Let's dive into chapter one in verse five. It says, all the offspring of Jacob were 70 persons. Joseph was already in Egypt and then Joseph died and all of his brothers and all of that generation. But the descendants of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly.
They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them. So right off the bat, we have a great hinge and segue from Genesis chapter 50 where we left off here to exit as chapter one. So there were 70 individuals, 70 persons in Jacob's family who traveled to Egypt and were under the protection of Joseph who was again second in command. Then now after they died, they all multiplied greatly.
They're fruitful, increased greatly and they filled the land. This is really great because we can see the covenantal promises that God made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob that they would be a great multitude. Even if you think back to Adam and Noah, God says be fruitful and multiply. Well, this is happening with God's family, with the family of Jacob.
They're filling the land and they're a vast multitude of people. And when God said to Abraham back in Genesis chapter 22 verse 17, I will make a dear descendants like the stars of heaven and the sands of the seashore, you can really see that beginning to take place. God is faithful to his promises. And there's another really great connection here with Joseph's name.
Joseph was the patron of the family of Israel. Just like I think I made the typology on the last lecture, just like Joseph is the patron of the family of Israel. So too is the new Saint Joseph, the patron of the family of the new Israel. So Joseph's name means may Yahweh give increase.
And that is truly happening through Joseph's, you could call it his ministry, his role. The people of God are truly giving increase. It's being fulfilled through Joseph's protection. So it's a really beautiful little connection there.
So they're a vast multitude of people and you think, wow, this is going really great. They're living in the land of Goshen. This is fruitful, they're fruitful, the land is fruitful, but there's a problem that they really needed to go back to the promised land and they're not, they kind of get comfortable and they're enjoying the best of the land. And then until ultimately in verse eight, we've got a complete change in dynamic.
So in verse eight, it says, there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph and he said to his people, behold, the sons of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply and have war befall us, they join our enemies and fight and fight against us and escape from the land. All right, these two verses, there's a lot packed into just these two verses here. Now this new Pharaoh came, became king over Egypt who didn't know Joseph.
The first thing to clarify here is that he's not ignorant of who Joseph was. That would be pretty much impossible. Many have pointed this out. Joseph, the famous Joseph who came from rags to riches.
One day he's a prisoner, the next day he is second in command who correctly interprets through the help of his God, their dreams of Pharaoh and saves the nation of Egypt, with the seven years of plenty saving all of this grain and then selling it back to all their various nations who come to Pharaoh looking for help, greatly enriching Pharaoh and making him powerful, et cetera, et cetera, there's no way on earth. This new Pharaoh would not know who Joseph is. It's like in our nation out here in America, almost everybody knows who George Washington is. If you have a minimum amount of education of our nation's history, you know who George Washington is and what he did in the Revolutionary War, et cetera, et cetera.
So it's not that this new Pharaoh didn't know about Joseph. It has to do with the Hebrew word for this English word to know. I mentioned this many times in the past, it's Yaddah. Yaddah is covenantal knowledge.
Okay, it's covenantal knowledge, being in relationship with somebody, having a treaty with somebody. That's what this is about. He didn't know Joseph in a covenantal sense. So what probably happened here is this new king over Egypt that arose.
It was probably uprising a coup d'etat. A new dynasty comes along, overthrows the previous dynasty, and the usurper Pharaoh doesn't recognize or honor Joseph's covenantal relationship or covenantal treaty partnership between him and his people with the previous Pharaoh and his dynasty. And that makes total sense. A new dynasty arises and you're like, I want to hold onto my power.
And here you have the Israelites right there in the land. They're very vast. Very, they're just filling the land, right? And you're kind of scared of them.
And so this is why he says, they're too many, they're too mighty for us because his power is unstable. That the Israelites are a threat to his throne. And so especially if you don't recognize the Israelites in a covenantal relationship, it's very likely the Israelites might rise up against you. Okay?
So this is why he wants to subjugate them. He's gonna oppress them with slavery. He's gonna also murder them. So this is the whole strategy.
Let's deal with them, less if they partner with our allies and then fight against us and we lose our new throne, our new power. So I hope that makes sense because to me, it makes a heck of a lot more sense than he just didn't know who Joseph was. Oh, who's Joseph, right? So what does he do now?
First, Pharaoh enslaves the Israelites into bitter service, verse 11. Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens and they built for Pharaoh's store cities, pit them in ramesesies. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the sons of Israel.
So they made the sons of Israel serve with rigor and made their lives bitter with hard service and mortar and brick and all kinds of work in the field. And in all their work, they made them serve with rigor. So this is the first thing that he does. He says, okay, we need to oppress them and remove all kinds of joy from them and freedom from them and make them build our store cities, make them work in the fields, et cetera, et cetera.
It's bitter, harsh slavery that he imposes on them. Now I have to point out one thing I've always found fascinating, which is the bitter irony of all of this. Cause if you go back to chapter 37 of Genesis, it was all of Joseph's brothers, right? All the sons of Israel who betrayed Joseph and sell him into slavery into Egypt.
And only to find out years later, all of Israel, all the brothers and their descendants, you should say the descendants of the brothers of Joseph are now enslaved in Egypt. It's like this harsh reality of what goes around comes around. When does it happen? If Joseph's brothers didn't sell them into slavery.
