Recension AK

Chapter I: These are the names of the sons of Israel who went down into Egypt with Jacob, their father, each man entering with all his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. But Joseph was already in Egypt. And the total number of souls from Jacob was seventy-five. Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation; but the sons of Israel multiplied and increased, and they became numerous and grew exceedingly strong, for the land made them multiply. Another king arose in Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his own people: Behold, this people, the sons of Israel, are a great multitude and are stronger than we are. Come, let us subdue them, lest they multiply and, if at some time they should encounter us in battle, they join with our enemies and fight against us, and thus we be driven from the land. And he set overseers over them for labor, so that they might afflict them with toil, and they built strong cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Rameses and On, which is the city of the sun. And the more they humbled them, the more these multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, and the Egyptians became despised by the sons of Israel.

And the Egyptians oppressed the sons of Israel with force. And they tormented them with grievous labor, with harsh work of clay and brick, and with every kind of work by which they enslaved them cruelly. And the king of the Egyptians said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Sephora and the other Phoa, and he said to them: When you go in to attend the Hebrew women in childbirth, if it be a male, kill it; but if it be a female, spare it. The midwives feared God and did not do as the king of the Egyptians had commanded them, and they saved the male children. The king of the Egyptians summoned the midwives and said: Why have you done this deed and saved every male child? The midwives said to Pharaoh: The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they give birth before the midwives arrive, and they themselves deliver. God did good to the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very strong, for the midwives feared God, and they built houses for themselves. Pharaoh commanded all his people and said: Every male child that the Hebrews bear, cast into the river, and spare every female child.