10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them, or else they will grow even more numerous, so that if war breaks out, they may join our enemies, fight against us, and then escape from the land.”
11 So they set slave masters over them to afflict them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Raamses as storage cities for Pharaoh.
12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread. So the Egyptians dreaded the presence of Bnei-Yisrael.
13 They worked them harshly,
14 and made their lives bitter with hard labor with mortar and brick, doing all sorts of work in the fields. In all their labors they worked them with cruelty.
15 Moreover the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,
16 and said, “When you help the Hebrew women during childbirth, look at the sex. If it’s a son, then kill him, but if it’s a daughter, she may live.”