Pharaoh.
12 Yet the harder they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread, until the Egyptians were filled with dread of the children of Israel.
13 So the Egyptians forced the children of Israel to work ruthlessly,
14 and made their lives bitter with heavy labor in mortar and brick and with every sort of fieldwork; all the labor they imposed on them was ruthless.
15 The king of Egypt also spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one named Shiphrah and the other Puah.
16 He said, "When you deliver the Hebrew women and look at the birthstool, if it is a son, put him to death; if it is a daughter, let her live."
17 The midwives, however, feared God; they did not do what the king of Egypt had told them, and they kept the boys alive.
18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, "Why have you done this and kept the boys alive?"
19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, "The Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women. They are full of life and have given birth before the midwife reaches them."
20 God was good to the midwives, and the people kept multiplying and became very strong.
21 Because the midwives feared God, he gave them households of their own.
22 Then Pharaoh gave an order to all his people: "Every son who is born you are to cast into the Nile, but let every daughter live."