he children of Israel came into Egypt, and they increased in numbers until they filled the land. The Egyptians made the children of Israel their servants: they made them build cities, and work in the fields, and the Egyptians treated them harshly. But the more the Egyptians mistreated them, the more they grew in numbers.

...she took for him an ark of bulrushes...

The king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, became afraid that the children of Israel would join Egypt’s enemies, and rise up to fight against them. So the Pharaoh said to them, “Every boy that is born to you, you must throw into the river to drown; but the girls you will keep alive.”

A Hebrew man and woman married and had a son, and the woman hid the child for three months. When she could no longer hide him, she took a basket made of reeds, and made it waterproof. Then she put the child in the basket, and laid it in the rushes by the edge of the river.

The Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe at the river, and she saw the basket in the rushes. When she opened it, she saw the crying baby, and she felt sorry for him. The Pharaoh’s daughter took the boy, and raised him as her son, and she named him Moses.

When Moses was grown, he went out one day, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen. Moses looked around, and when he saw that no one was near, he killed the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.

When he went out the next day, two Hebrew men were fighting. Moses said to one of them, “Why are you hitting this man?” But the man said to Moses, “Who made you our judge? Are you going to kill me, like you killed the Egyptian?

Then Moses was afraid, because he knew he had been found out. When the Pharaoh heard what Moses had done, he sought to have Moses killed. But Moses fled from the Pharaoh. He went to the land of Midian, and took a wife, and watched her father’s sheep.