Israel Oppressed in Egypt

Chapter 1

1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who entered Egypt—each man with his household entered with Jacob: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5 All the people who were directly descended from Jacob numbered 70.⁠ But Joseph was already in Egypt, 6 and in time Joseph and his brothers and all that generation died. 7 The Israelites, however, were fruitful, increased greatly, multiplied, and became extremely strong, so that the land was filled with them.⁠ 8 Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph,⁠ came to power over Egypt.⁠ 9 He said to his people, “Look at the Israelite people, more numerous and stronger than we are! 10 Come, let’s deal wisely with them. Otherwise they will continue to multiply, and if a war breaks out, they will ally themselves with our enemies and fight against us and leave the country.” 11 So they put foremen over the Israelites to oppress them with hard labor.⁠ As a result they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.⁠ 12 But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread. As a result the Egyptians loathed the Israelites,⁠ 13 and they made the Israelites serve rigorously.⁠ 14 They made their lives bitter by hard service with mortar and bricks and by all kinds of service in the fields.⁠ Every kind of service the Israelites were required to give was rigorous. 15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,⁠ 16 “When you assist the Hebrew women in childbirth, observe at the delivery: If it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she may live.”⁠ 17 But the midwives feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this and let the boys live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women—for the Hebrew women are vigorous; they give birth before the midwife gets to them!”⁠ 20 So God treated the midwives well, and the people multiplied and became very strong. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he made households for them. 22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “All sons that are born⁠ you must throw into the river, but all daughters you may let live.”

Texts in conversation

Compare Exodus 1:15 and Pseudo Jonathan Exodus 1:15

Hebrew Bible · Targum

Summary

Exodus describes Pharaoh’s decree that the midwives kill any Hebrew male newborns. The Aramaic translation in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan includes a long midrashic expansion that includes details about the Egyptian magicians Jannes and Jambres.

Passages

Exodus 1:15

Hebrew Bible

12 But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread. As a result the Egyptians loathed the Israelites, 13 and they made the Israelites serve rigorously. 14 They made their lives bitter by hard service with mortar and bricks and by all kinds of service in the fields. Every kind of service the Israelites were required to give was rigorous. 15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you assist the Hebrew women in childbirth, observe at the delivery: If it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she may live.” 17 But the midwives feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live.

750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Exodus

Pseudo Jonathan Exodus 1:15

Targum

14 And made their lives bitter with hard work in clay and bricks and in all kinds of work in the open country; with harshness they made them do all their work. 15 And Pharaoh said that while he slept, he saw in his dream that all the land of Egypt was placed on one balance of a weighing scale, and a lamb, the young of a ewe, on the other balance of the weighing scale; and the balance of the weighing scale on which the lamb was placed weighed down. Immediately he sent and summoned all the magicians of Egypt and told them his dream. Immediately Jannes and Jambres, the chief magicians, opened their mouths and said to Pharaoh: 'A son is to be born in the assembly of Israel, through whom all the land of Egypt is destined to be destroyed.' 16 Therefore Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, took counsel and said to the Jewish midwives—one of whom was named Shiphrah, she is Jochebed, and the other was named Puah, she is Miriam, her daughter. 17 And he said, 'When you act as midwives for the Jewish women, you shall look at the birthstool: if it is a male child, you shall kill him; but if it is a female child, she shall live.'

300–1200 CE (scholarly estimate) Read in Pseudo Jonathan Exodus

References

"... My pastor was not aware that his casual comment was extrabiblical, an ancient tradition designed to explain a puzzling element in the biblical story. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the “interpreted Bible.” What earnest Bible readers think the Bible says is sometimes a merging of what is there in black and white and how one’s faith tradition has come to understand it. And that merger is often seamless, so much so that most readers are not even aware of it. Biblical writers were not immune to this phenomenon. For example, in 2 Timothy 3:8 we see a casual reference to the magicians in Pharaoh’s court of Moses’s day as Jannes and Jambres. Where did these names come from? No names are given in the Old Testament. Nor are they the product of special revelation, for they simply come up in the flow of the argument with no fanfare, no indication that the writer is now privy to some special or long-lost (and irrelevant) piece of information. If we want to understand the source of this information, it is in the interpretive traditions of his Second Temple world. The name Jannes is found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (Damascus Covenant 5.17–19), and both names are found in a targum (Targum Pseudo-Jonathan to Exodus 1:15). During the Second Temple period it was common to “concretize” biblical episodes by giving names to otherwise anonymous biblical figures, and “Jannes and Jambres” is an example of that. These names then became part of a larger cultural conviction about the biblical story (like the names of the three wise men), and 2 Timothy 3:8 is an instance of that process ..."

Peter Enns, The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn’t Say about Human Origins (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2012), 114–115.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

Israel Oppressed in Egypt

Exodus40 chapters

Compare Exodus 1:15 and Pseudo Jonathan Exodus 1:15

Summary

Passages

Exodus 1:15

Pseudo Jonathan Exodus 1:15

References

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