1. About 3,700 years ago, in the Contract (where the fire went between the divided animal carcasses - Genesis 15:9-21), God promised Abraham the following for his descendants:

(a) the people will be large in number (thus will be your offspring);
(b) the people will be slaves (and they will serve them, and they will torment them);
(c) the people will be liberated from slavery with great wealth (and after that they will leave with great wealth);
(d) the people will return to Abrahams new country (and the fourth generation will return here);
(e) they will receive the Land of Israel (then Canaan), (to your offspring I have given this country).

2. Jacob went down with his entire family (and these are the names of the children of Israel who went to Egypt) in order to meet his son Joseph whom he had not seen for over twenty years.

3. Jacob's family lived separately from Egyptians, in Goshen.

4. The children of Israel had reproduced, and proliferated, and increased, and become extremely powerful (Exodus 1:7). Pharaoh worried because of the increase in population of the Israelites. He said to his people "The people of the children of Israel are more numerous and more powerful than we are - come, let us deal craftily with them" (Exodus 1:9-10).

5. Pharaoh decided to make anti-Israelites decrees.

In the first stage he did not kill the children, but got the people to build him store-cities, making them work extremely hard; then he ordered male children to be killed at birth; and finally ordered that they should be thrown into the Nile.

6. The Exile of Israel in Egypt lasted 210 years, of which 116 were spent in excessively hard slave labour.