Page:The Holy Bible Vol 1 (Thomson).djvu/99

Ch. L. Isaak and Jacob. And Joseph adjured the children of Israel saying, In the visitation wherewith God will visit you, you shall carry my bones hence with you. So Joeseph died being a hundreed and ten years old, and when they had embalmed him they put him into a coffin in Egypt.





These are the names of Israel's sons who went down to Egypt with their father Jacob. They went every one with his whole family; Reuben, Symeon, Levi, Judas, Issachar, Zabulon, Benjamin, Dan and Nephthaleim, Gad and Aser. Now Joseph was in Egypt. And all the souls from Jacob were seventy five. And when Joseph was dead and all his brothers and all that generation and the children of Israel had increased and multiplied and were become numerous and grew more and more powerful and the land caused them to abound, there arose another king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. And he said to his nation, Behold the race of the children of Israel is become a great multitude, and is mightier than we. Come therefore, let us deal subtilly with them. Perhaps when they are multiplied, if a war should happen to us, they will join our enemies and fight against us and depart out of the land. So he set task masters over them to afflict them with labours and they built for Pharao fortified cities, namely, Peithouand Rameses and On, which is Heliopolis. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew stronger and stronger. So the Egyptians were abhorred by the children of Israel; and the Egyptians ruled over the Israelites with rigour and made tehir lives bitter with hard labour in working clay and making bricks and with all the toils of the field, according to the several kinds of service to whcih they forcibly subjected them. Moreoever the king of the Egyptians spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of the first in rank was Sephora and the name of the second Phua, and said, When you do the office of midwives to the Hebrew women and they are delivered, if it be a male child, kill it; but if it be a female preserve it alive. But the midwives feared God and did not do asthe king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the males VOL. I.