Exodus 1:9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.”
Had Bene-Israel more population than the Egyptians then?
Or may be it was a kind of exaggeration from the mouth of the Pharaoh, the sort of exaggeration in which unprincipled persons indulge when they would justify themselves for taking an extreme and unusual course?