Exodus 1:1-22
Israel’s Suffering in Egypt
1 Now these are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt; each man and his household came with Jacob: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; 4 Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 5 All those who were descendants of Jacob were seventy persons (for Joseph was in Egypt already). 6 And Joseph died, all his brothers, and all that generation. 7 But the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.
8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; 10 come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were in dread of the children of Israel. 13 So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. 14 And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor.
15 Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of one was Shiphrah and the name of the other Puah; 16 and he said, “When you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive. 18 So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, and saved the male children alive?”
19 And the midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are lively and give birth before the midwives come to them.”
20 Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very mighty. 21 And so it was, because the midwives feared God, that He provided households for them.
22 So Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born you shall cast into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive.”
Joseph was forgotten by the new Pharaoh and fear was begotten as the new king pressed all Israel among them into the hard labor of slavery. The fear that God’s prosperous people who were fruitful and multiplying according to His promise made the host country uneasy and fearful of an uprising, so the solution was to ignore the past and control and use the people of the LORD for their own benefit instead. The new regime seemed to gloss over the facts of how Joseph saved Egypt from the severe seven-year famine and made Pharaoh rich in the process, owning all the land and animals earned as payment for the food by his starving people, all enabled by God through Joseph. It is as if the king was enacting retribution against the LORD for making the false gods of his people as powerless and of no significance. The effects on the descendants of Israel there were felt with every crack of the whip and every burden placed on their shoulders to build the monuments and cities of their Egyptians. However, the more the people of God were mistreated the more they multiplied against the goads of affliction even as they had to serve with ever increasing cruel harshness in rigorous abuse in their bondage. They continued to make the bricks and mortar and tend the fields given to Pharaoh by Joseph’s wisdom that was long forgotten. The king then in his irrational fear ordered the midwives to murder the male babies in a futile attempt to weaken the people of God increasing in their midst, but even that was futile as the fear of God caused the midwives to let the male babies live instead. They protected themselves by saying that the Hebrew women gave birth before they could arrive on the scene to help them and so were spared as they honored the LORD and were given places to live when the royal decree cast them aside for not following through on the mandated infanticide, somewhat akin to forced abortions. The command stood to throw the male babies into the river and save the females only. This is what led to the threat to Moses and his deliverance through the water to come. Though the Egyptians were driven to,such atrocities by fear of God’s people, the LORD kept them safe in Egypt as foretold (Genesis 15:13, Acts 7:6) to Abraham long before. He had a plan for salvation that would require a deliverer and would ensure his safety to save them all in due time, just as He would as a type of Moses in the spiritual salvation in Christ (Galatians 4:4-5) much later in time as foreshadowed here. The parallel here with God’s people in Christ is seen in Revelation 12:9, 17 where the serpent still tries to destroy God’s children and will also fail miserably to stop the gospel from reaching them all whom He has called, no matter how much suffering and tribulation we must endure as the people of God in Christ increase and multiply with fruitfulness to fill the new earth.
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