And a man of the house of Levi went and took a daughter of Levi.
The verse records only a wedding between two people of the same tribe — no names, no date, no hint of what is coming. Yet the rescue of a whole nation starts here, in a place where no one was watching.
The verse records an ordinary family event. Commentators point out that this is how God always works.
It was like the birth of our blessed Lord at Bethlehem. Here too, neither the parents nor the world around them understood what the birth of the son of Amram and Jochebed meant. This is how God always works. He lays the foundation of His purposes in silence. He prepares His instruments until the moment He has already fixed for action arrives. Then He bares His arm and displays His presence and power in front of the whole world.
Another writer follows that hidden work forward, from this marriage to a place in Pharaoh's palace.
First, we have the historical facts about the captivity of Israel. There were the persecutions this people had to endure. There was God's watchful care over events, answering the faith of the parents of the infant Moses. In this way He carried out the purposes of His grace. These not only kept the child alive, but placed him in a high position in Pharaoh's court. The things that are done on the earth He does Himself. He prepares everything beforehand, when nothing is yet visible to man.
Scripture does not name them here, but later passages do, and their family line matters.
Amram and Jochebed, according to Exodus 6:18-20, belonged to the tribe of Levi and to the family of the Kohathites. It was a family which in the future would perform such important duties in relation to the tabernacle.
Some writers read the tribal name itself as a pointer forward. Levi carries a meaning, and the position of this child in the family is noted too.
Moses was born of a son and a daughter of Levi. The father's name was Amram (chapter 6:20 and Num. 26:59). His wife's name was Jochebed. As we saw in Genesis, Levi means "joined," and Levi was the third son of Jacob (Gen. 29:32-35). Here we have a picture that hints at the true Mediator, joined to God and man.
Both partners came from the tribe set apart for God's service. One writer draws a lesson for marriage from that detail.
"A man from the house of Levi ... took as his wife a Levite woman." This shows that they wanted to hold marriage in relation to God Himself, and to treat it as something in which the rights of the Lord are honoured. More than that, it seems the service of God itself was in view in the step they took. The Levites were the men who served God. They handled the holy things of God. So it is a most blessed thing to see a man and a woman take up this happy privilege with the thought that the service of the Lord might be enriched.
This marriage produced more than a child. It showed that faith in God had survived among the people in Egypt.
But we open Exodus 2, and we at once discover two things. First, there were still men and women of faith among the children of Israel. Hebrews 11:23 makes this plain, for it points to the faith, not of Moses, but of his parents... The verse in Hebrews shows that his father as well as his mother saw that he was a beautiful child. Their eye of faith was fixed on God, and they were not afraid of the king's commandment. A greater than Pharaoh commanded their allegiance.
That faith was not vague optimism. It rested on a promise these parents already knew.
Those who believed always had a deliverer before them — not only the woman's Seed, but Abraham's Seed as well. To take that life away would have been a Satanic attack on God's purposes. At the risk of their own lives, it seems, they kept their child safe for three months.
Pharaoh's rage did not slow God down. It served Him.
In this chapter God shows us how He uses the very wrath of the king to protect the man who would become the deliverer of His people. It is a gripping story that shows the perfection and sovereignty of God's ways.
- Quiet. God lays the foundation of His purposes in silence. He prepares His instruments long before the world sees anything.
- Levi. The couple are Amram and Jochebed, from the tribe that served God and handled the holy things.
- Faith. Hebrews 11:23 says both father and mother acted in faith. They did not fear the king, because a greater authority held their allegiance.
- Deliverer. They were not just saving a baby. Everyone who believed was waiting for a promised deliverer, and the attack on that life struck at God's purposes.
- Sovereignty. Pharaoh's own fury became the means of preserving the man who would set Israel free.
And the woman conceived, and bore a son. And she saw him that he was fair, and hid him three months.
A Levite couple has a son at the very moment when Egypt's king has ordered the death of every Hebrew boy. What the mother saw in that baby, and what she did for the next three months, the New Testament calls faith.
The baby arrives in a world where the law has already decided he must die.
He was born while Pharaoh's ban on the male children of Israel was raging. No exception is made for him. He enters the earth to find that earthly place is denied him. There was no room for the Lord of glory in the inn. Now Egypt's king decrees that Moses, who pictures Him, should die the moment he is born! By faith alone his parents rescued him. "They saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's edict." The Holy Spirit gave them a deep and particular conviction. By it they knew that God was to be trusted for this child.
