Exodus 1:8-14
New American Bible (Revised Edition)
The Oppression. 8 (A)Then a new king, who knew nothing of Joseph,[a] rose to power in Egypt. 9 He said to his people, “See! The Israelite people have multiplied and become more numerous than we are! 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them to stop their increase;[b] otherwise, in time of war they too may join our enemies to fight against us, and so leave the land.”
11 Accordingly, they set supervisors over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor.(B) Thus they had to build for Pharaoh[c] the garrison cities of Pithom and Raamses. 12 Yet the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians began to loathe the Israelites. 13 So the Egyptians reduced the Israelites to cruel slavery, 14 making life bitter for them with hard labor, at mortar[d] and brick and all kinds of field work—cruelly oppressed in all their labor.
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- 1:8 Who knew nothing of Joseph: the nuance intended by the Hebrew verb “know” here goes beyond precise determination. The idea may be not simply that a new king came to power who had not heard of Joseph but that this king ignored the services that Joseph had rendered to Egypt, repudiating the special relationship that existed between Joseph and his predecessor on the throne.
- 1:10 Increase: Pharaoh’s actions thereby immediately pit him against God’s will for the Israelites to multiply; see note on v. 7 above.
- 1:11 Pharaoh: not a personal name, but a title common to all the kings of Egypt.
- 1:14 Mortar: either the wet clay with which the bricks were made, as in Na 3:14, or the cement used between the bricks in building, as in Gn 11:3.
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