These are the names of the sons of Israel who entered Egypt -- each man with his household entered with Jacob:

All the people who were directly descended from Jacob numbered seventy. But Joseph was already in Egypt,

Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power over Egypt.

He said to his people, "Look at the Israelite people, more numerous and stronger than we are!

Come, let's deal wisely with them. Otherwise they will continue to multiply, and if a war breaks out, they will ally themselves with our enemies and fight against us and leave the country."

So they put foremen over the Israelites to oppress them with hard labor. As a result they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.

But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread. As a result the Egyptians loathed the Israelites,

"When you assist the Hebrew women in childbirth, observe at the delivery: If it is a son, kill him, but if it is a daughter, she may live."

Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this and let the boys live?"

Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "All sons that are born you must throw into the river, but all daughters you may let live."

A man from the household of Levi married a woman who was a descendant of Levi.

The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a healthy child, she hid him for three months.

But when she was no longer able to hide him, she took a papyrus basket for him and sealed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and set it among the reeds along the edge of the Nile.

His sister stationed herself at a distance to find out what would happen to him.

opened it, and saw the child -- a boy, crying! -- and she felt compassion for him and said, "This is one of the Hebrews' children."

Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get a nursing woman for you from the Hebrews, so that she may nurse the child for you?"

Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages." So the woman took the child and nursed him.

When the child grew older she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, "Because I drew him from the water."

In those days, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and observed their hard labor, and he saw an Egyptian man attacking a Hebrew man, one of his own people.

He looked this way and that and saw that no one was there, and then he attacked the Egyptian and concealed the body in the sand.

When he went out the next day, there were two Hebrew men fighting. So he said to the one who was in the wrong, "Why are you attacking your fellow Hebrew?"

The man replied, "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Are you planning to kill me like you killed that Egyptian?" Then Moses was afraid, thinking, "Surely what I did has become known."

When Pharaoh heard about this event, he sought to kill Moses. So Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, and he settled by a certain well.

Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and began to draw water and fill the troughs in order to water their father's flock.

When some shepherds came and drove them away, Moses came up and defended them and then watered their flock.

So when they came home to their father Reuel, he asked, "Why have you come home so early today?"

He said to his daughters, "So where is he? Why in the world did you leave the man? Call him, so that he may eat a meal with us."

When she bore a son, Moses named him Gershom, for he said, "I have become a resident foreigner in a foreign land."

The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from within a bush. He looked -- and the bush was ablaze with fire, but it was not being consumed!

So Moses thought, "I will turn aside to see this amazing sight. Why does the bush not burn up?"

When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him from within the bush and said, "Moses, Moses!" And Moses said, "Here I am."

God said, "Do not approach any closer! Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."

He added, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." Then Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

The Lord said, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.

I have come down to deliver them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up from that land to a land that is both good and spacious, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the region of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.

And now indeed the cry of the Israelites has come to me, and I have also seen how severely the Egyptians oppress them.

So now go, and I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt."

Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, or that I should bring the Israelites out of Egypt?"

He replied, "Surely I will be with you, and this will be the sign to you that I have sent you: When you bring the people out of Egypt, you and they will serve God on this mountain."

Moses said to God, "If I go to the Israelites and tell them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' -- what should I say to them?"

God said to Moses, "I am that I am." And he said, "You must say this to the Israelites, 'I am has sent me to you.'"

God also said to Moses, "You must say this to the Israelites, 'The Lord -- the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob -- has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and this is my memorial from generation to generation.'

"Go and bring together the elders of Israel and tell them, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers, appeared to me -- the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob -- saying, "I have attended carefully to you and to what has been done to you in Egypt,

and I have promised that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, to a land flowing with milk and honey."'

"The elders will listen to you, and then you and the elders of Israel must go to the king of Egypt and tell him, 'The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. So now, let us go three days' journey into the wilderness, so that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.'

But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go, not even under force.

So I will extend my hand and strike Egypt with all my wonders that I will do among them, and after that he will release you.

"I will grant this people favor with the Egyptians, so that when you depart you will not leave empty-handed.

Every woman will ask her neighbor and the one who happens to be staying in her house for items of silver and gold and for clothing. You will put these articles on your sons and daughters -- thus you will plunder Egypt!"

Moses answered again, "And if they do not believe me or pay attention to me, but say, 'The Lord has not appeared to you'?"

The Lord said to him, "What is that in your hand?" He said, "A staff."

The Lord said, "Throw it to the ground." So he threw it to the ground, and it became a snake, and Moses ran from it.

But the Lord said to Moses, "Put out your hand and grab it by the tail" -- so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand --

"that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you."

