Exodus 1:9-11

Lexham English Bible

⁹ And he said to his people, “Look, the people of the Israelites^[a] are greater and more numerous than us. ¹⁰ Come, we must deal shrewdly with them, lest they become many, and when war happens, they also will join our enemies and will fight against us and go up from the land.” ¹¹ And they appointed commanders of forced labor over them in order to oppress them with their forced labor,^[b] and they built storage cities for Pharaoh—Pithom and Rameses.