Then God led Abram outside. God said, “Look at the sky. See the many stars. There are so many you can’t count them. In the future, your family will be like that.”
Joseph did what Pharaoh said and gave his father and brothers land in Egypt. It was the best land in Egypt, {in the eastern part of the country} in the land of Rameses.
The Egyptian people decided to make life hard for the people of Israel. So the Egyptians put slave masters over the people. These masters forced the Israelites to build the cities of Pithom and Rameses for the king. The king used these cities to store grain and other things.
Moses answered, “All of our people, young and old, will go. And we will take our sons and daughters, and our sheep and cattle with us. We will all go because the Lord’s feast is for all of us.”
All the men 20 years old or older were counted. There were 603,550 men, and each man had to pay a tax of 1 beqa [445] of silver. (Using the official measure, a beqa is 1Ú2 shekel. [446])
On the 15th day of the first month, they left Rameses. That morning after Passover, the people of Israel marched out of Egypt with their arms raised {in victory}. All the people of Egypt saw them.