11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. They built storage cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses.
He said to Abram, "Know for sure that your seed will live as foreigners in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them. They will afflict them four hundred years.
Joseph placed his father and his brothers, and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had commanded.
Yahweh said, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.
The Egyptians dealt ill with us, and afflicted us, and laid on us hard bondage:
The king of Egypt said to them, "Why do you, Moses and Aaron, take the people from their work? Get back to your burdens!" Pharaoh said, "Behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens." The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people, and their officers, saying,
Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, saying, "Why do you deal this way with your servants?
Therefore tell the children of Israel, 'I am Yahweh, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great judgments: and I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and you shall know that I am Yahweh your God, who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
how our fathers went down into Egypt, and we lived in Egypt a long time; and the Egyptians dealt ill with us, and our fathers:
and all the store-cities that Solomon had, and the cities for his chariots, and the cities for his horsemen, and that which Solomon desired to build for his pleasure in Jerusalem, and in Lebanon, and in all the land of his dominion.
While you sleep among the campfires, The wings of a dove sheathed with silver, Her feathers with shining gold.
They went about from nation to nation, From one kingdom to another people.
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Commentary on Exodus 1 Keil & Delitzsch Commentary
Increase in the Number of the Israelites Their Bondage in Egypt - Exodus 1
The promise which God gave to Jacob in his departure from Canaan (Genesis 46:3) was perfectly fulfilled. The children of Israel settled down in the most fruitful province of the fertile land of Egypt, and grew there into a great nation (Exodus 1:1-7). But the words which the Lord had spoken to Abram (Genesis 15:13) were also fulfilled in relation to his seed in Egypt. The children of Israel were oppressed in a strange land, were compelled to serve the Egyptians (Exodus 1:8-14), and were in great danger of being entirely crushed by them (Exodus 1:15-22).
To place the multiplication of the children of Israel into a strong nation in its true light, as the commencement of the realization of the promises of God, the number of the souls that went down with Jacob to Egypt is repeated from Genesis 46:27 (on the number 70, in which Jacob is included, see the notes on this passage); and the repetition of the names of the twelve sons of Jacob serves to give to the history which follows a character of completeness within itself. “ With Jacob they came, every one and his house, ” i.e., his sons, together with their families, their wives, and their children. The sons are arranged according to their mothers, as in Genesis 35:23-26, and the sons of the two maid-servants stand last. Joseph, indeed, is not placed in the list, but brought into special prominence by the words, “ for Joseph was in Egypt ” (Exodus 1:5), since he did not go down to Egypt along with the house of Jacob, and occupied an exalted position in relation to them there.
After the death of Joseph and his brethren and the whole of the family that had first immigrated, there occurred that miraculous increase in the number of the children of Israel, by which the blessings of creation and promise were fully realised. The words פּרוּ ישׁרצוּ ( swarmed ), and ירבּוּ point back to Genesis 1:28 and Genesis 8:17, and יעצמוּ to עצוּם גּוי in Genesis 18:18. “ The land was filled with them, ” i.e., the land of Egypt, particularly Goshen, where they were settled (Genesis 47:11). The extra-ordinary fruitfulness of Egypt in both men and cattle is attested not only by ancient writers, but by modern travellers also (vid., Aristotelis hist. animal. vii. 4, 5; Columella de re rust. iii. 8; Plin. hist. n. vii. 3; also Rosenmüller a. und n. Morgenland i. p. 252). This blessing of nature was heightened still further in the case of the Israelites by the grace of the promise, so that the increase became extraordinarily great (see the comm. on Exodus 12:37).
The promised blessing was manifested chiefly in the fact, that all the measures adopted by the cunning of Pharaoh to weaken and diminish the Israelites, instead of checking, served rather to promote their continuous increase.
Exodus 1:8-9
“ There arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph .” ויּקם signifies he came to the throne, קוּם denoting his appearance in history, as in Deuteronomy 34:10. A “new king” (lxx: βασιλεὺς ἕτερος ; the other ancient versions, rex novus ) is a king who follows different principles of government from his predecessors. Cf. חדשׁים אלהים , “new gods,” in distinction from the God that their fathers had worshipped, Judges 5:8; Deuteronomy 32:17. That this king belonged to a new dynasty, as the majority of commentators follow Josephus