This post was created in August 2017. Navigate up to scripture index: index-passages.
19 July 2022 -- I've since abandoned this specific project, and am working on something a bit different. This page remains for anyone who might find it interesting.
The following is a translation and Exodus 1, with notes. Although it is a product in part of my own thinking, I feel free to rely on and even steal wording from the KJV, JPS 1917, and Murphy and Driver’s commentaries. All these are public domain resources. The text itself of Exodus 1 I hereby release into the public domain; use it as you see fit. The notes are mine, and I retain the copyright to them.
Text
1 Now these are the names of the sons of Israel, who came to Egypt. Each man and his household came with Jacob: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; 4 Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. 5 And all the persons who came from the thigh of Jacob were seventy persons. Joseph was in Egypt already. 6 And Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation. 7 And the sons of Israel were abundantly fertile, and multiplied, and grew strong, to a very great extent. And the land was filled with them.
8 And a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, “Look, the nation of the sons of Israel are more numerous and stronger than us. 10 Let us wise up to them, or else they will multiply, and then if a war breaks out they will join our enemies, and fight against us, and go up out of the country.” 11 And they set task-masters over them in order to oppress them with their burdens. And they built supply cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses. 12 And the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied, and the more they spread out. And they loathed the Israelites. 13 And Egypt enslaved the sons of Israel with cruelty. 14 And they made their lived bitter with hard slavery, with clay and with bricks, and with all the slaving in the fields, with all their slaving as they cruelly enslaved them. 15 And the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives — of whom one was named Shiphrah and the other Puah — 16 and he said, “When the Hebrew women are in labor, and you see them on the abnayim, if it is a son, kill him. If it is a daughter, let her live.”
17 But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt told them, and they let the infants live. 18 And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said to them, “Why are you doing this and letting the infants live?”
19 And the midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, because they are vigorous, and they give birth before the midwife comes to them. 20 And God treated the midwives well, and the people multiplied and grew very strong. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.
22 And Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every boy which is born you will throw into the River, and every girl you will keep alive.”
Notes
1. Israel . . . Jacob. Israel and Jacob are, of course, the same person. But “Jacob” is what he is usually called in narratives, and “sons of Israel” is a fixed expression for the members of the Israelite tribes — hence the switch in names mid-verse.
2-4. Reuben, Simeon . . . Gad and Asher. The twelve sons are listed in the order they are for reasons having to do with their birth order and mothers. For a full explanation of the logic behind the order, and on why this translation is correct in leaving the word “and” in the four places where it appears in the list, see here.
5. thigh. A common euphemism used in referring to male reproduction. Compare Genesis 24:2, 47:29.
seventy. The Septuagint reads seventy-five.
The “seventy” come “from the loins of Jacob,” which would indicate that the writer of Exodus 1:5 does not include Jacob as one of the seventy persons. Driver says that Exodus 1:1-5 come from the Priestly Source, while Richard Elliot Freedman (in The Bible With Sources Revealed) credits the final redactor R.
persons. The use in this verse of nephesh, (RV “souls” in this case) for persons is a common feature of P’s style (Driver).
\7. to a very great extent. Hebrew bimeod meod, “with muchness, muchness” (Driver). According to Driver, this is “an expression peculiar to P and Ezek[iel].”
the land. Driver identifies this as referring either to the “land of Rameses” (Genesis 47:11) or Goshen (47:4). The difference in terminology between “Goshen” and “Rameses” in Genesis 47 is credited by Driver to the documentary hypothesis: Rameses is P, and Goshen is J.
\8. there arose a new king. The wording is interesting. At a first reading of the chapter alone, it would seem to be the case that Exodus 1 has in mind a king not too long after the death of Joseph — this king’s distinguishing characteristic is that he “did not know Joseph”. On the other hand, as Driver points out, the chronological statements in Genesis and Exodus imply that Moses was born 279 years after the death of Joseph, a period of time which would presumably see plenty of Pharaohs come and go. The text of Exodus 1, however, does not seem to imply such a long stretch of time.
