1. These are the names of the Israelites who came to Egypt with Jacob along with their households:
2. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,
3. Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin,
4. Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.
5. The total number in Jacob’s family was seventy. Joseph was already in Egypt.
6. Eventually, Joseph, his brothers, and everyone in his generation died.
7. But the Israelites were fertile and became populous. They multiplied and grew dramatically, filling the whole land.
8. Now a new king came to power in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph.
9. He said to his people, "The Israelite people are now larger in number and stronger than we are.
10. Come on, let’s be smart and deal with them. Otherwise, they will only grow in number. And if war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and then escape from the land."
11. As a result, the Egyptians put foremen of forced work gangs over the Israelites to harass them with hard work. They had to build storage cities named Pithom and Rameses for Pharaoh.
12. But the more they were oppressed, the more they grew and spread, so much so that the Egyptians started to look at the Israelites with disgust and dread.