11. So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. They built Pithom and Rameses as supply cities for Pharaoh.
12. But the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.
13. They worked the Israelites ruthlessly
14. and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.
15. Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,
16. “When you help the Hebrew women give birth, observe them as they deliver. If the child is a son, kill him, but if it’s a daughter, she may live.”
17. The Hebrew midwives, however, feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live.