\9. the nation. Hebrew am. The English “nation” does not quite capture the sense of the word perfectly, but “ethnic group” seemed too technical. The word marks a transition — the Israelites are no longer regarded as a just a family or clan, but now make up an am, on par with other ethnic groups like Egyptians or Canaanites.
greater and stronger than us. This could alternately be read, too great and strong for us. Either way, the main idea is clear: the Israelites were becoming overwhelmingly populous. This does not work very well historically, for reasons explained in more detail here.
\10. if a war breaks out, Hebrew, ki tiqrenah milchamah, is grammatically unusual, as explained in Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar (section 47k). Driver and Gesenius prefer to read instead ki tiqraenu milchamah, approximately, if war breaks out against us, or if war befalls us, or if we should find ourselves in a war, as found in the Samaritan Pentateuch, Peshitta, Vulgate, Targum Onkelos, Dilmmann, and others.
go up. As is common in the Bible, travel toward the land of Canaan is depicted as moving “upward,” and travel away is “downward.” As Driver hints, this reflects the mindset of the biblical writers; a Pharaoh would not necessarily see things the same way.
11. task-masters. The Hebrew text refers to the institutions of mas, or forced labor. As Driver points out, the mass use of forced labor also characterizes the rein of Solomon (1 Kings 5:13, 14; 9:15; 12:18). It was also a major issue which lead to the break-up of the united kingdom of Israel, according to the Bible.
supply cities. Hebrew, arei miskenot. Because ir (arei is it’s plural construct form) does not necessarily mean “city” quite in the modern sense, the New Living Translation might be justified in taking the whole phrase to mean “supply centers.” But most translations have “storage cities,” “supply cities,” or the like. We read of three biblical kings creating “miskenot cities,” including this unnamed Pharaoh, Solomon (1 Kings 9:19; 2 Chronicles 8:4, 6), and Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 17:12). They are also mentioned one other time, in the context of Ben-Hadad’s army destroyed some miskenot cities (2 Chronicles 16:4). There is one use of miskenot without the word “cities,” in 2 Chronicles 32:28, where Hezekiah makes miskenot for storing agricultural goods. It might logically, follow, then, that a miskenot city would have a similar function. However, it seems that neither the Septuagint (“fortified cities,” NETS translation) nor the Vulgate (“cities of tabernacles”, urbes tabernaculorum) read it this way.
Pharaoh. When the Pentateuch tells a story involving the ruler of Egypt, he is never named, but merely given his title “Pharaoh.” This reflects the fact that the Pentateuch does not contain detailed historical memories of actual Pharaoh’s, but the Pharaoh is simply used more or less as a stock character. Notice that in this chapter the expressions “Pharaoh” and “king of Egypt” alternate for no obvious reason.
Pithom. In the OT, the name occurs only here, but it’s Egyptian equivalent pr-itm, (the “r” was silent). No location has been found which can be identified with certainty as the location in the biblical story. See The Oxford History of the Biblical World, edited by Michael Coogan, in the chapter Bitter Lives, by Carol Redmount (1998), page 65. According to Redmount the term pr-itm is a generic one, and could refer to several locations; the biblical text by using the generic form has made it difficult to locate, just as by using the generic term “Pharaoh” in any story set before 900-something BCE the biblical text makes it hard to identify the precise Pharaoh referred to. The non-historical nature of the Book of Exodus makes the question somewhat less important than it would be if we were reading about a historical episode.
Raamses. Although some translations simply read Rameses, the Hebrew text does have two a-_vowels here. As for the location, “The scholarly consensus is that only Rameses II could be meant, who ruled from 1279 to 1213 BC. The storehouse known as Pi-Rameses, which is typically identified with the site mentioned in Exodus 1:11, was built in about 1270 BC. If this identification is correct, then the exodus could have happened only sometime after 1270 BC” (Peter Enns, in the [_Baker Illustrated Bible Handbook](https://books.google.com/books?id=JUcEAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT59&dq=%22Exodus+1:11%22+identified+consensus&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAl57Br7HVAhXDx4MKHY3bC3sQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=%22Exodus%201%3A11%22%20identified%20consensus&f=false)). On the other hand, the biblical timeline of 1 Kings 6 insists on a 15th-century Exodus, and the timeline through Judges and nearby information pushes it back even further. In general, biblical stories set before about 1000 BC have low historical reliability.
