Exodus 1:10-16 Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it happen that when any war breaks out, they also join themselves to our enemies, and fight against us, and escape out of the land."

NHEB⁽ⁱ⁾ ¹⁰ Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it happen that when any war breaks out, they also join themselves to our enemies, and fight against us, and escape out of the land." ¹¹ Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. They built storage cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses. ¹² But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out. And the Egyptians were in dread of the children of Israel. ¹³ And the Egyptians ruthlessly made the children of Israel labor, ¹⁴ and they made their lives bitter with hard labor, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner of labor in the field, all their labors which they ruthlessly made them do. ¹⁵ The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah, ¹⁶ and he said, "When you perform the duty of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birth stool; if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live."