The ESV says the mother saw "that he was a fine child." Other translations say "goodly" or "fair." Commentators read this as something faith saw, not just a mother's pride.
When Moses was born, there was an expression in his face that faith read. "Beautiful to God" is the word. There was a certain beauty in him that awakened the faith of Amram and Jochebed; and they were obedient to it... Under the finger of God they saw the purpose of God and hid the child.
Judged by ordinary standards, the beauty of a newborn is a thin basis for defying a king.
Here we have a remarkable simplicity of faith in Moses' parents, which acts on grounds that to most would seem slight enough — the beauty of the child. God still answers it, for it was faith in Him; and how largely He answers, for this is Moses the deliverer! Is there not here one of the natural indications of the mind of God, which we are so unskilled at finding, and which the poor and uneducated perhaps read best?... but God makes no mistake, and wherever faith is, with Him it will be found in honour.
Writers here draw a line between a mother's natural instinct and what moved these two.
The mother's heart saw the beauty of the baby as a sign from God to preserve him from the murderous fate the king intended. But there was more than natural feeling. "By faith" Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful; and they were not afraid of the king's edict (Heb. 11:23). A deliverer was always before those who believed... To take that life outright was a Satanic attack on God's purposes.
Hiding the child broke the king's law.
True, they owed allegiance to their earthly ruler. But they also owed allegiance to the Lord of lords. Trusting in Him, they were lifted above all fear of the king's commandment, and hid their child — the child whom God had given them — for three months. They counted on God, and they were not disappointed. He never leaves or forsakes those who put their trust in Him.
The king did not just issue his order and forget it.
Obviously the man who devised the death of every male child would also search for them. He would make sure from time to time that his decree was carried out.
Hiding could not last forever. Commentators read what she did next as the same faith, taken further.
In fact, it was nothing but faith triumphing over the influences of nature and death. It left room for the God of resurrection to act in His own proper sphere and character... And a sword was piercing the mother's heart, as she saw her precious child laid, as it were, in death. Satan might act, and nature might weep. But the One who raises the dead was behind the dark cloud, and faith saw Him there.
The lesson lands on parents today.
Their hiding the child no doubt endangered their own lives. But God's honour was more important than the king's commandment... Did she not actually give him up into the hand of God, and in an unexpected way receive him back again? So faith never loses by giving anything up into God's hand. May we learn such lessons well, in regard to our children, or any other possession entrusted to us.
- Seen — The parents saw something in the child that ordinary eyes would have missed. Scripture calls him fine; faith read "beautiful to God" in his face.
- Read — By human reckoning that beauty was slight ground. Faith read it as a sign of God's mind, and God honoured the reading: this baby was the deliverer.
- Feared — They owed allegiance to the king, but they owed more to the Lord of lords, so they hid the child instead of obeying.
- Endured — Three months of hiding meant constant risk of death, since Pharaoh searched to check that his decree was obeyed.
- Released — When hiding was no longer possible, they gave the child up to God and received him back. Faith loses nothing it places in His hand.
And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of reeds, and plastered it with resin and with pitch, and put the child in it, and laid [it] in the sedge on the bank of the river.
Pharaoh had ordered every Hebrew boy thrown into the Nile, and after three months Jochebed could hide her son no longer. Was the little basket she built a mother's last desperate act, or an act of faith?
She built the basket from the river's own reeds, and sealed it twice over.
The little boat or cradle in which his mother placed Moses. It was made of bulrushes — or rather the paper-reed, papyrus, which grew in the river Nile. It was daubed with slime and with pitch. That most likely means she first covered it with wet earth or clay, and then with bitumen. God answered the faith of the parents, and Moses was drawn out of the water to be the saviour of His people.
One writer looks at the word itself, and at the story the mother may have had in mind.
It was an ark, we read. Scripture uses that word in only one other place, for the vessel Noah prepared to save himself and his house. Perhaps she knew the story of the flood, which that same child would later write down in words taught by the Holy Spirit. Her faith rose to the emergency. She would place the infant in an ark, sure that her child might escape a doom that otherwise looked certain, just as Noah and his family had been kept safe in one.
For one writer the verse holds two things: what the moment cost the parents, and what the coating on the basket meant.
The parents had to know death — at least as a symbol — both for themselves and for their child, before he could become an instrument in service for God.
Noah acted under divine direction, and so the word used there for pitch also means a ransom. That hints at the truth that a ransom must be found to deliver from the waters of judgment. But this Hebrew mother used pitch of another kind, and so did not know the full truth. Yet she confessed the need of redemption. Her faith owned it. So her ark of bulrushes, with its precious cargo, floated in safety among the reeds on this river of death.
