This presented a problem. The king who reigned during there placement in the land was no longer in power. There was a new king. This king knew nothing of Joseph. This king made the following statement in Exodus 1:9, "Behold the people of the sons of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply and in the event of war, they also join themselves to those who hate us, and fight against us, and depart from the land." To put it bluntly, they were somewhat scared of the sons of Israel.
How would they deal with this issue they were facing? How were they going to control the sons of Israel from growing stronger and mightier? How were they going handle this situation? Let's take a quick look at the text.
Exodus 1:11-14--They Worked Them
They appointed taskmasters over them to afflict them with hard labor (v. 11). They made them build storage cities for Pharaoh (v. 11). They compelled the sons of Israel to labor rigorously (v. 13). They made their lives bitter with hard labor in mortar and bricks and at all kinds of labor in the field (v. 14).
What was the outcome of all of this hard labor? Look at verse 12:
"But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out,
so that they were in dread of the sons of Israel."
In our everyday vernacular we would say it like this: they through everything but the kitchen sink at the sons of Israel to try and control them and they only made the problem worse.
The Egyptians failed to realize one thing. God was working for the sons of Israel. The harder the Egyptians pushed, the greater God grew the sons of Israel. The more sanctions and rigorous regulations the Egyptians placed on the sons of Israel, the more God caused them to spread.
Tomorrow we will take look at another failed attempt by the Egyptians to control the sons of Israel.
