Exodus 1

¹Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came into Egypt; every man and his family came with Jacob.

²Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah;

³Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin;

⁴Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.

⁵All the offspring of Jacob were seventy persons: and Joseph had come to Egypt before them.

⁶Then Joseph came to his end, and all his brothers, and all that generation.

⁷And the children of Israel were fertile, increasing very greatly in numbers and in power; and the land was full of them.

⁸Now a new king came to power in Egypt, who had no knowledge of Joseph.

⁹And he said to his people, See, the people of Israel are greater in number and in power than we are:

¹⁰Let us take care for fear that their numbers may become even greater, and if there is a war, they may be joined with those who are against us, and make an attack on us, and go up out of the land.

¹¹So they put overseers of forced work over them, in order to make their strength less by the weight of their work. And they made store-towns for Pharaoh, Pithom and Raamses.

¹²But the more cruel they were to them, the more their number increased, till all the land was full of them. And the children of Israel were hated by the Egyptians.

¹³And they gave the children of Israel even harder work to do:

¹⁴And made their lives bitter with hard work, making building-material and bricks, and doing all sorts of work in the fields under the hardest conditions.