| 1:1 | These are the names of the Israelites who went to Egypt with Jacob, each bringing his family members: |
| 1:2 | Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, |
| 1:3 | Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, |
| 1:4 | Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. |
| 1:5 | Seventy persons in all generated by Jacob's seed. Joseph was already in Egypt. |
| 1:6 | Then Joseph died, and all his brothers--that whole generation. |
| 1:7 | But the children of Israel kept on reproducing. They were very prolific--a population explosion in their own right--and the land was filled with them. |
| 1:8 | A new king came to power in Egypt who didn't know Joseph. |
| 1:9 | He spoke to his people in alarm, "There are way too many of these Israelites for us to handle. |
| 1:10 | We've got to do something: Let's devise a plan to contain them, lest if there's a war they should join our enemies, or just walk off and leave us." |
| 1:11 | So they organized them into work-gangs and put them to hard labor under gang-foremen. They built the storage cities Pithom and Rameses for Pharaoh. |
| 1:12 | But the harder the Egyptians worked them the more children the Israelites had--children everywhere! The Egyptians got so they couldn't stand the Israelites |
| 1:13 | and treated them worse than ever, crushing them with slave labor. |
| 1:14 | They made them miserable with hard labor--making bricks and mortar and back-breaking work in the fields. They piled on the work, crushing them under the cruel workload. |
| 1:15 | The king of Egypt had a talk with the two Hebrew midwives; one was named Shiphrah and the other Puah. |
| 1:16 | He said, "When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the sex of the baby. If it's a boy, kill him; if it's a girl, let her live." |
| 1:17 | But the midwives had far too much respect for God and didn't do what the king of Egypt ordered; they let the boy babies live. |
| 1:18 | The king of Egypt called in the midwives. "Why didn't you obey my orders? You've let those babies live!" |
| 1:19 | The midwives answered Pharaoh, "The Hebrew women aren't like the Egyptian women; they're vigorous. Before the midwife can get there, they've already had the baby." |
| 1:20 | God was pleased with the midwives. The people continued to increase in number--a very strong people. |
| 1:21 | And because the midwives honored God, God gave them families of their own. |
| 1:22 | So Pharaoh issued a general order to all his people: "Every boy that is born, drown him in the Nile. But let the girls live." |
Keluaran 1 - The Message Bible
