over 3,000 years ago, when Jacob, a Hebrew, came to Egypt along with his twelve sons. Jacob pleaded with the Pharaoh to allow them to live in Egypt. The kindly Pharaoh granted them the permission and allowed them to live in the Land of Goshen, the eastern part of the Nile Delta in Egypt. Many years later, Jacob and his sons died but their heirs never went back to their land. But their rapidly growing population, in the eyes of the Egyptian royals, posed a threat to the empire. So the Pharaoh ordered his men to throw all newborn Hebrew boys into the waters of the Nile. They raided every Hebrew home to check for any newborn male and brutally slaughtered it if they found any. One day Thermuthis, one of the Pharaoh's daughters, saw a tiny boat floating on the river while she was bathing with her handmaidens. Her surprise knew no bounds when she found the boat to be only a small craft of bulrushes coated in pitch with a newborn baby boy inside. The princess took pity on the infant and upon the insistence of a little girl Miriam, ordered a Hebrew woman Jochebed to look after the baby. Some years later, the princess adopted the child and gave him the name of "Moses", meaning "one who is drawn out" or "one who is pulled out" as the princess really brought him out of water. The little boy was born to be the deliverer of the Hebrews. On reaching adulthood, however, he came to know who he was really. He went to see how his brethren who were enslaved to the Egyptians were faring. Moses a rage killed an Egyptian slave master whom he had seen beating a Hebrew. He escaped to the desert, joined a group of shepherds, and became a shepherd himself. He married Zipporah, a shepherd woman, became a father. One night, as he was met God Jehovah and commanded to be a deliverer of the Hebrews. By God's orders, Moses returned to Egypt with his elder brother Aaron. He request Pharaoh to release the Jews from slavery. When the Pharaoh refused, Moses and Aaron went away to return again the following morning. They showed him a miraculous sign of warning - Aaron's staff turns into a serpent. Pharaoh's sorcerers, using trickery, performed the same feat, but Aaron's serpent turned back into a staff after swallowing the staffs of the magicians. He refused to read the signs. His refusal brought to the land of Egypt the famous ten plagues. By God's command and with his assistance, Moses inflicted the plagues to force the Pharaoh to release the Jews from slavery. The plagues wreaked havoc on the Egyptian households, but the Israelites were unharmed every time. The tenth and the last plague was the deadliest of them all. But under instruction from Moses, the Israelites marked the doorposts of their dwellings with the blood of a spring lamb, so that God could identify them easily and spare their families and pass over their houses. The festival of "Passover" commemorates this sparing of Jewish lives by God. Following the tenth plague, there was widespread uproar in Egypt. he implored them to get out of the land of Egypt taking all the Israelites with them, whom he had kept as slaves. But under instruction from Moses, the Israelites marked the doorposts of their dwellings with the blood of a spring lamb, so that God could identify them easily. But Pharaoh was not confident and refused to liberate slaves.