Was the basket only a frightened mother's idea? One writer says no.
How could we ever suppose that the "ark" was devised by one who saw no future for her child but death by drowning? Impossible. We can only see that meaningful structure as a cheque that faith wrote and handed in at the bank of the God of resurrection. The hand of faith designed it as a vessel of mercy. It was to carry that fine child safely over death's dark waters, into the place the unchanging purpose of the living God had assigned him.
Her action does what the king demanded — and defeats it.
Pharaoh had commanded all his people, "Every son that is born you shall cast into the river." Jochebed obeys the king. She agrees that his command applies to her son, and she casts him into the river. But he is hidden in an ark, so not one drop of those waters of death can touch him. And God richly honours her faith.
Commentators differ here. One reads "she could hide him no longer" as the point where the parents' faith ran out, and what follows as mercy rather than reward.
Their faith lasted three months. While they had faith they hid him — they kept their beautiful child. At the end of three months they cast him out; they "could hide him no longer." Had they not come to the end of their faith? ... The thing desired was the child's life, and it is preserved. Protection comes from the least expected quarter — the palace. But Scripture does not present a home in Pharaoh's house as an answer to faith... Faith was powerful as long as faith was there. When faith was not there, God's mercy was, and it showed even more clearly than in the day of faith.
- Ark — the word ties this basket to Noah's vessel. Scripture uses it nowhere else: one purpose, salvation through water.
- Pitch — the coating kept death out. It was faith's confession that a ransom must stand between the child and the waters of judgment.
- Reeds — she built from what the Nile itself grew, turning the river of death into the material of rescue.
- River — she obeyed Pharaoh's words and cast her son into the Nile. In obeying, she overturned his decree.
- Resurrection — she handed her child to the God who raises the dead. Where her faith ran out, His mercy did not.
And his sister stood afar off to see what would happen to him.
A baby lies in a little ark of bulrushes at the river's brink, and his sister stands back from the water, watching. The verse gives her no name and no words, so is she watching out of a sister's love, or holding a post given her by faith?
One writer names her, and notes how close her watching was.
The sister was later known not only as Miriam but as the "prophetess." She watched at a distance, but near enough to see how her little brother would fare on the bank of the river.
One writer is struck by the girl herself.
And what a remarkable girl Miriam was, the child's sister. It was not mere curiosity, I gather, that made her stand at a distance to see what would happen to her brother. She knew she had a part to play in his safety and in God's plan for him — and how well she played it! Her courage, speed and shrewdness went far beyond anything you could expect from the child of an enslaved nation. The Lord was guiding her too.
The mother's part did not end when she walked away.
The mother, in the calmness of faith, returned home, but left his sister to watch from a distance (v. 4). Jochebed likely knew the habits of Pharaoh's daughter, and expected to some degree what would take place. After all, she must have instructed her daughter to do exactly what she did.
Commentators differ on how to read that distance. One of them measures the sister's faith against her mother's.
It is very clear that "his sister" was not up to "the measure of faith" that "his mother" had. No doubt she felt deep interest and true affection. We can trace the same in "Mary Magdalene and the other Mary sitting opposite the tomb." But there was something far beyond either interest or affection in the woman who made the "ark." True, the mother did not stand at a distance to know what would be done to her child, and so — as often happens — the dignity of faith might have looked like indifference on her part. It was not indifference, but true elevation: the elevation of faith.
Others take her sitting down as a model for us.
Sit still and watch. Moses' sister was in a very blessed position; the little ark had gone out among the bulrushes, and she sits down and watches. It was a blessed place for faith to watch and see what was done. If you cannot sit still and wait for God, you are not in the right position. Do you say: But we have given everything up; now what will the end be? How will the Lord show Himself? — Sit down before God and say: Your ways are too great for me; what will You do?
The girl could not make anything happen. God could.
God acted, as He always will in answer to faith. He guided Pharaoh's daughter to the very spot where the child rested, with his sister standing at a distance. Her faith did not fully match the faith of the mother; but even this was God's leading.
This watch by the river was not the last we hear of her.
Miriam showed courage and resourcefulness. She gave herself to a task that was both monotonous and dangerous. That picture of her lets us read without surprise, later on, that she is a prophetess and leads the singing worship of the entire redeemed nation on the banks of the Red Sea.
