NSB(i)
10 »We must outsmart them or they will increase in number. If war breaks out they will leave the country and join our enemies to fight against us.«
11 So the Egyptians put slave masters over them in order to oppress them through forced labor. They built Pithom and Rameses as supply (storage) cities for Pharaoh.
12 However the more the Israelites were oppressed, the more they increased in number and spread out. The Egyptians could not stand them any longer.
13 They forced the Israelites to work hard as slaves.
14 They made their lives bitter with backbreaking work in mortar and bricks and every kind of work in the fields. All the jobs the Egyptians gave them were brutally hard work.
15 The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives. Shiphrah and Puah were among them.
16 He said: »When you help the Hebrew women give birth on the birth stool, if it is a son you shall put him to death. If it is a daughter, then she shall live.«