Well, obviously that's just conjecture. That's fun conversation around a fire with a pipe and a scotch, but I just find that fascinating the bitter turn of events therefore all of Israel. Well, anyways, he enslaves them, but that's not all. The next thing that he does is enact what I call statewide infanticide.
In verse 15, it says, the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shipprah and the other Puah. So there's all these Hebrew midwives and two of them are immortalized. I think for good reason as we're going to see, I really like this short little story here of Shipprah and Puah, whose names are forever read by every single person who reads the Bible, I guess immortalized throughout all history. They should be the patron saints, I think, of any institution dealing with birthing centers or midwifery or NICUs or anything.
It's just awesome for their pro-life and for their being bold against the state, which of course is Pharaoh. So I really think these women are fantastic. Why? Well, let's see.
Well, when Pharaoh says to them, when you serve as midwives to the Hebrew women and see them upon the burst rule, fittest of son, you shall kill them, but if it is a daughter, she shall live. But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. So they're very pro-life. They're obviously very religious.
They fear God. They have this relationship with God and they're not, of course not, they're not going to be killing these babies. And this outrages Pharaoh. He calls them and says, why did you do this?
Why are you letting the male children live? And then they say, I find this so awesome. They say in verse 19, because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women for they are vigorous and are delivered before the midwife comes to them. That's a pretty big smack in the face of those Egyptian women and Pharaoh, of course, who rules them.
Oh, are Hebrew women, they're strong and vigorous and healthy and they basically give birth to their babies on their own, but your Egyptian women on the other hand, they're the reverse, they're kind of weak and pathetic and need a bunch of help, right? So it's just so bold, these two women refusing to give in to the state, fearing God and being very pro-life and serving these families. So that's why I've always said, maybe they should be the patron saints of any institution dealing with the birth of children. So anyways, Pharaoh's not happy about this, so he says, fine, all right.
In verse 22, he commanded all of his people, note that state-wide command, every son that is born to the Hebrews, you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live. So note this, all of Egypt is complicit in not just the enslavement of Israel, okay, but also for the murder of the baby boys. State-wide and fantasized, all of Egypt is guilty of this now. This is gonna be really, really important.
I want you to keep this in mind for when we come back to the plagues later on in the next lecture, then the lecture after that, we'll talk about the final plague, the Passover and the death of the firstborn sons. That's all in connection with the fact that all of Egypt is guilty. It's not just Pharaoh, it's all the Egyptians, okay? So that's a very important point.
Now, what is the purpose, the strategy, the intention going on here with these two tactics? I like to teach you that as a combined martial and marital strategy, right? I try to say that three times faster. A martial and a marital strategy.
So what is Pharaoh trying to do when he says let's deal shrewdly with them unless they multiply? First, it makes a lot of sense, right? With the adult males enslaved and otherwise occupied by their their service, Pharaoh basically accomplishes all of his building projects. He's gonna build these massive store cities and keep all of the males.
And of course, the females occupied with all of their service and renders any potential uprising pretty impotent or very unlikely. If all the men are oppressed harshly by building these store cities, probably not the pyramids, I should say. There's a lot of debate about that, but it's probably very unlikely that the Hebrews had anything to do with the building of the pyramids. So anyways, close parentheses there.
You're basically rendering all of any potential uprising from these men pretty rare, pretty difficult, right? So that's the first thing. The second thing is by murdering the Hebrew boys as infants, Pharaoh then further reduces the military threat because there simply are no Israelites to grow up and become soldiers, right? So it press all the male adults while we have them, build everything that we need to get built.
They're not likely to rise up. And in the future, there will be no future males to grow into soldiers and rebels and form an army and fight against us. So that takes care of all of the soldiers, what I would call the martial strategy there. If there are no males around to rise up and fight, then you're pretty much gonna be able to hold onto your throne or at least you eliminate the threat Israel is going to pose to you if there are no soldiers.
But then third, what about the girls? Well, the baby girls then are gonna grow up and need to get married to somebody. And if there are no Israelite boys around to marry, then they're probably gonna be marrying the Egyptian males, right? And so the Egyptians will slowly inherit back this very fertile rich land of Goshen that Israel has possessed for all these hundreds of years.
Goshen's some of the best land out there. So it's gonna be very unlikely, at least very difficult to dispossess them of the land overnight. Well, now with this sort of marital strategy, they're going to eliminate the Israelites and they're going to have the Israelite women intermarry with the Egyptians inherit back the land. So it's pretty genius, it's pretty cunning for sure.
When he says, let's deal shrewdly, it is for sure very shrewd. But despite all this oppression and slavery and murder of the infants, God is protecting his people. They're still multiplying. It says that in verse 12, the more they repressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad.
In verse 20, God dealt well with the midwives and the people multiplied and grew very strong. That's really, really important. God is protecting his people. And despite all of Pharaoh's attempts, he just simply cannot get the upper hand.
And this really reminds me of the early Christian murders. There's a very famous quote from an early Christian writer called Tertilian, tier in your notes. It goes, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. So the more the Roman emperors oppressed the Christians and murdered them and fed them to lions and crucified them and lit them on fire and all the horrible martyrs, martyrdoms that occurred painful, horrible ways in which the Roman Empire tried to suppress Christianity.
It just never worked. They could continue to grow because the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. And we kind of see this here in chapter one of Exodus.