- Posted. She was no bystander. Writers see her stationed at the river with a part to play in her brother's safety.
- Distanced. She kept back from the water, but near enough to see how her brother fared — and to step in when the moment came.
- Weighed. Commentators differ: some see faith not yet equal to the mother's, who went home and left the outcome to God.
- Waiting. Her posture is a lesson. When you have done all you can, sitting still before God is the right place to be.
- Rewarded. God brought Pharaoh's daughter to that exact spot. The girl who kept that dangerous watch later led a rescued nation's song.
And the daughter of Pharaoh went down to bathe in the river; and her maids went along by the river's side. And she saw the ark in the midst of the sedge, and sent her handmaid and fetched it.
A princess of Egypt walks down to the Nile to bathe. She spots a basket among the reeds and sends a servant to fetch it. Nothing in the scene points to God. Yet commentators call this walk the hinge on which a whole nation's rescue turns.
The daughter of the king who ordered Hebrew boys drowned is the one who lifts a Hebrew boy out of the water. Commentators see God's answer to His people starting here. The same scene draws two opposite reactions:
Here God's answer begins to break on the ear of faith, in the sweetest tones. God was in all this. Unbelief may laugh at such an idea. Faith can laugh too, but the two kinds of laughter are very different. Unbelief laughs in cold contempt. It scorns the thought that God would step into something as small as a royal woman's walk by the river. Faith laughs with real, heartfelt gladness at the thought that God is in everything. And if God was ever in anything, He was in this walk of Pharaoh's daughter, though she never knew it.
She was not looking for a baby. She wanted a bath. The gap between her motive and the outcome is the point:
It is beautiful and instructive to see God behind the scene, arranging everything for His own glory. Pharaoh's daughter was acting on her own wish, and for her own pleasure. She did not know that she was an instrument of God's will. But everything matched God's purpose: her going down to the river to bathe, and the hour she went. That purpose concerned the child who was to be the deliverer of His people.
Before God moved the princess, a mother had already acted. One writer links her basket to an older vessel, and to the trust Scripture credits her with:
The word "ark" here is the same as in Genesis 6:14, and the pitch it was coated with also reminds us of Noah's ark. The dark waters were kept out. It was not only the mother's natural love that acted, but faith. "By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king's edict" (Heb. 11:23)... First they saved the child by faith for three months. Then the mother's faith prepared the little basket, the place of safety. In faith she set that reed ark at the river's edge... And God acted as He always does in answer to faith. He guided Pharaoh's daughter to the very spot where the child lay, with his sister watching from a distance.
The rescue came through the household Jochebed had most reason to dread:
Pharaoh's decree meant the child should have been drowned. Jochebed could count anyone in his house as a deadly enemy. The last person she would have wanted to see her child was the very one who first spotted the fragile basket. Pharaoh's daughter saw the ark, and commanded the maid to fetch it. God had directed her steps to the spot where the ark lay, and touched her heart to pity the baby as soon as she saw it.
Her faith was repaid in a form she could not have imagined — the very decree that threatened her son became the shelter over him.
Her infant, until now in danger any moment of death because of the king's decree, was now to be preserved from death by the will of that king's own daughter.
A bath in a river looks too small to matter. One writer says size is no guide to importance. He points to another king whose sleepless night saved a nation:
The smallest matter can turn out to be a vital link in a chain of events, by which the Almighty God is carrying forward His grand designs. Look, for instance, at Esther 4:1, and what do you see? A pagan king, spending a restless night. Nothing unusual, we may suppose. Yet this very circumstance was a link in a great chain of providence. At the end of that chain you find the wonderful deliverance of the oppressed people of Israel.
The king's order was meant to end Israel's hope. It ended up housing and training Israel's rescuer:
The king's wicked plan opened the way for Israel's future deliverer to enter his own house and court. There he gained an experience of Egyptian customs and ways that served him well later... The Pharaoh of that day never guessed what his plan of death was doing. It was keeping alive the man God would use, in the days of his successor, to overthrow the might of Egypt. But so it was.
- Faith first. A mother's trust built the basket and let it go; God's answer met that trust at the exact spot on the bank.
- Timing. Her walk, and the hour of it, were her own choice and His arrangement at once.
- Unaware. The princess served the purpose of God without knowing it — she was acting for her own pleasure.
- Reversal. The decree meant to drown Hebrew sons did the opposite. It sheltered and trained the one who would break Egypt's power.
- Scale. No event is too ordinary to be a link in the chain — a royal bath here, a king's sleepless night in Esther.
