⁸ A new king, who had not known Joseph, came to power in Egypt. ⁹ He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we are.^{(A) 10} Let us deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further, and if war breaks out, they may join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.”^{(B) 11} So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor.^(C) They built Pithom and Rameses as supply cities^(D) for Pharaoh. ¹² But the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread so that the Egyptians came to dread^[a] the Israelites. ¹³ They worked the Israelites ruthlessly^{(E) 14} and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.^(F)

¹⁹ He dealt deceitfully with our race and oppressed our ancestors by making them leave their infants outside, so they wouldn’t survive.^[a](A)