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.