And she opened [it], and saw the child, and behold, the boy wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is [one] of the Hebrews' children.
A princess lifts the lid of a small basket. The face looking in belongs to the household that ordered this child's death. What happens next turns on nothing more than a baby's tears.
Pharaoh's daughter came to the river for her own reasons and found a basket. Rescuing a Hebrew boy was no part of her plan.
Here, then, God's answer begins to break, in sweetest tones, on the ear of faith. God was in all this. Unbelief may laugh at such an idea. Faith can laugh too, but the two kinds of laughter are very different. The first laughs in cold contempt at the thought of God stepping into the small matter of a royal young woman's walk by the river. The second laughs with real gladness at the thought that God is in everything. And if ever God was in anything, He was in this walk of Pharaoh's daughter, though she did not know it.
The same point is pressed on the timing as much as the person — she chose the hour, and it was the right one.
It is wonderfully beautiful and instructive to see God this way behind the scene, arranging everything for His own glory. The daughter of Pharaoh was acting from her own inclination, and for her own pleasure, and did not know that she was an instrument of the divine will. But everything — her going down to the river to bathe, the time she did it — all was according to the purpose of God concerning the child who was to be the deliverer of His people.
The one thing the child could do was cry.
Even the tears of the baby had a purpose, and they were not shed in vain. They stirred the compassion of this royal woman. Understanding the secret, she said, "This is one of the Hebrews' children."
Another writer looks at what those tears did to Moses himself.
The daughter of the man who would have destroyed him lifts Moses, the weeping baby, out of the ark of bulrushes. But not before the coldness and emptiness of this world had left its mark on his tender spirit. We read that "the baby was crying." So in earliest infancy, before his mind could take it in, he must taste the sorrow and pressure he would never be a stranger to all his life… The emptiness of the world and the unfailing compassions of God are the first lessons of discipline traced on his unconscious mind. They can never be erased, for God teaches early, firmly, and for good.
One writer traces the route she walked and the pity she felt back to God, and then names the choice she faced.
By Pharaoh's decree, the child should have been drowned. Pharaoh's daughter saw the ark and told the maid to fetch it. God had directed her steps to the spot where the ark lay. And God touched her heart to have compassion on the infant as soon as she saw it… At once she saw that the baby belonged to the condemned race. Now an important question had to be settled. Should she side with her father, or take the part of the oppressed race? Duty, natural inclination and patriotism might have made her side with her father. But the child wept, and that stirred her womanly tenderness at once. She had compassion on him, and decided to save him, though she knew perfectly well he was the child of one of the Hebrew women.
The king's edict was aimed at children like this one.
The enemy never thwarts God, whatever apparent success God may allow him from time to time. In this case God so worked, in His wisdom, that Pharaoh's cruel edict had one result only. Pharaoh had to educate and train in his own palace the man who was destined to lead Israel out of Egypt in triumph.
Nothing here breaks the laws of nature.
This was no miracle, any more than the preservation of the child. But the living God was at work in the various people involved. He rescued from a watery grave the one who would rescue His people from a slavery that many felt was worse than death in the Nile. Moses is a picture of the Deliverer from sin and wrath, not for Israel only but for every believer.
Another writer takes the same pattern further, to One greater than Moses.
God works by His providence to carry out His purpose: the deliverance of His people. So the very place where life was forfeited became the place where the deliverer of His people was sheltered and cared for. That was true not only of Moses, but also of One incomparably greater… How powerless the adversary is, despite all his boasted power and authority, to frustrate God's kind intentions towards His people. The enemy is never so completely defeated as in the moment when he seems to have won.
- Walk. A princess went to the river for her own pleasure. She never guessed whose purpose she was serving — God was in that walk, "though she did not know it."
- Weeping. The baby's tears were not wasted. They were his first taste of the world's coldness — and the very thing that stirred her pity.
- Word. She knew whose child he was — one of the Hebrews' children — and spared him anyway. God had directed her steps, and God touched her heart.
- Wisdom. The river meant for drowning became the place of rescue. The palace of the persecutor became the training ground of Israel's deliverer.
- Witness. The rescued child who would rescue others points on to the Deliverer from sin and wrath. The enemy is never so defeated as at the moment he seems to have won.
And his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call thee a wet-nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?
Moses' sister has been watching from a distance, and now she speaks. Her offer of a nurse looks simple, but it hides a mother's faith and a plan the Egyptian court knew nothing about.
