Verse-by-Verse Commentary
The Book of Exodus
Chapter 1: Bondage in Egypt
Exodus opens four centuries after Genesis ends. The family of seventy that came to Egypt has become a nation, exactly as God promised Abraham. But a new king rises who fears them, and the story of the world's greatest redemption begins in its darkest place: slavery, cruelty, and a royal order to drown the baby boys. Into that darkness, two brave women who feared God step first.
About This Commentary
This is a verse-by-verse study of Exodus chapter 1. For each section you will find the KJV text, the Hebrew words that sharpen the meaning, plain explanation, and a Gospel Focus. Exodus is the Bible's great picture of redemption: a people in bondage, a deliverer God raises up, a lamb whose blood shields them, and a passage through the water into covenant with God. Chapter 1 sets the stage by showing the bondage that redemption answers, and the faith of ordinary people who feared God more than a king. Every Scripture quotation is from the King James Version.
Setting the Stage
"Exodus" and "Names"
"Exodus" comes from the Greek for a going out or departure. The Hebrew title is "Shemot," meaning "Names," taken from the opening words, "these are the names." The book is about the God who knows His people by name and brings them out.
Moses
By the testimony of Scripture, Moses wrote Exodus, as he did Genesis. It is the account, in large part, of his own life and the deliverance God worked through him.
Four Hundred Years On
Genesis ended with Joseph and his family, about seventy people, settled in Egypt. Exodus 1 opens generations later, with that family grown into a vast people, just as God had told Abraham they would.
Redemption
Bondage, a deliverer, the blood of a lamb, and passage through the sea: Exodus is the shadow that the gospel would one day fill. It teaches us what it means to be saved.
Israel Multiplies in Egypt (Exodus 1:1-7)
The chapter begins by listing the names of Jacob's sons who came to Egypt, then leaps across the years to show what God had done with that little family.
The Promise Kept
"Now these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already. And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation. And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them."
Hebrew Study
The seven verbs of increase are chosen with care. "Increased abundantly" is sharats (שָׁרַץ), the very word used of the waters that "brought forth abundantly" the swarming, teeming creatures of creation (Genesis 1:20-21). Israel does not merely grow; it swarms with life, filling the land as the seas and skies were filled at the beginning. Paired with it are parah (be fruitful), rabah (multiply), and atsam (wax mighty) — a sevenfold drumbeat of blessing, and seven in Hebrew is the number of completeness. The "seventy souls" (nephesh) that came down have become a fullness no census can hold.
Explanation
Look at the pile of verbs: fruitful, increased abundantly, multiplied, grew exceedingly mighty, filled the land. The writer is stacking words on purpose to show an explosion of life. Seventy people (Exodus 1:5) had become a nation too large to count.
Gospel Focus
This is God keeping His word. He had promised Abraham, "I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth" (Genesis 13:16) and "tell the stars, if thou be able to number them... So shall thy seed be" (Genesis 15:5). He told Jacob on his way down to Egypt, "fear not to go down into Egypt; for I will there make of thee a great nation" (Genesis 46:3). Exodus 1:7 is the receipt. The language even echoes Eden, "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28), because the God of creation is the God of the promise. When God says a thing, time and circumstances only serve to prove Him true.
A New King and Cruel Bondage (Exodus 1:8-14)
The blessing of growth is met by the fear of a new ruler, and blessing turns to bondage.
Feared, Then Enslaved
"Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour."
Hebrew Study
"with rigor," perek (פֶּרֶךְ). A strong word for harsh, crushing, brutal labor. Egypt did not merely employ Israel; it tried to grind them down. Verse 14 says they "made their lives bitter" with hard bondage, in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field.
"did not know Joseph." To "know" here means more than to have heard of him. This king had no regard for Joseph, who had once saved Egypt from famine. Gratitude was forgotten, and fear took its place.
Explanation
Pharaoh's cruelty comes cloaked as statecraft. "Come on, let us deal wisely with them" — he frames a whole people as a security threat, "lest... they join also unto our enemies." It is the oldest tyrant's script: manufacture fear of the outsider, then call the oppression that follows mere prudence. So the machinery of empire is turned on them — taskmasters, burdens, the store-cities Pithom and Raamses rising on Hebrew backs. The passage builds in a rising list of hard words — afflict, burdens, rigour, bitter, hard bondage, mortar and brick — so the reader feels the weight pressing down. Yet the shrewdness of the wise king runs headlong into a wall: the very verse that reports his plan reports its failure, for the more Egypt afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew.
Gospel Focus
Notice the strange arithmetic of verse 12: "the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew." Oppression could not defeat God's blessing; it seemed only to fuel it. The same pattern runs through the Bible and history: the harder the world pressed the people of God, the more they grew. The church was born the same way, scattered by persecution yet spreading everywhere, "they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word" (Acts 8:4). What is meant to crush the work of God often only spreads it. Do not read affliction as proof that God has forgotten you; here it is the very soil in which His promise keeps growing.
The Midwives Who Feared God (Exodus 1:15-21)
When Pharaoh's slavery fails to stop the growth, he turns to murder, and two ordinary women stand in his way.
Shiphrah, Puah, and the Fear of God
"And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah: And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses."
Hebrew Study
"feared God," yare Elohim (יָרֵא אֱלֹהִים). To fear God is to reverence Him, to hold Him in such awe that His will outweighs every other voice, even a king's. Their fear of God made them fearless before Pharaoh.
The names remembered. Scripture records the names of two Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, but never names the mighty Pharaoh of this chapter. Heaven keeps a different record than earth: the powerful oppressor is left anonymous, while the humble women who feared God are named forever.
