The Bible Study Podcast, episode 28.

Today the Bible Study podcast talks about Moses.

Many or most of you have no doubt heard the story of Moses, but we're going to revisit

it today.

So open your Bibles to Exodus, Chapter 1.

Sometime last year we talked about Joseph, and the story of Joseph ends in Egypt with the children of Israel,

and that is literally the children of Jacob, whose name is now Israel, the 12 sons and their families, are in Egypt.

And Exodus 1 takes up that story in the same place, but many years later.

These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family,

Rubin, Simeon, Levi and Judah, Isakar and Zebulun, and Benjamin,

Dan and Naftali, Gad, and Asher, the descendants of Jacob numbered 70 and all, Joseph was already in Egypt.

Now Joseph and his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly, and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them.

Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. Look, he said to his people, the Israelites have become too numerous for us. Come, we must deal with them shrewdly, or they will become more numerous, and if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country. So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor,

and they built Pitham and Rameses as storehouses for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed,

the more they multiplied and spread, so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter and with hard labor in brick and mortar, and with all

kinds of work in the fields. In all their hard labor, the Egyptians used them ruthlessly. The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names are Shifra and Pua, when you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him, but if it is a girl, let her live. Then midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the King of Egypt had told them. They let the boys live. And then skipping ahead to the next chapter, Chapter 2, now a man from the house of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months, but when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put him among the reeds on the banks of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds, sent her slave girl to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying and she felt sorry for him. This is one of the Hebrew babies, she said. Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you? Yes, go, she answered, and the girl went and got the baby's mother.

Pharaoh's daughter said to her, take this baby and nurse her for me, and I will pay you. So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, I drew him out of the water. One day after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his people were and watched them at their hard labor.

He saw an Egyptian beating Hebrew, one of his own people, glancing this way and that, and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew? The man said,

Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the

Egyptian? Then Moses was afraid and thought, what I did must have become known. When Pharaoh

heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian.

I want to stop here and look at what we've got so far.

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