The child's sister had been watching from a distance. Notice when she chooses to speak.
Miriam had joined the group at the critical moment. Affection sharpened her wit, and she used the compassion she plainly saw. She said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?" What could the princess say to such a sensible and well-timed suggestion, but "Go"?
Her waiting by the river was not idle curiosity.
What a remarkable girl Miriam was, the child's sister. I gather it was not mere curiosity that made her stand at a distance to see what would happen to her brother. She knew she had a part to play in his safety and in God's plan for him — and how well she played it! Her courage, speed and shrewdness went far beyond anything you would expect in the child of an enslaved nation. The Lord guided her too.
What she showed at the riverbank matched what she became later.
Miriam showed courage and resource. She gave herself to a task that was both dull and dangerous. All this leaves such an impression of her that we read without surprise, later on, that she is a prophetess. She leads the whole redeemed nation in worship and song on the banks of the Red Sea. It is good to find that she has thrown in her lot with the oppressed and slandered nation, the people of God.
Miriam does not say "one of our women." She picks the word an Egyptian would use.
"Hebrews" is the regular Gentile word. Abram is called "Abram the Hebrew"; see also Exodus 2:6-7, 11, 13, so chapter 1:16 and 19. There cannot be a doubt that it was the name used by strangers — "the children of Eber."
Miriam's offer brings the child's own mother back to him. Watch what happens to Pharaoh's plan.
The story of Moses in the basket of reeds is so well known that there is little need to point out the skill of the divine hand. That hand arranged for Moses' own mother to nurse him, for her to receive wages for doing it, and for Pharaoh's daughter to adopt him in the end. The Pharaoh of that day never guessed that his plan of death was keeping alive the very man God would use, in the days of his successor, to overthrow the might of Egypt. But so it was.
The princess hires her with the words "nurse the child for me." One writer asks whose voice the mother really heard.
So her child was not only kept alive: she had the privilege of nursing her own child, and of being paid for it! Very likely she would hear a voice higher than the voice of Pharaoh's daughter, saying, "Take this child away and nurse him for me." She had faith in the living God, so she would surely raise the child for His glory, not for the pleasure of Pharaoh's daughter.
Miriam's offer keeps Moses with his own parents. The princess came to the river for her own reasons.
No doubt her own wishes moved her, and she sought only her own pleasure, as she went down to the river to bathe. Yet without knowing it she was to be God's instrument. She would defeat the hostility of her father and foil his plans. Her royal protection would also keep Moses in the tender and affectionate care of his parents. It was in this setting, and not in Pharaoh's court or in the colleges of Egypt, that the future deliverer of God's people received his training and preparation for the great destiny ahead of him.
- Watching — Miriam stood at a distance, and not out of curiosity. She knew she had a part in her brother's safety, and the Lord guided her in it.
- Speaking — She waited for the compassion to show itself, then spoke: affection made her quick, and her offer was so sensible the princess could only say "Go."
- Wording — "Hebrews" was the name outsiders used for Israel. Miriam frames her offer in the language of the court.
- Wages — The mother who gave the child up receives him back, hired and paid by the very house that decreed his death.
- Shaping — The nurse decided the upbringing. Moses grew up in his own home, not in Pharaoh's court, and the girl from the riverbank later led a redeemed nation in song.
And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the damsel went and called the child's mother.
One word from an Egyptian princess — "Go" — sends the baby back to the woman who bore him. Behind that one word stands a plan no one there understood. God is about to answer a mother's faith in a way she never asked for.
The princess had come to the river for her own reasons. She gives her permission without a second thought. Yet someone she did not know had arranged every detail of the timing.
It is wonderfully beautiful and instructive to see God like this behind the scene, arranging everything for His own glory. Pharaoh's daughter was acting from her own inclination, and for her own pleasure, and did not know that she was an instrument of the divine will. But everything was according to the purpose of God — her going down to the river to bathe, and the time she did so. It all concerned the child who was to be the deliverer of His people.
The effect of her single word reaches further than saving one baby's life. It decides where he will spend his earliest years.
Without knowing it, she was to be the divine instrument to defeat her father's hostility and foil his plans. She was also the one who, under her royal protection, kept Moses in the tender and affectionate care of his parents. So the future deliverer of God's people was trained in this setting, not in Pharaoh's court or in the colleges of Egypt. Here he was prepared for the great destiny that lay before him.
Affection made the sister quick. She saw her opening and took it.
