The People of Israel Suffer

1 ^1-5 (A) When Jacob went to Egypt, his son Joseph was already there. So Jacob took his eleven other sons and their families. They were: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. Altogether, Jacob had 70 children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren^[a] who went with him.

⁶ After Joseph, his brothers, and everyone else in that generation had died, ^7 (B) the people of Israel became so numerous that the whole region of Goshen was full of them.

^8 (C) Many years later a new king came to power. He did not know what Joseph had done for Egypt, ⁹ and he told the Egyptians:

There are too many of those Israelites in our country, and they are becoming more powerful than we are. ^10 (D) If we don't outsmart them, their families will keep growing larger. And if our country goes to war, they could easily fight on the side of our enemies and escape from Egypt.

¹¹ The Egyptians put slave bosses in charge of the people of Israel and tried to wear them down with hard work. Those bosses forced them to build the cities of Pithom and Rameses,^[b] where the king^[c] could store his supplies. ¹² But even though the Israelites were mistreated, their families grew larger, and they took over more land. Because of this, the Egyptians feared them worse than before ¹³ and made them work so hard ¹⁴ that their lives were miserable. The Egyptians were cruel to the people of Israel and forced them to make bricks and to mix mortar and to work in the fields.

^6 (A) God said Abraham's descendants would live for a while in a foreign land. There they would be slaves and would be mistreated 400 years.

^40-41 (A) The Lord's people left Egypt exactly 430 years after they had arrived.

^40-41 (A) The Lord's people left Egypt exactly 430 years after they had arrived.

^7 (A) But he also said, “I will punish the nation that makes them slaves. Then later they will come and worship me in this place.”