Exodus 1

קרא את הפרק הזה בכוונה

Exodus 1 opens the story of Israel's slavery. The seventy descendants of Jacob who came to Egypt have become a people so numerous that the land is filled with them. A new king who did not know Joseph sees them as a threat, and the chapter records three escalating measures against them: forced labor building the store cities Pithom and Rameses, which only makes them multiply; a secret order to the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah to kill newborn boys, which they refuse because they fear God; and finally a public command to the whole nation to throw every Hebrew boy into the Nile. God rewards the midwives with families, and the people keep growing.

פתח פירוש פרק

Exodus 1 begins with a list of names and ends with babies in the river, and the distance between the two is the story of how a family became a people and a guest became a slave. Seventy people came down to Egypt with Jacob. Generations later they fill the land, and a pharaoh who has never heard of Joseph looks at them and sees a security problem. His policy is what empires always do first: put them to work. Taskmasters, brick pits, store cities, lives made bitter, and yet the harder the Egyptians press, the more the Israelites grow, until Egypt is afraid of its own workforce. So the king turns to something quieter. He calls in two midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, and tells them to let the girls live and kill the boys on the birthstool. They do not. The text gives the reason in three words: they feared God. When Pharaoh demands an explanation, they tell him the Hebrew women are too vigorous to wait for a midwife, and the most powerful man in the world accepts it. God, absent from the chapter until this moment, is good to the midwives and gives them families of their own. Then Pharaoh drops the secrecy and orders his whole people to throw every Hebrew boy into the Nile. The chapter ends there, in the dark, with a decree that will put a baby in a basket in the very river meant to kill him.

קטעי מפתח

Exodus 1:1-7 Exodus 1:8-14 Exodus 1:15-21 Exodus 1:22 Genesis 46:26-27 Matthew 2:16-18

Historical and literary context

The chapter bridges Genesis and Exodus by repeating the list of Jacob's sons and the number seventy from Genesis 46, then passing over several generations in a sentence. The "new king who did not know Joseph" is unnamed, like every pharaoh in Exodus; the store city Rameses points many readers to the thirteenth century BC and Ramesses II, though the date of the exodus is disputed. Brick making with straw and mortar is well attested in Egyptian records and tomb paintings, as are Semitic laborers. The midwives are the only Egyptians of the period named in the chapter, and the naming of two women while the king stays anonymous is a deliberate reversal.

How the chapter unfolds

Verses 1 to 7 list the sons of Israel, note the death of Joseph's generation, and describe the extraordinary growth of the people in language borrowed from Genesis 1. Verses 8 to 14 introduce the new king, his fear, his shrewd plan, and the forced labor that fails to check the growth. Verses 15 to 21 tell of the midwives, the king's order, their disobedience, their answer, and God's reward. Verse 22 records the final command to drown every Hebrew son in the Nile, which sets up the birth of Moses in chapter 2.

Why this chapter matters

The chapter establishes the pattern of the whole book: an empire that oppresses and a God whose people flourish under the oppression. "The more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied" has been quoted by persecuted communities ever since. Shiphrah and Puah are the first recorded act of civil disobedience in the Bible, and their fear of God over fear of the king became a model for Christian and Jewish resistance to unjust orders. The order to drown the boys is the background to Moses in the basket and, in Matthew's Gospel, to Herod's slaughter of the infants.

Interpretive tension to watch

The midwives lie to Pharaoh, and God rewards them; readers have long debated whether the text approves the lie or only the refusal to kill, and whether the women were Hebrews or Egyptians who served the Hebrews, since the Hebrew phrase allows both. How two midwives could serve a population of hundreds of thousands is a further question, answered by taking them as heads of a guild or the story as told in miniature. The chapter's silence about God until verse 17 is also striking: for sixteen verses he is absent, and then he appears in the fear of two women.

שאלות לפרק הזה

Pharaoh's policy is built on fear of a people who have done nothing to him. Where does that fear come from, and where do you see it today?
The midwives "feared God" more than the king. What made their refusal possible, and what did it cost them?
God is not mentioned until verse 17. What does his silence in the first half of the chapter say about how he works?

Study with context

Use this as a chapter guide, then press deeper into the text itself. The goal is to slow down observation, notice structure, and ask better questions before jumping to conclusions.

הוספה להערות

1 Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came into Egypt; every man and his family came with Jacob. 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; 4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5 All the offspring of Jacob were seventy persons: and Joseph had come to Egypt before them. 6 Then Joseph came to his end, and all his brothers, and all that generation. 7 And the children of Israel were fertile, increasing very greatly in numbers and in power; and the land was full of them. 8 Now a new king came to power in Egypt, who had no knowledge of Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, See, the people of Israel are greater in number and in power than we are: 10 Let 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. 11 So 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. 12 But 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. 13 And they gave the children of Israel even harder work to do: 14 And 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. 15 And the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew women who gave help at the time of childbirth (the name of the one was Shiphrah and the name of the other Puah), 16 When you are looking after the Hebrew women in childbirth, if it is a son you are to put him to death; but if it is a daughter, she may go on living. 17 But the women had the fear of God, and did not do as the king of Egypt said, but let the male children go on living. 18 And the king of Egypt sent for the women, and said to them, Why have you done this, and let the male children go on living? 19 And they said to Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are strong, and the birth takes place before we come to them. 20 And the blessing of God was on these women: and the people were increased in number and became very strong. 21 And because the women who took care of the Hebrew mothers had the fear of God, he gave them families. 22 And Pharaoh gave orders to all his people, saying, Every son who comes to birth is to be put into the river, but every daughter may go on living.

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קרא את הפרק הבא Exodus 2 in Bible in Basic English.

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