When Jacob was told, “Your son Joseph has just come to you,” Israel regained strength and sat up on his bed.

He said to me, ‘I am going to make you fruitful and will multiply you. I will make you into a group of nations, and I will give this land to your descendants as an everlasting possession.’

Now Israel’s eyes were failing because of his age; he was not able to see well. So Joseph brought his sons near to him, and his father kissed them and embraced them.

Israel said to Joseph, “I never expected to see you again, but now God has allowed me to see your children too.”

Joseph positioned them; he put Ephraim on his right hand across from Israel’s left hand, and Manasseh on his left hand across from Israel’s right hand. Then Joseph brought them closer to his father.

Joseph said to his father, “Not so, my father, for this is the firstborn. Put your right hand on his head.”

Jacob called for his sons and said, “Gather together so I can tell you what will happen to you in the future.

But the midwives feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live.

Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get a nursing woman for you from the Hebrews, so that she may nurse the child for you?”

In those days, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and observed their hard labor, and he saw an Egyptian man attacking a Hebrew man, one of his own people.

He said to his daughters, “So where is he? Why in the world did you leave the man? Call him, so that he may eat a meal with us.”

The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from within a bush. He looked – and the bush was ablaze with fire, but it was not being consumed!

When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called to him from within the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.”

He added, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Then Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

And now indeed the cry of the Israelites has come to me, and I have also seen how severely the Egyptians oppress them.

Moses answered again, “And if they do not believe me or pay attention to me, but say, ‘The Lord has not appeared to you’?”

But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and grab it by the tail” – so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand –

“that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.”

“So you are to speak to him and put the words in his mouth. And as for me, I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you both what you must do.

He will speak for you to the people, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were his God.