Daily Reading for Monday, July 14th, 2025

Reading 1, Exodus 1:8-14, 22

⁸ Then there came to power in Egypt a new king who had never heard of Joseph.

⁹ 'Look,' he said to his people, 'the Israelites are now more numerous and stronger than we are.

¹⁰ We must take precautions to stop them from increasing any further, or if war should break out, they might join the ranks of our enemies. They might take arms against us and then escape from the country.'

¹¹ Accordingly they put taskmasters over the Israelites to wear them down by forced labour. In this way they built the store-cities of Pithom and Rameses for Pharaoh.

¹² But the harder their lives were made, the more they increased and spread, until people came to fear the Israelites.

¹³ So the Egyptians gave them no mercy in the demands they made,

¹⁴ making their lives miserable with hard labour: with digging clay, making bricks, doing various kinds of field -- work -- all sorts of labour that they imposed on them without mercy.

²² Pharaoh then gave all his people this command: 'Throw every new-born boy into the river, but let all the girls live.'

Responsorial Psalm, Psalms 124:1-3, 4-6, 7-8

¹ [Song of Ascents Of David] If Yahweh had not been on our side -- let Israel repeat it-

² if Yahweh had not been on our side when people attacked us,

³ they would have swallowed us alive in the heat of their anger.

⁴ Then water was washing us away, a torrent running right over us;

⁵ running right over us then were turbulent waters.

⁶ Blessed be Yahweh for not letting us fall a prey to their teeth!

⁷ We escaped like a bird from the fowlers' net. The net was broken and we escaped;

⁸ our help is in the name of Yahweh, who made heaven and earth.