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.