Exodus1chapter 1

Exodus 1:1-4

The book opens with the word And, so in Hebrew it reads as the next paragraph of Genesis rather than the start of something separate, and its Hebrew title is taken from this verse, Shemoth, meaning names. The list compresses Genesis 46:8 to 27, running Leah's six sons first, then Rachel's Benjamin, then the four born to Bilhah and Zilpah. Joseph is left out of the roll because he was in Egypt before any of them arrived.

Exodus 1:5-6

Seventy is the number Genesis 46:27 gives for the household that went down, and Stephen says threescore and fifteen at Acts 7:14, following the Septuagint, which counts further descendants of Joseph. The Hebrew text and the Greek text differ here and both readings have long been held. Genesis closes with Joseph in a coffin in Egypt, and this verse reports the rest of that generation gone with him, which is how a family with standing at court becomes a people with none.

Exodus 1:7

Five verbs pile up in one verse, fruitful, increased abundantly, multiplied, waxed exceeding mighty, and the land was filled. Three of those words come straight out of the blessing at Genesis 1:28, and a fourth, increased abundantly, is the verb Genesis 1:20 and 9:7 use of swarming life. The creation command is being carried out by a family living in a country that is not theirs, and the promise of a great nation at Genesis 12:2 is kept in the years this narrative passes over without a story.

Exodus 1:8

Stephen quotes this verse at Acts 7:18 when he tells Israel's story to the council, another king arose, which knew not Joseph. The Hebrew verb rendered knew often carries the sense of acknowledging rather than being informed, so what the verse reports may be a policy rather than a gap in the records. Which Pharaoh this was is disputed and the text gives no name: an earlier date puts the oppression under the eighteenth dynasty, and a later date puts it under Rameses II, whose name stands on one of the cities in the next verses. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown reckon a change of dynasty about sixty years after Joseph died.

Exodus 1:9-10

Pharaoh's case to his people is that the Hebrews are more and mightier than we, which is the language of the promise repeated by a frightened man. The plan is presented as calculation, let us deal wisely with them, and the danger it names is a war in which they change sides and get them up out of the land. Leaving the land is exactly what God is about to bring about, so the policy is built to prevent the thing it ends up producing. Matthew Henry notes that men who deal wickedly commonly believe they are dealing wisely.

Exodus 1:11-12

The first measure is economic, taskmasters set over them and burdens laid on, and the labour produces two store cities, Pithom and Raamses. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown place both in the eastern delta near the Pelusiac branch of the Nile, which is the district Genesis 47:11 calls the land of Rameses, where Joseph had settled the family. Genesis 15:13 told Abram his seed would be a stranger in a land that is not theirs and would be afflicted there, and the affliction begins in this verse. The result runs against the intention, since the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.

Exodus 1:13-14

The Hebrew root abad stands five times in these two verses, carried in English by serve, bondage, service, service and serve. It is the loudest repetition in the chapter and an English reader cannot hear it, because one root covers forced labour and worship alike. The rest of the book turns on that word: the demand to Pharaoh is let my people go, that they may serve me, at 4:23, 7:16, 8:1, 8:20, 9:1, 9:13 and 10:3, the passover is called this service at 12:25, and the book ends in chapter 40 with a tent, a priesthood and an order of service. Israel does not stop serving, and what changes is the master.

Exodus 1:15-16

Two midwives are given names, Shiphrah and Puah, and the king who summons them is not, which is how the chapter distributes weight. Whether they were Hebrew women or Egyptian women who attended the Hebrews has been argued from the phrase itself and from the names, and the older commentators divide over it. The word rendered stools occurs in one other place in the Hebrew Bible, Jeremiah 18:3, where it is the potter's wheels, and Adam Clarke takes it for a birthing stone or trough. Pharaoh's second measure moves from work to birth, and it asks women to kill the children they are called in to deliver.

Exodus 1:17-18

The fear of God is set directly against the command of a king, and the midwives act on the first. Gill and Clarke both point out that Genesis 9:6 had already put the shedding of man's blood under sentence long before Sinai, so the women had a standard in hand to obey. The king then summons them to ask why, which means an order carrying the whole power of Egypt behind it had been quietly refused by two women whose names the text keeps.

Exodus 1:19

The answer they give Pharaoh is that the Hebrew women deliver before a midwife can reach them. Readers have long asked whether it was true, whether it was a lie, and whether God rewarded them for saying it, and the text records the words and comments on none of that. Verses 20 and 21 credit the fear of God, and Adam Clarke observes that women in constant hard labour do commonly bear more easily, which is the ground on which some read the answer as plain fact.

Exodus 1:20-21

God dealt well with the midwives and the people multiplied again, so Pharaoh's second measure fails the way the first one failed. He made them houses is a Hebrew idiom for building a family, the same expression used of Rachel and Leah at Ruth 4:11 and of David at 2 Samuel 7:11, so women who refused to end Hebrew households were given households of their own. Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the reward as attached to the fear of God the verse names, rather than to the answer they gave the king.

Exodus 1:22

The third measure drops the pretence of policy, goes to the whole population, and makes the Nile the instrument. Egypt's life came out of that river and Adam Clarke notes that the river was itself an object of worship, so the killing is done in the water the country depended on. The first plague turns that river to blood at 7:20, which answers the decree in the place where it was carried out. The decree also spares the daughters, and the next chapter has a Hebrew mother, a sister and Pharaoh's own daughter save one child, in a basket the text calls an ark, using the word for Noah's vessel and for nothing else in the Old Testament.