Miriam had now joined the group at the critical moment. With wit sharpened by affection, she took advantage of the obvious compassion. She said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call you a nurse of the Hebrews, so that she may nurse the child for you?" What could the princess say to such a sensible and well-timed suggestion, but "Go"?
The verse calls the girl an almah. That Hebrew word is disputed, and this verse helps settle what it means.
Much of the controversy is around the word "virgin" (almah). The critics say it does not mean a virgin but a young married woman. However, they are wrong. The same word appears in Genesis 24:43, Exodus 2:8, Psalm 68:25, Song of Solomon 1:3, and elsewhere. In these and other passages it means "virgin."
The king had told his people to throw every baby boy into the river. This mother obeyed him — with one difference — and here that difference pays off.
Jochebed obeys the king. She admits that the king's command applies to her son, and she casts him into the river. But he is hidden in an ark, so that not one drop of those waters of death could touch him. And God richly honours her faith. You all know the story. The king's daughter takes him up, and the baby's sister runs to "call a nurse", who is none other than the child's own mother.
The king's decree was meant to wipe out a generation of Hebrew boys. It ends up placing one of them inside his own household.
The beautiful faith of Moses' mother here meets its full reward. Satan is confounded, and God displays His marvellous wisdom. Pharaoh had said, "If it is a son, then you shall kill him," and again, "Every son that is born you shall cast into the river." Who would have thought that he would have one of those very sons in his own court — and such a son! The devil's own weapon defeated him. He was using Pharaoh to frustrate the purpose of God, and God used Pharaoh to feed and bring up Moses.
The mother has her son back, and a few short years with him. She did not waste them.
How diligently that dear mother must have used her time! How she must have planted in his mind the promises of the God of their fathers! How she must have taught that young child that he belonged with those slaves who were still the people of God! How she must have told him of the promises of God, that He would visit them and bring them up out of that land, and give them an inheritance!
- Hidden hand. The princess follows her own wishes and speaks one word. She serves a will she knows nothing about.
- Hidden faith. The mother had obeyed the king's order to the letter and still trusted God — she put her son in the river, but in an ark.
- Hidden reward. God answers that faith here: the princess sends the girl, and the nurse she fetches is the baby's own mother.
- Hidden defeat. Pharaoh's own weapon turns on him: the decree meant to destroy the boy ends up feeding and sheltering him.
- Hidden schooling. The years that follow shape the deliverer — not in Egypt's colleges, but in his own mother's arms.
And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Take this child away and nurse it for me, and I will give [thee] thy wages. And the woman took the child and nursed it.
Pharaoh had ordered every Hebrew boy drowned in the Nile. Now his own daughter hands a rescued Hebrew baby back to his mother — and pays her wages to nurse him.
Commentators read this moment as the mother's earlier faith rewarded in full. The king who ordered every son thrown into the river ends up paying to raise one of those very sons.
The beautiful faith of Moses' mother here meets its full reward. Satan is defeated, and the marvellous wisdom of God shines out. The king had said, "If it is a son, then you shall kill him," and again, "every son that is born you shall cast into the river." Who would have thought that he would have one of those very sons in his own court — and such a son! The devil's own weapon defeated him. Satan was using Pharaoh to frustrate the purpose of God, and God used Pharaoh to feed and bring up Moses — the very man who would be His instrument in defeating the power of Satan.
The offer of payment is the detail that startles. The palace pays a slave's wife to do what love would have made her do for nothing.
And was it ever heard in the history of the world that a mother should be paid wages for nursing her own child? The mother of Moses needed no wages to make her willing to nurse her child, but wages came to her all the same. She was the wife of a foreign slave making bricks without straw, and royal hands paid her wages.
Nothing supernatural happens here. A princess bathes. A baby cries. A sister speaks up. A nurse gets the job.
This was no miracle, any more than the preservation of the child. But it was the living God working in the various people concerned, to rescue from a watery grave the one who was to rescue His people from a bondage that to many was more bitter than death in the Nile. Moses is the type — the picture — of the Deliverer from sin and wrath, not for Israel but for every believer.
The nursing years were short. She would have to give him up to the palace.
Pharaoh's daughter took him from the river's edge, adopted him, and then put him back under his mother's care until he was old enough to return to the king's court for good… How well that dear mother must have used her time! How she must have instilled into his mind the promises of the God of their fathers! How she must have taught that young child that he belonged with those slaves, who were still the people of God! … What wages a faithful mother has, if she has spent time, strength and prayers in bringing up her children in the ways of the Lord!
One writer applies the princess's words to Christian parents today.
