Acts 7:19

²⁵He turned their heart to hate his people, to conspire against his servants.

⁹He said to his people, “Behold, ^[+] the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. ¹⁰Come, let’s 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.” ¹¹Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. They built storage cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses. ¹²But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out. They started to dread the children of Israel. ¹³The Egyptians ruthlessly made the children of Israel serve, ¹⁴and they made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and in brick, and in all kinds of service in the field, all their service, in which they ruthlessly made them serve.

¹⁵The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah, ¹⁶and 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.” ¹⁷But the midwives feared God, ^[+] and didn’t do what the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the baby boys alive. ¹⁸The king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said to them, “Why have you done this thing and saved the boys alive?”

¹⁹The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women aren’t like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.”

²⁰God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied, and grew very mighty. ²¹Because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. ²²Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “You shall cast every son who is born into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive.”

⁴His tail drew one third of the stars of the sky, and threw them to the earth. The dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. ⁵She gave birth to a son, a male child, who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. Her child was caught up to God and to his throne.

⁴“Come,” they say, “let’s destroy them as a nation, that the name of Israel may be remembered no more.” ⁵For they have conspired together with one mind. They form an alliance against you.

¹Many times they have afflicted me from my youth up. Let Israel now say: ²many times they have afflicted me from my youth up, yet they have not prevailed against me. ³The plowers plowed on my back. They made their furrows long.