1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household:
These are the divine faculties that exist within all beings, who are born into physical bodies, each an individual being.
2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,
The first four faculties are Perception (Reuben), Receptivity (Simeon), Love (Levi), and Prayer—the faculty of accumulating spiritual energy (Judah).
3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin,
The next three are Zeal (Issachar), Order\Organization (Zebulun), and Faith (Benjamin).
4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.
The last four faculties are Judgment (Dan), Strength of Chracter (Naphtali), Power (Gad), and Understanding (Asher).
5 All the offspring of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt.
Seventy, being 7 multiplied by 10, represents the complete\perfect being. The imagination is already in the egocentric consciousness that is materialism.
6 Then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation.
The death of Joseph and his family symbolize the forgetting of all the faculties that they represent. They drop from the consciousness into the subconscious mind.
7 But the descendants of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong; so that the land was filled with them.
The consciousness is filled with spiritual energy at this point. The spiritual energy is symbolized by the Israelites.
8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.
The new king\Pharaoh symbolizes the developing Ego. The fact that he “did not know Joseph” means that the new consciousness is ignorant of it’s creative powers and origin.
9 And he said to his people, "Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us.
10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war befall us, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land."
The Ego (Pharaoh) fears the result of allowing the spiritual forces to flow freely through the body, so it tries to block them and the spiritual consciousness they represent. This is done because it fears that it will lose power.
11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens; and they built for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses.
12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel.
However, the more they are blocked, the stronger they become, finding any way they can to express themselves in consciousness. The human\material consciousness fears the spiritual forces even more when it realizes that it cannot control them using any means of oppression.
13 So they made the people of Israel serve with rigor,
14 and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field; in all their work they made them serve with rigor.
The attitude toward spirituality symbolized by the Egyptians (fear and trying to restrict) causes the spiritual forces to have a harder time expressing themselves through the consciousness and bodies of those that oppress them. This makes all things in life harder.
15 Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,
16 "When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, she shall live."
Shiphrah, which in the Aramaic means bright and shining and Puah. meaning bright shining and giving light are selected by the Pharaoh to kill all the male children. The midwives represent the aspect of consciousness responsible for receiving into mind new ideas. Children represent ideas. In this case, they are the ideas of the higher consciousness which the Pharaoh, the material, lower nature wants to kill.
17 But the midwives feared the gods, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.
18 So the king of Egypt called the midwives, and said to them, "Why have you done this, and let the male children live?"
19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and are delivered before the midwife comes to them."
They do not obey the Ego (Pharaoh), as they represent the spiritual consciousness. They enable the ideas to grow stronger in consciousness and multiply, to enable the deliverance from Egypt.
20 So gods dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and grew very strong.
Because the parts of the soul represented by the midwives are helping the spiritual forces and consciousness to grow stronger, their power multiplies in the consciousness of the individual.
21 And because the midwives feared the gods, they were given families.
The families of the midwives represent the spiritual forces that are part of spiritual consciousness.
22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live."
The Ego causes all the materialistic ideas to kill the active part of the spiritual consciousness (symbolized by all the male children), but allows the emotions and subconscious tendencies to live (symbolized by the daughters), so that they can be used to make more material beliefs and strengthen the materialistic consciousness\Ego thereby.