11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their labor. They built for Pharaoh storage cities: Pithom and Rameses.
12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew so that as a result they abhorred the sons of Israel.
13 The Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor,
14 and they made their lives bitter with hard service—in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field, all their service in which they made them serve was with rigor.
15 The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah,
16 and he said, “When you perform the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the stools, if it is a son, then you must kill him, but if it is a daughter, then she may live.”
17 However, the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but kept the male children alive.