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Exodus 1: What the Passage Says

66 claims across 22 verses, in the order the chapter makes them.

Not a sermon outline. What Exodus 1 says, and what its hard words meant. The reading of it is yours.

The Chapter in a Sentence

The chapter lists the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, notes that Joseph and his whole generation died, and says the Israelites grew very numerous. A new king of Egypt, who did not know Joseph, puts taskmasters over them and forces them into hard labor, but they keep increasing. He orders the Hebrew midwives Shiphrah and Puah to kill every Hebrew boy at birth; they fear God and do not obey, and Pharaoh then commands all his people to throw every son that is born into the river.

Claim by Claim

  1. 1:1
    • These are the names of the sons of Israel who came into Egypt.
    • They came with Jacob.
    • Each man came with his household.
  2. 1:2
    • Reuben is named.
    • Simeon is named.
    • Levi is named.
    • Judah is named.
  3. 1:3
    • Issachar is named.
    • Zebulun is named.
    • Benjamin is named.
  4. 1:4
    • Dan is named.
    • Naphtali is named.
    • Gad is named.
    • Asher is named.
  5. 1:5
    • All the persons descended from Jacob's body were seventy persons.
    • Joseph was in Egypt.
  6. 1:6
    • Joseph died.
    • All Joseph's brothers died.
    • All that generation died.
  7. 1:7
    • The sons of Israel were fruitful.
    • They swarmed and increased abundantly.
    • They multiplied.
    • They became exceedingly mighty.
    • The land was filled with them.
  8. 1:8
    • A new king arose over Egypt.
    • That king did not know Joseph.
  9. 1:9
    • The king said to his people that the people of the sons of Israel are more numerous and mightier than the Egyptians.
  10. 1:10
    • The king said, Come, let us deal shrewdly with them.
    • The king said this was lest the Israelites multiply.
    • The king said that if war should happen, the Israelites would also join those who hate the Egyptians.
    • The king said the Israelites would fight against the Egyptians.
    • The king said they would go up out of the land, though whether the ones going up are the Israelites or someone else is left unstated.
  11. 1:11
    • They set taskmasters over the Israelites.
    • The purpose was to afflict the Israelites with forced labor.
    • The Israelites built store cities for Pharaoh.
    • The store cities were Pithom and Raamses.
  12. 1:12
    • The more the Egyptians afflicted the Israelites, the more the Israelites multiplied.
    • The more the Egyptians afflicted the Israelites, the more the Israelites spread out.
    • The Egyptians came to dread the sons of Israel.
  13. 1:13
    • The Egyptians made the sons of Israel serve with harshness.
  14. 1:14
    • The Egyptians made the Israelites' lives bitter with hard labor.
    • The labor was in mortar and in bricks.
    • The labor included all kinds of work in the field.
    • All the service the Egyptians imposed on them was with harshness.
  15. 1:15
    • The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives.
    • The name of one midwife was Shiphrah.
    • The name of the second midwife was Puah.
  16. 1:16
    • The king said, When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birthstool.
    • The king said, If it is a son, you shall kill him.
    • The king said, If it is a daughter, she shall live.
  17. 1:17
    • The midwives feared God.
    • The midwives did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them.
    • The midwives kept the male children alive.
  18. 1:18
    • The king of Egypt summoned the midwives.
    • The king asked them why they had done this thing.
    • The king said they had kept the male children alive.
  19. 1:19
    • The midwives said to Pharaoh that the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women.
    • The midwives said the Hebrew women are vigorous.
    • The midwives said the Hebrew women give birth before the midwife comes to them.
  20. 1:20
    • God dealt well with the midwives.
    • The people multiplied.
    • The people became very mighty.
  21. 1:21
    • Because the midwives feared God, he made households for them.
  22. 1:22
    • Pharaoh commanded all his people.
    • Pharaoh said every son that is born shall be cast into the Nile.
    • Pharaoh said every daughter shall be kept alive.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