"If they do not believe you or pay attention to the former sign, then they may believe the latter sign.

And if they do not believe even these two signs or listen to you, then take some water from the Nile and pour it out on the dry ground. The water you take out of the Nile will become blood on the dry ground."

Then Moses said to the Lord, "O my Lord, I am not an eloquent man, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant, for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue."

The Lord said to him, "Who gave a mouth to man, or who makes a person mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?

So now go, and I will be with your mouth and will teach you what you must say."

But Moses said, "O my Lord, please send anyone else whom you wish to send!"

Then the Lord became angry with Moses, and he said, "What about your brother Aaron the Levite? I know that he can speak very well. Moreover, he is coming to meet you, and when he sees you he will be glad in his heart.

"So you are to speak to him and put the words in his mouth. And as for me, I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you both what you must do.

He will speak for you to the people, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were his God.

You will also take in your hand this staff, with which you will do the signs."

So Moses went back to his father-in-law Jethro and said to him, "Let me go, so that I may return to my relatives in Egypt and see if they are still alive." Jethro said to Moses, "Go in peace."

The Lord said to Moses in Midian, "Go back to Egypt, because all the men who were seeking your life are dead."

Then Moses took his wife and sons and put them on a donkey and headed back to the land of Egypt, and Moses took the staff of God in his hand.

The Lord said to Moses, "When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the wonders I have put under your control. But I will harden his heart and he will not let the people go.

You must say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says the Lord, "Israel is my son, my firstborn,

and I said to you, 'Let my son go that he may serve me,' but since you have refused to let him go, I will surely kill your son, your firstborn!"'"

Now on the way, at a place where they stopped for the night, the Lord met Moses and sought to kill him.

But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off the foreskin of her son and touched it to Moses' feet, and said, "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me."

So the Lord let him alone. (At that time she said, "A bridegroom of blood," referring to the circumcision.)

The Lord said to Aaron, "Go to the wilderness to meet Moses. So he went and met him at the mountain of God and greeted him with a kiss.

Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord who had sent him and all the signs that he had commanded him.

Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, 'Release my people so that they may hold a pilgrim feast to me in the desert.'"

But Pharaoh said, "Who is the Lord that I should obey him by releasing Israel? I do not know the Lord, and I will not release Israel!"

And they said, "The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Let us go a three-day journey into the desert so that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, so that he does not strike us with plague or the sword."

The king of Egypt said to them, "Moses and Aaron, why do you cause the people to refrain from their work? Return to your labor!"

Pharaoh was thinking, "The people of the land are now many, and you are giving them rest from their labor."

That same day Pharaoh commanded the slave masters and foremen who were over the people:

"You must no longer give straw to the people for making bricks as before. Let them go and collect straw for themselves.

But you must require of them the same quota of bricks that they were making before. Do not reduce it, for they are slackers. That is why they are crying, 'Let us go sacrifice to our God.'

So the slave masters of the people and their foremen went to the Israelites and said, "Thus says Pharaoh: 'I am not giving you straw.

You go get straw for yourselves wherever you can find it, because there will be no reduction at all in your workload.'"

The Israelite foremen whom Pharaoh's slave masters had set over them were beaten and were asked, "Why did you not complete your requirement for brickmaking as in the past -- both yesterday and today?"

The Israelite foremen went and cried out to Pharaoh, "Why are you treating your servants this way?

No straw is given to your servants, but we are told, 'Make bricks!' Your servants are even being beaten, but the fault is with your people."

But Pharaoh replied, "You are slackers! Slackers! That is why you are saying, 'Let us go sacrifice to the Lord.'

So now, get back to work! You will not be given straw, but you must still produce your quota of bricks!"

The Israelite foremen saw that they were in trouble when they were told, "You must not reduce the daily quota of your bricks."

and they said to them, "May the Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the opinion of Pharaoh and his servants, so that you have given them an excuse to kill us!"

Moses returned to the Lord, and said, "Lord, why have you caused trouble for this people? Why did you ever send me?

From the time I went to speak to Pharaoh in your name, he has caused trouble for this people, and you have certainly not rescued them!"

Then the Lord said to Moses, "Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh, for compelled by my strong hand he will release them, and by my strong hand he will drive them out of his land."

God spoke to Moses and said to him, "I am the Lord.

I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name 'the Lord' I was not known to them.

I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they were living as resident foreigners.

I have also heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.

Therefore, tell the Israelites, 'I am the Lord. I will bring you out from your enslavement to the Egyptians, I will rescue you from the hard labor they impose, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.