Exodus 1:9-16

9He said to his people, “There are too many Israelites, and they are stronger than we are.

10We have to outsmart them, or they’ll increase in number. Then, if war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.”

11So the Egyptians put slave drivers in charge of them in order to oppress them through forced labor. They built Pithom and Rameses as supply cities for Pharaoh.

12But the more the Israelites were oppressed, the more they increased in number and spread out. The Egyptians couldn’t stand them ⌞any longer⌟.

13So they forced the Israelites to work hard as slaves.

14They made their lives bitter with back-breaking work in mortar and bricks and every kind of work in the fields. All the jobs the Egyptians gave them were brutally hard.

15Then the king of Egypt told the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah,

16“When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth, look at the child when you deliver it. If it’s a boy, kill it, but if it’s a girl, let it live.”