Exodus 1:9-16

9He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we are.

10Come, let’s deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further, and when war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.”

11So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. They built Pithom and Rameses as supply cities for Pharaoh.

12But the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.

13They worked the Israelites ruthlessly

14and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.

15The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives — the first, whose name was Shiphrah, and the second, whose name was Puah —

16“When you help the Hebrew women give birth, observe them as they deliver. If the child is a son, kill him, but if it’s a daughter, she may live.”