Joseph died and over the next 400 years Jacob's family grew tremendously and were called the people of Israel. They were also called Hebrews. Now there rose up a new king in Egypt who never knew Joseph. When he saw that the people of Israel were so many, he became afraid, and he made them into slaves. He feared they would turn on the Egyptians and defeat them so he even ordered that every baby boy born in Israel be killed at birth. But the Hebrew midwives refused to obey Pharaoh's command. God protected them, and the Hebrews continued to increase in number.
Now there was a family of Israel from the clan of Levi who had a beautiful baby boy. They hid him for three months, but finally they put the baby in a tiny boat and put the boat in the Nile River. Miriam, the older sister of the baby boy, stayed hidden nearby to watch what might happen to her little brother.
Then the daughter of the king of Egypt came to the Nile River with her friends, and she saw the baby and took him as her own son and named him Moses. Miriam came to the daughter of the king and asked, “Do you want me to find an Israelite woman to nurse the baby for you?” She replied, “Yes, find me a woman and I will pay her to nurse the child for me.” So Moses was given back to his own mother to nurse him. When the child grew older, his mother took him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. So Moses grew up in the house of the king of Egypt.
When Moses became a man, one day he went out among his people, Israel. There he saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite man. Moses looked this way and that way and saw no one. So he killed the Egyptian and hid his body. But the thing became known and Moses ran away into the desert.
But God saw the suffering of His people, Israel, and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.