Every Christian parent has the privilege of owning that the child God has given them is under the sentence of death. He may put the child down into those waters of death, owning that this is where the child belongs — but Another has passed through those waters first. And now the One on whom we count to save our children gives the child back to us, saying: "Take this child away and nurse him for Me, and I will give you your wages." It is ours no longer. The One into whose hands we have placed it has accepted it, and now returns it to us to bring up for Himself.
- Risk. The mother had already put her son into the river, under sentence of death, and trusted God with the outcome.
- Return. The child came back to her arms — not by miracle, but by God working through a bathing princess, a crying baby and an alert sister.
- Wages. No mother would ask for pay to nurse her own son. Royal hands paid a slave's wife anyway.
- Trust. The child was hers no longer. She took him back to raise for Another, who had accepted him from her hands.
- Reward. Those brief nursing years shaped the deliverer of a nation — the wages of faith outlasting the throne that tried to kill him.
And when the child was grown, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses, and said, Because I drew him out of the water.
Moses goes back to the palace, and the woman who saved him gives him a name that would describe his whole life. A princess acts out of simple kindness, but God is arranging a rescue: the child drawn out of the river will one day draw a whole people out of Egypt.
The king ordered every Hebrew boy thrown into the Nile. That very order carried Moses into the royal household, at Pharaoh's own cost.
The beautiful faith of Moses' mother here meets its full reward. Satan is defeated, and God shows His wonderful wisdom. Who would have thought it? The king had said, "If it is a son, then you shall kill him," and again, "every son that is born you shall cast into the river." Yet he had in his own court one of those very sons — and such a son! The devil was beaten with his own weapon. Pharaoh, whom he was using to block the purpose of God, is the man God uses to feed and raise Moses. And Moses was to be His instrument in defeating the power of Satan.
The princess names the boy after what she had just done at the water's edge. She spoke better than she knew.
In time the mother gave the child up to Pharaoh's daughter. She called him "Moses," which means "Drawn out," "because," she said, "I drew him out of the water." Moses is an Egyptian name, and it seems it was made up for this very occasion. But the Egyptian lady had no idea how deep her own words went. The "Drawn out" was to draw out of Egypt a people sentenced to death. So even in his name, Moses was a picture of Jesus, God's deliverer from death. He went down into death, and by His death draws God's people out of the doom of this world.
Jochebed had let the child go. Now she gets him back to nurse, with wages attached. One writer even reads her act at the river as obedience to the king's command, carried out in faith.
Jochebed obeys the king. She agrees that the king's command applies to her son too. So she puts him into the river — but hidden inside a basket, so that not one drop of those waters of death could touch him. And God honours her faith in full. The king's daughter takes him up, and the babe's sister runs to "call a nurse," who is no other than the child's own mother. With what joy she takes that little one from the arms of the king's daughter — not for herself now, but for the one who had saved him: "Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages."
The verse gives one line to the years at home, but those years did their work. Egypt's schooling came later and never erased them.
The same faith that had kept him safe for God's service now raised him in a way well suited to the man who would deliver his brothers from the hand of the oppressor. No doubt his mother had impressed on him the moral greatness of his brothers as "the people of God" and "the sons of Israel." Nothing in the tempting wisdom of the Egyptians could ever erase it.
Becoming her son was not a courtesy title. It put a Hebrew child, born under a death sentence, in line for the throne of Egypt.
She raised him from infancy to childhood, and from childhood to manhood, as her own son; and what was the result? By the age of forty, Moses was within direct reach of the throne of Egypt, with every prospect of taking it. Pharaoh had no son. Pharaoh's daughter had no children. If she died, her adopted son would without doubt have taken the throne of Egypt.
Moses chose none of this. Later he walked away from all of it. One writer marks the line between what providence hands you and what faith does with it.
But divine providence is no guide for faith, nothing but the word. Providence brought him in, and faith led him out. "By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward" (Heb. 11:24-26).
- Drawn out. The princess named him "drawn out" because she lifted him from the water. The one drawn out would later draw a doomed people out of Egypt.
- Foiled. Pharaoh ordered the boys drowned. That order carried the future deliverer into his own court, at his own cost.
- Wages. The mother who gave her son to the river got him back to nurse, and the palace paid her wages.
- Formed. At home his mother gave him a sense of "the people of God." All Egypt's learning could not erase it.
- Refused. Providence put Moses in the palace. Faith took him back out, valuing the reproach of Christ above Egypt's treasures.