Exodus

1.1-22

The level of detail written to describe the life of Jacob's family at the end of Genesis is not used to explain the time that immediately followed as we begin the Book of Exodus. That is because the Bible is not a book merely for the sake of history, and the details are not for our entertainment. More importantly, it is for the sake of God's providence. In the years that span the time between the death of Joseph, and the arrival of Moses, there are two significant things that happen: The people of God are oppressed, and they multiply greatly. No other details are necessary until the alarm of the Egyptian Pharoah prompts plans to thwart what God is doing by commanding that all the male children born to the Israelites be slain. Two hundred fifteen (215) years after Abraham entered Caanan, Jacob entered Egypt. Genesis 15:13-16 says Abram's people will be enslaved and mistreated for 400 years in a land that is not theirs, but in the fourth generation, they will return. From Ex 6:18-20, 18:2-4 we see Moses born as the fourth generation of Israel (Jacob). This timeline is important firstly because it is what the Bible says. But it is also important that we note the accuracy of it because it is rightly reconciled with other Scripture. Differing from most modern English translations of the Bible, the Codex Alexandrinus, (a Greek manuscript of the Bible from the 5th century) translates Exodus 12:40 as: "Now the time that the sons of Israel AND OF THEIR FATHERS lived in Egypt AND IN THE LAND OF CANAAN was 430 years." The Hebrew manuscripts used for that CA translation are long lost, but they are widely held to have been closer to the original signature than the earliest we can still access. By this earlier rendering, 215 years after Jacob entered Egypt, Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. That same year he would deliver the covenant and the Law to God's chosen people. Paul agrees with this timeline as he states in Galatians 3:17 that the Law came 430 years after the promises were spoken to Abraham - 215 years in Canaan, and 215 years in Egypt.

CHAPTER 1

Israel Multiplies in Egypt

1 Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob; they came each one with his household:
2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah;
3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin;
4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.
5 And all the persons who came from the loins of Jacob were seventy in number, but Joseph was already in Egypt.
6 Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation.
7 But the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased and multiplied and became exceedingly mighty, so that the land was filled with them.
8 And a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.
9 And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of the sons of Israel are more and mightier than we.
10 “Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply and it be in the event of war, that they also join themselves to those who hate us and fight against us and go up from the land.”
11 So they appointed taskmasters over them to afflict them with hard labors. And they built for Pharaoh storage cities, Pithom and Raamses.
12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out, so that they were in dread of the sons of Israel.
13 So the Egyptians brutally compelled the sons of Israel to slave labor;
14 and they made their lives bitter with hard slave labor in mortar and bricks and in all kinds of slave labor in the field, all their slave labor which they brutally compelled them to do.
15 Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other was named Puah;
16 and he said, “When you are helping the Hebrew women to give birth and see them upon the birthstool, if it is a son, then you shall put him to death; 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 had spoken to them, but let the boys live.
18 So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this thing, and let the boys live?”
19 Then the midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife can come to them.”
20 So God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very mighty.
21 Now it happened that because the midwives feared God, He made households for them.
22 And Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “Every son who is born you are to cast into the Nile, and every daughter you are to keep alive.”