Exodus 1:8-10, 17-18, 22 records, A new king came to power in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph. He spoke to his people in alarm, “There are way too many of these Israelites for us to handle. We’ve got to do something: Let’s devise a plan to contain them, lest if there’s a war they should join our enemies, or just walk off and leave us.”………..But the midwives had far too much respect for God and didn’t do what the king of Egypt ordered; they let the boy babies live. The king of Egypt called in the midwives. “Why didn’t you obey my orders? You’ve let those babies live!”…………So Pharaoh issued a general order to all his people: “Every boy that is born, drown him in the Nile. But let the girls live. MSG
Joseph dies, the last page of Genesis, and a new king of Egypt comes to power, the first page of Exodus, who fears the Jews who live among him because there are so many of them. We turn a page and it seems a day in history passes. Yet the distance between the pages is 400 years! (more…)