Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.

Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.

But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel.

And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour:

And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.

And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah:

And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.

But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive.

And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive?

And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them.

1:5 souls. Compare this use of “souls” to Genesis 46:26,27, and Acts 7:14.

1:7 increased abundantly. Populations can grow very rapidly under favorable conditions. For example, the seventy who came into Egypt could easily have multiplied to over five million in just ten generations, assuming only that the average family had six children who lived and reproduced, and that only two generations were living contemporaneously, at any one time. This was only half the size of Jacob’s original family. Even an average family size of four would generate a population of over 100,000 in ten generations.

1:8 king over Egypt. Unfortunately, Egyptian chronology is still controversial among Egyptologists and Biblical archaeologists. Various schools of thought favor different identifications of this new Pharaoh, as well as others before and after. Until such arguments are settled, there is no need to attempt a precise correlation of the uncertain Egyptian histories with the divinely inspired and trustworthy Biblical records.

1:11 Pithom and Raamses. Although various suggestions have been made, the exact locations of these ancient cities have not yet been confirmed by archaeologists.

1:14 with rigour. A wall painting in the tomb of an Egyptian prime minister, dated in the mid fifteenth century B.C., shows slaves from Syro-Palestine forming bricks from mud, supervised by weapon-wielding Egyptian taskmasters.

1:15 one was Shiphrah. The names of the two midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, have been found to be typical names among women in northwest Egypt during the times of Moses.

1:20 dealt well with the midwives. The midwives had both disobeyed their rulers and lied to them, both of which actions are normally sinful in God’s sight (e.g., I Peter 2:13; Ephesians 4:25), and yet God rewarded them. When situations arise in which the commands of rulers conflict with explicit commandments of God (in this case, the murder of innocent children conflicts with the commandment against murder and also His explicit commandment and promise to Jacob–note Genesis 46:3,4), then God’s word must be obeyed (Acts 5:29) rather than the unlawful orders of men. The midwives protected the infants at the risk of their own lives. What may seem superficially to have been a “false witness” was not “against thy neighbour” (Exodus 20:16), but in hazardous protection of their neighbor, just as was the case with those Christians who hid their Jewish neighbors during Hitler’s pogroms.

1:22 daughter. Pharaoh perhaps desired to have his own subjects marry their women.

1:1 And the LORD. The book of Leviticus begins with the conjunction “and,” thereby showing its direct continuity with the closing verse of Exodus. God henceforth would usually speak to Moses in the tabernacle.

1:1 spake unto him. All Scripture is verbally inspired, but there were various methods by which this was accomplished. The result, rather than the method, is the key issue. God “in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets” (Hebrews 1:1). The idea of direct divine dictation is often ridiculed by liberals or denied with embarrassment by conservatives, but the fact is that this method was actually claimed by the human writers in many cases. The book of Leviticus is a prime example, with Moses asserting that over 90% of its verses were dictated by God. Similar claims were made by many of the prophets. “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14).