Where the Masoretic Text reads “Pithom and Raamses,” the Septuagint adds a third city: “On, which is Heliopolis.” But Genesis 41:45 would seem to indicate that On already existed in the time of Joseph.
13. Egypt. The Hebrew text reads literally, Egypt, and I think a reader can follow the meaning. KJV and WEB make it more explicit: “the Egyptians.”
15. Shiphrah, according to Murphy, means “brightness” or “splendor.” Gesenius speaks similarly.
Puah, according to Murphy, is a contracted form of Yephuah, meaning “splendor.” Gesenius notes the idea, calling it an “opinion of Simonis,” but does not comment, approvingly or otherwise.
The portrayal of a population of about 2.3 million people as having two midwives is, of course, impossible. If a midwife were to handle two births per day, two midwives could handle four births. That makes two midwives enough for perhaps a population producing 1,400 children per year. If a typical fertile woman in the ancient world had a child every three years or so, then two midwives could at most handle a population with 4,200 fertile women, or less given the repeated insistence of Exodus that Israelites were unusually fertile. This population would contain 4,200 adult couples of childbearing age. On the generous assumption that half of the couples in the society were past child-bearing age, that still leaves us with only 8,400 couples. The two midwives are simply incompatible with the biblical idea of 600,000 Israelites, even if you make any reasonable changes to the assumptions I used in calculating.
\16. abnayim__. The phrase in Hebrew, al ha-abnayim, would seem to mean something like “upon the two stones.” The exact meaning of the phrase is obscure, but the context dictates that it must have something to do with birthing. The only other place where ha-abnayim is found in the Bible is in Jeremiah 18:3, where it refers to a potter’s wheel, but that meaning doesn’t seem to work here.
Whenever you find in an ancient text the idea of killing all the males of some group and letting the women live, it should go without saying that the intention is to sexually exploit the women. Compare how the Israelites did the same thing with Moses’ permission according to Numbers 31:18, and how it is allowed in biblical law according to Deuteronomy 21:10-14.
19. vigorous. The Hebrew is hayot, which appears only here. It is spelled identically to the more common Hebrew hayyot, which means “animals.” The interpretation would work fine here — the Hebrew women, like animals, give birth quickly, without assistance. Alternately, this hayot is derived from hay, “life,” and means that they are lively or vigorous. Even if the word is not “animals,” it is probable that it is intentional for the text to use a word similar to the Hebrew for “animals.”
Driver, helpfully, notes that we should not read too much into the “midwives’ excuse.” Just because the midwives give an excuse does not mean that we should conclude that, historically, Egyptian women had long labors, or Israelite women short ones.
21. them. Grammatically, the word them is unexpectedly masculine here.
families. Literally, houses. The Hebrew term “house”, bayit, is frequently used for households or families.
Where the Masoretic Text reads vayaas lahem batim, “_and he [God] made them houses,” the Targum Pseduo-Jonathan, along with Codex Alexandrinus and Symmachus, read _vayaasu lahem batim, “they made themselves houses.” The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, fancifully, takes “houses” as referring to the “house” of the high priesthood and the royal “house.”
22. the River. The Hebrew word is yeor, which usually refers to the Nile. I have capitalized it to try and preserve that nuance.
This order, if you compare Exodus 2, is given prior to the birth of Moses. The birth of Moses occurs eighty years before the events of the Exodus (7:7). If a universal order to the kill off the boys born to a slave population were in force for eighty years, the Israelites would have been virtually exterminated. The order to kill all male children here functions to set us up for the birth narrative of Moses (which in turn copies details from a birth narrative of Sargon of Akkad) but otherwise the order to kill all males appears not to have any impact on the story. The Israelites continue being enslaved, and eighty years later there’s 600,000 males between twenty and fifty years of age. The biblical text does not leave room for the possibility of any large-scale resistance by the Israelites prior to the Exodus, so the existence of all these males (a force larger than the Roman army at its peak) is left unexplained. It is more reasonable to think of this order to kill all males not as a report of an historical situation, but as a story-telling device, to get us to Moses’ birth narrative.