1Now these are the names of the sons of Israel, who came into Egypt (every man and his household came with Jacob): 2Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5All the souls who came out of Jacob’s body were seventy souls, and Joseph was in Egypt already. 6Joseph died, as did all his brothers, and all that generation. 7The children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.
8Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who didn’t know Joseph. 9He said to his people, “Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. 10Come, let’s deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it happen that when any war breaks out, they also join themselves to our enemies and fight against us, and escape out of the land.” 11Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. They built storage cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses. 12But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out. They started to dread the children of Israel. 13The Egyptians ruthlessly made the children of Israel serve, 14and they made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and in brick, and in all kinds of service in the field, all their service, in which they ruthlessly made them serve.
15The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah, 16and he said, “When you perform the duty of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birth stool, if it is a son, then you shall kill him; but if it is a daughter, then she shall live.” 17But the midwives feared God, and didn’t do what the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the baby boys alive. 18The king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said to them, “Why have you done this thing and saved the boys alive?”
19The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women aren’t like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.”
20God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied, and grew very mighty. 21Because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 22Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, “You shall cast every son who is born into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive.”
This passage relates to the so-called problem of large Numbers in the Old Testament, and the Pentateuch in particular. While the focus in this passage is on spoils of war, elsewhere in the Pentateuch, it is related to how the Israelites consisted of some 600,000 fighting men, which would translate into some two million people who left Egypt in the Exodus and wandered into the wilderness and settled in the land of Canaan thereafter. Practically all those who study the geography and characteristics of the land consider this an impossibly high number based on our present state of knowledge. It is generally estimated that the population of the land of Canaan, for example, would have been of the order of 50,000 people at the time portrayed by the biblical narratives. Even the Bible itself in places gives hints that the numbers were not that big, see especially the portrayal of Caleb and his family in Joshua 14-15, which suggests only a limited number of individuals as part of Caleb’s family, an important unit in Judah, as occupying the area of ancient Hebron (cf. also Exodus 23:29-30). Additionally, archaeological surveys indicate that the southern area of Judah was very sparsely populated at the time, even when there could have been a fairly substantial nomadic presence in the area that would have left little trace in the archaeological record. So, what is happening here with the portrayal of such large numbers? There have been many attempts at a solution throughout the years, but nothing conclusive has come about. One possibility could be that the numbers are an intentional exaggeration, perhaps to show how Yahweh, the God of Israel, really had blessed and multiplied the people (see, e.g., Exod 1:20) and to emphasize the great victory of the Israelites in the passage in question here. Certainly, otherwise, it clearly appears that some of the battle accounts of the book of Joshua, for example, involve intentional exaggeration in narrative detail, in line with known such practices among the various ancient peoples of the area at the time. From a modern perspective, any such exaggeration may instinctively seem dubious, but it may well have been a natural way of telling things at the time and recognized as such by the original ancient readers. It should also be noted that the numbers are consistent with other Old Testament materials, such as Judges 19-21 and 2 Samuel 24, passages which, in fact, portray an early rather than a late time in Israel’s history.
See also chart at Numbers 31:36, and Got Questions, https://www.gotquestions.org/numbers-Bible-accurate.html for additional arguments on this.