Explanation
When open slavery fails, Pharaoh turns to a quieter evil: secret murder at the birthstool, boys only. Why the boys? They are the future soldiers he fears, and — though he cannot know it — the line from which a deliverer will come; the daughters he thinks harmless will grow up to raise the very nation he means to erase. Against this stands the first recorded act of civil disobedience in Scripture: the midwives simply "did not as the king of Egypt commanded them." When summoned to account, they answer that the Hebrew women are "lively" (chayot, vigorous) and deliver before help arrives. The narrative does not pause to weigh their words; its gaze is fixed on the one thing it commends — they feared God, and so they let the children live.
Gospel Focus
This is the first great act of holy defiance in Exodus. Commanded by the most powerful man on earth to murder infants, the midwives refused, "because they feared God." This is exactly the principle the apostles would later state before the rulers of Israel: "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). When a human authority commands what God forbids, reverence for God comes first. And notice how God responded: He "dealt well" with them and gave them households of their own. God sees the quiet courage the world never notices, and He does not forget it.
Pharaoh's Order at the River (Exodus 1:22)
Thwarted by the midwives, Pharaoh widens his cruelty to the whole nation, and the chapter ends at its darkest, just before deliverance dawns.
Cast Into the River
"And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive."
Hebrew Study
The "river" is ye'or (יְאֹר), an Egyptian loanword for the Nile — Egypt's lifeblood, worshipped as a god, the source of all the land's plenty. Pharaoh commands the sons be "cast" into it — shalak, to hurl or throw down. The tyrant weaponizes the very river that gives Egypt life, turning the nation's god into an instrument of death.
Explanation
The final decree drops every pretense. There is no more talk of "dealing wisely," no more hiding behind midwives; now Pharaoh charges "all his people" to drown the Hebrew boys, deputizing an entire nation as executioners. The evil that began as policy and moved to secret murder now becomes open, universal, and shameless. It is the darkest verse in the chapter — and precisely there, at the bottom, the story is poised to turn, for the next word after this decree is the birth of a child.
Gospel Focus
The chapter closes in horror: a nationwide order to drown the baby boys in the Nile. Yet this is exactly the hour God chooses to act. The very river meant to be a grave for Hebrew sons will, in the next chapter, carry a baby named Moses to safety in Pharaoh's own household. God loves to begin deliverance where the enemy means destruction. The pattern reaches its height at the cross, where the worst thing men ever did became the means of the world's salvation. When the night is darkest, redemption is nearest.
A Note on History
The Bible's picture of Israel making bricks under Egyptian taskmasters matches what Egypt itself left behind. The store-cities Pithom and Raamses (Exodus 1:11) belong to the eastern Nile Delta, where Semitic peoples are known to have settled and labored. A wall painting in the tomb of Rekhmire at Thebes (fifteenth century BC) shows foreign, Semitic-looking laborers making mud bricks with straw, and Egyptian documents such as Papyrus Anastasi record brick quotas and the supply of straw, a striking parallel to the later demand that Israel make bricks without straw (Exodus 5). The Brooklyn Papyrus even lists Egyptian household slaves bearing Northwest-Semitic names.
Chapter 1 in Review
Exodus 1 sets the stage for redemption. God keeps His promise to Abraham and turns a family into a nation. A fearful king answers God's blessing with slavery and then with murder, but the more he afflicts Israel, the more they grow. Two God-fearing midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, defy the king to save the babies, and God honors them. The chapter ends in the deep darkness of Pharaoh's order at the river, precisely where God is about to raise up a deliverer.
For the Apostolic reader, this chapter is the doorway into the Bible's great salvation story. Exodus will give us a deliverer, a Passover lamb, blood on the door, and a people brought through the sea, all shadows of the salvation we have in Jesus Christ, our Passover (1 Corinthians 5:7), through whom we are brought out of bondage and into God. Chapter 1 shows us the bondage. Keep reading, because the God who kept His promise to multiply them is the same God who will keep His promise to save them, and us.
- God keeps His promises; He grew Israel into a nation exactly as He told Abraham He would.
- Affliction could not stop God's blessing; the more Israel was oppressed, the more it multiplied.
- The fear of God makes ordinary people bravely obey Him above any earthly power.
- God begins deliverance in the darkest hour, foreshadowing our salvation in Christ.
Questions for Reflection
- Where are you tempted to read affliction as God's absence, when it may be the soil of His promise?
- The midwives feared God more than a king. Where is God asking you to obey Him above another voice?
- God named the humble and left the tyrant anonymous. How does that reshape what you count as greatness?
References & Sources
Scripture is quoted from the King James Version (KJV). The Hebrew terms are standard and can be checked in any Hebrew lexicon. Supporting passages are listed so every claim can be verified in its own setting. If anything here does not look right, a verse, a reference, or a wording, please tell us at info@FruitBearers.net. Thank you for helping us keep Bible Learning error free.
- Semitic brick-labor in Egypt: the Tomb of Rekhmire (Thebes); Papyrus Anastasi; the Brooklyn Papyrus (35.1446).
- God's promise to multiply Abraham's descendants: Genesis 13:16; 15:5; 46:3; compare Genesis 1:28.
- Israel multiplies and is enslaved: Exodus 1:1-14.
- The God-fearing midwives; obeying God above men: Exodus 1:15-21; Acts 5:29.
- Pharaoh's order at the river; deliverance from darkness: Exodus 1:22; 2:1-10.
- Exodus as a picture of salvation in Christ: 1 Corinthians 5:7; 10:1-2.