Over time, the position of Jacob's descendants, like that of other Semitic tribes living in northern Egypt, in the Nile Delta region, worsened noticeably. This is not surprising: judging by everything the sacred writer tells us...
Over time, the position of Jacob's descendants, like that of other Semitic tribes living in northern Egypt, in the Nile Delta region, worsened noticeably. This is not surprising: judging by everything the sacred writer tells us, Joseph came to Egypt during the reign of one of the last (possibly even the last) pharaohs of the first dynasty of the New Kingdom. If so, Joseph (and therefore Jacob) found there the last pharaoh who was Semitic by origin. The first pharaoh of the second dynasty was already a native Egyptian, and the attitude toward Semites in Egypt became what it had always been: they were again treated as barbarians and, accordingly, as second-class people.
Egypt, moreover, always remained a monoethnic state, a country of one people, and no one made any attempt to integrate the Semites, who had suddenly become foreigners on land where they had already lived for at least a hundred years. Under such conditions, the traditional clan and tribal ties within the Semitic tribes only grew stronger and were not eroded, as would have happened if they had been integrated into Egyptian society. In addition, the Egyptian government had real grounds to fear trouble in the event of war with the Semitic tribes of Sinai; Egypt often had wars with them. The point is that the Semitic tribes of the Delta were the closest ethnic relatives of the Semites of Sinai. In the event of war they could easily have raised a rebellion and struck the Eastern Corps of the Egyptian army in the rear, and that corps would inevitably have borne the full weight of very difficult military action in the desert.
The danger was all the greater because the Semites outnumbered the Egyptians, not in the country as a whole, of course, but only in the Delta region, where Egyptians were reluctant to settle. Meanwhile it was precisely the Semitic population of the Delta that was assigned the work of building "store cities": probably warehouses for that same Eastern Corps. Such public works were normal for Egypt; the entire rural population was drafted for them during the time free from agricultural labor.
They were hardly murderously hard, but the Semites, who had never known any public works, perceived them as violence and enslavement, although legally, of course, they were not slaves. At the same time, however, the birth rate among Jacob's descendants did not fall, which means the work was not exhausting. In such a situation the demand of the authorities, most likely local authorities, not to help Hebrew women in labor was understandable; but here, as always in such cases, each person decides for herself what to do. The women made their choice, and God did not abandon them.
