FROM BLESSINGS TO BONDAGE

BOOK OF EXODUS

CHAPTER 1

            Daily Bread welcomes you to the beginning of The Second Book of the Bible.  We’re proud to have you returning to study through the pages of the Bible with us and we look forward to presenting you with many different points of view, facts, traditions, adventures, trials, tragedies, celebrations and much more that the Bible shares with all who look within these pages of TRUTH..

            As we begin, first let's partake of a Daily Bread Stick.  The word “Exodus” means a mass departure.  So let’s get started and see who is leaving and from where.

            After Joseph died, and all his brothers and all of that generation, the children of Israel grew in numbers and became a very strong, very mighty people and the land of Egypt was filled with these Israelites (Offspring of Israel, once known as Jacob). 

            There was, of course a new king over Egypt by that time, also called Pharaoh, who didn’t know Joseph as the other Pharaoh that liked him did.  He said to the Egyptians, the people of the children of Israel are bigger and stronger than we are.  We must do something or if a war breaks out, they might join our enemies and fight against us, so let’s get them out of here. 

            Taskmasters were ordered to make the Israelites do hard work and build for Pharaoh elaborate cities that they named Pithom and Raamses.  But the harder they made them work, the more the Israelites grew.  The Egyptians were worried about this, so they made the Israelites work even harder still, so that their lives were miserable.  It was hard work, with mortar and brick and all kinds of work in the fields.

            The Pharaoh came up with an idea on how to reduce the Israelite population. He told the Hebrew midwives, that whenever they deliver a child for a Hebrew woman, if it’s a son, to kill him, but to let the daughters live.  He was hoping to put an end to the Israelites within one generation, but the midwives feared God and didn’t obey Pharaoh.

            When he found out that the sons were still alive, the Pharaoh demanded to know why the midwives had done this.  They answered that the Hebrew women are different than the Egyptian women and they deliver their babies before the midwives get there.

            God was pleased with what the midwives did and He blessed them with large families.  The Israelites multiplied and became stronger than ever.

            Pharaoh wanted his way, one way or another, so he commanded all of his people, the Egyptians, that every son that was born to the Israelites was to be thrown in the river and every daughter was to remain alive.

            Imagine the turmoil that these people were feeling.  In Joseph’s generation, the Pharaoh was just the opposite, giving the best that Egypt had to offer to the children of Israel.  Even during the famine, they were given more than the native Egyptians, and now they are slaves, in bondage because this Pharaoh is jealous and afraid that they’ll one day take over Egypt.

            Our next story is about the birth of Moses.  Moses was known as “the deliverer,” since he was the one who led God’s people, the children of Israel, out of the bondage of Egypt.  You won’t want to miss it, so join us again, for more Daily Bread.

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