I glanced over this passage the other day as I was working on Biblefox. My eye caught on the quote from the King of Egypt in verses 8-10:
8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who didn’t know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. 10 Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it happen that when any war breaks out, they also join themselves to our enemies, and fight against us, and escape out of the land.”
That seems pretty rational to me. You have a group of foreigners really prospering in your country. They don’t have the same beliefs as you. If they continue to grow, who knows what affect they might have on the country? They might even try to take over the country. That seems like a real issue to me. Those Egyptians were probably legitimately frightened of what Israel might do to them. As Pharaoh warned, issues like that really should be dealt with wisely. Of course, human wisdom is frequently different from God’s wisdom, so the Egyptians’ humanly wisdom didn’t have the effect they wanted.
Human Wisdom:
11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. They built storage cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out.
God’s Wisdom:
But I tell you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who mistreat you and persecute you
Richard Venable