Moses opens the book of Exodus by reminding us of the number of Hebrew people who originally came to Egypt. He does this to demonstrate to us how greatly they multiplied while there.
"These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt." (Exodus 1:1-5) The Lord told Abraham that his descendants would dwell in a foreign land for 430 years. Though only seventy Hebrew persons entered Egypt, many scholars believe that it's not out of the question to assume their population may have numbered as much as two million when the Lord brings them out of Egypt four centuries later.
"Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them." (Exodus 1:6-7) Joseph lived to be 110 years old and we can assume his brothers lived a hundred or so years each. They all pass on and succeeding generations take their place. The king who promoted Joseph to second-in-command has also died and a king (or dynasty of kings) that has no regard for the Hebrews takes over the land. "Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt." (Exodus 1:8)
During our study of Genesis we discussed the possibility that Joseph worked in the employ of one of the final great Hyksos kings, perhaps Apepi I. The Hyksos were a Semitic people who invaded, conquered, and ruled over Lower Egypt for a time. Their capital was near the land of Goshen, the land Joseph requested for his family when they came to Egypt. This would explain why Joseph's own home appeared to be near his family's settlement in Goshen, for he and all the other high-ranking officials, including Pharaoh himself, would have resided in that region of Lower Egypt. The native-born Egyptian Pharaohs preferred to reign from Thebes. If the Pharaoh of Joseph's time was a Hyksos, this helps to explain why he elevated a Hebrew from a shepherding family to a position of near-equality with himself. The Hyksos were Semites who were originally migratory shepherds themselves and they would not have looked down on the Hebrews in the way a native Egyptian would have. Native Egyptians considered themselves superior to all other races and would not even eat at the same table with someone not of Egyptian heritage. If Joseph served under a Hyksos king, then when the Egyptians managed to take back full control of their land and drove the Hyksos occupiers out, we can see why this new dynasty of rulers would have also cast a suspicious eye upon another Semitic group within their borders: the Hebrews.
Why did they not expel the Hebrews from their midst? The Bible provides no explanation for this and neither does history or archaeology, at least not that I was able to find in my research. Perhaps the Hebrews were so plentiful by now that forcibly throwing them and everything they owned out of the country was too difficult a task. Or it could be that the Egyptians feared this would cause the Hebrews to band together with Egypt's enemies at the time---the Hyksos or the Hittites, for example---and come back with a great army to make war. Contrary to what this new Pharaoh seems to think in Exodus 1, the Hebrews were content to live in peace in the land of Goshen and mind their own business. They weren't interested in suddenly rising up to overthrow the Egyptians and they weren't interested in becoming soldiers-for-hire for Egypt's enemies as Pharaoh seems to be suggesting when we arrive at verses 9 and 10. But it looks as if the new administration feared they would band together with other Semitic tribes to help those tribes take Egypt from its new ruling native-born dynasty. "'Look,' he said to his people, 'the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.'" (Exodus 1:9-10)
"So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh." (Exodus 1:11) How did they enslave them? The Bible doesn't say, but it likely was easier for the Egyptian soldiers to go into Goshen and oppress them than to round them up and evict them from the country. Or perhaps something happened that caused the Hebrews to become indebted somehow to the Egyptians. During the famine of Joseph's time, for example, the Egyptian citizens themselves became indebted to the government when they ran out of money to purchase grain and had to trade their livestock, their land, and eventually themselves in exchange for food. If for some reason the Hebrews had to rely upon the Egyptian government for a season, and if their reliance placed them in debt to the government, they may have had to "work off" that debt. Or it could be that the Egyptians began levying a very heavy tax upon the Hebrews, a tax so immense that they could not continue to pay it, and that put them so deeply in debt to Egypt that the government foreclosed on them by forcing them into labor. This would have placed the Egyptian government in a position to oppress them severely once their racist fear of the Hebrews grew to such magnitude that they became irrationally fearful of an uprising.
The forced labor of the Hebrew people does nothing to decrease their long lifespans or their fertility. "But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly." (Exodus 1:12-14) The Hebrews may not be free to leave, not just yet, but the Lord blesses them and increases their number during their years in slavery. When He brings them out of Egypt they will be a mighty nation large enough to take over and occupy the promised land. To the Egyptians they are sub-humans, but to the Lord they are a chosen people.
The king who originally oppressed the Hebrews may not be the king who issues a dire decree in tomorrow's passage. We don't know in what year the Egyptians first decided to oppress the Hebrews or how long the Hebrews were forced into slavery. We simply know that the entire length of their sojourn in Egypt---from the time Jacob's family arrived until the time the Lord leads them out---is 430 years. We aren't given the names of any of the kings of the book of Exodus, but the king on the throne who later refuses Moses' request to let the Hebrews go is not the king of today's passage or of tomorrow's passage. The most we will be able to do is speculate on the identity of these kings, and we will do that later on, but I didn't want to begin our study of Exodus with a lot of complicated Egyptian history or a lot of mathematics regarding the timeline of the exodus.
Tomorrow an Egyptian pharaoh will sign a death sentence for all the new baby boys born to Hebrew women. But a princess of his own household will save the life of a baby boy who will become the one known as Moses: God's chosen deliverer of His people Israel.
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