1:1
"Israel" is the second name given to Jacob (Genesis 32), so "the sons of Israel" here means Jacob's actual sons. From verse 7 onward the same Hebrew phrase means his descendants as a whole people, which is why translations switch to "the Israelites."
1:2
These are listed by mother: the six sons of Leah first, then Rachel's son Benjamin, then the sons of the two servant women, Bilhah and Zilpah. Joseph, Rachel's other son, is left out of the list because he is already in Egypt (verse 5).
1:5
"Came from Jacob's own body" translates a Hebrew idiom, literally "came out of Jacob's loins": that is, his direct descendants. The number seventy is a round figure for a complete family group; the ancient Greek translation of Exodus gives seventy-five instead, counting additional descendants of Joseph, and that is the figure quoted in Acts 7:14.
1:6
"All that generation" means everyone who lived at that same time.
1:7
The verse stacks up verbs of increase (fruitful, increased, multiplied, became strong, filled the land) deliberately reusing the wording of the blessing given at creation and repeated to Noah and to Abraham: "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth."
1:8
"Did not know Joseph" does not mean he had never heard of him. In Hebrew, to "know" someone in this sense is to acknowledge a relationship and the obligations that come with it. The new king recognized no debt to Joseph or his family. "Arose" can also suggest a change of dynasty rather than an ordinary succession.
1:9
The Hebrew is comparative and slightly odd, literally "more numerous and mightier than us", an obvious exaggeration in the mouth of a king who commands the whole of Egypt.
1:10
"Go up out of the land" is ambiguous, and translators divide over it. The king may fear losing his workforce (the Israelites leaving), or, on another reading of the same consonants, fear being driven out himself. "Go up" is the standard direction word for travel from Egypt toward Canaan, which lies to the northeast and higher.
1:11
"Pharaoh" is a title, not a personal name; it comes from the Egyptian for "great house," the palace, used for the king himself. Taskmasters were overseers of state forced-labor gangs, a normal Egyptian institution: subject populations owed the crown unpaid labor. "Storage cities" were fortified government depots for grain, equipment and supplies. Pithom and Raamses were in the eastern Nile delta; Raamses carries the name of the pharaohs called Ramesses.
1:12
"They were grieved" misleads a modern ear badly. It does not mean the Egyptians felt sorry for the Israelites. The Hebrew describes a sick, crawling dread and loathing: the more the Israelites grew, the more the Egyptians could not stand the sight of them.
1:13
"Rigour" in 1611 English meant severity or harshness, not carefulness. The Hebrew word behind it describes crushing, back-breaking treatment of a person, and it is a deliberately strong word, repeated twice in these two verses.
1:14
Egyptian building bricks were made from Nile mud mixed with chopped straw and sand, shaped in wooden molds and dried in the sun. Work gangs were assigned daily quotas, a detail that becomes important in chapter 5. "Mortar" here is the wet clay used both for the bricks and to bond them.
1:15
"Hebrew" is a term used mostly by outsiders about this people, or by the people themselves when speaking to outsiders; "Israelite" is the insider word. The Hebrew phrase translated "Hebrew midwives" can mean either midwives who were themselves Hebrew women or midwives (of any nationality) who attended Hebrew women, the grammar does not settle it. Shiphrah and Puah are Semitic names known from other ancient records.
1:16
The Hebrew word is literally "the two stones": a pair of stones or bricks that a woman in labor squatted on to give birth, a practice pictured in Egyptian art. A minority of interpreters take the word instead to refer to the genitals, so that the midwives are being told to check the sex of the child as it is born.
1:17
"Feared God" in Hebrew means to hold God in awe and take his claims seriously, a settled reverence that governs behavior, not fright. It is regularly used of people who act morally when no human authority is watching.
1:19
The Hebrew word behind "strong" or "lively" occurs only here and is uncertain; it suggests vigor or quickness, and some have heard in it a comparison to animals, which give birth without assistance. The midwives' answer plays on the very fertility the king is afraid of.
1:21
"He gave them households" translates the Hebrew idiom "he made them houses." A "house" here is a family line, children and descendants. The subject is God, though the Hebrew leaves it just possible to read Pharaoh, and the reward fits the crime: women who protected children are given children.
1:22
"The river" always means the Nile, the single great river of Egypt; no name is needed. The Hebrew text says simply "every son that is born," without specifying whose, the context implies Hebrew boys, and the ancient Greek and Samaritan versions add "to the Hebrews" to make it explicit.

Read Exodus 1