Who was Moses' mother?
Moses' mother is named only twice in Scripture — Jochebed, a woman of the tribe of Levi who married Amram and bore three children who all became leaders of Israel. Her story raises a question bigger than genealogy: how did a slave woman under a death sentence for her baby end up being paid by the palace to raise Israel's deliverer?
Her name and family
The barest facts come from the genealogies. One reference work sums up her whole entry in a single line:
Morrish Bible DictionaryWife and aunt of Amram, and mother of Aaron, Moses, and Miriam. Exodus 6:20; Numbers 26:59.
Both parents came from the same tribe, and from the branch of it that would later care for the tabernacle, Israel's tent of worship.
VariousAmram 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.
That she was Amram's aunt strikes a modern reader as strange, and commentators note that the marriage laws given later at Sinai would have ruled it out: "Jochebed was Amram's own aunt, his father's sister. By the law of Leviticus, such unions as Abraham and Sarah, Amram and Jochebed, and Jacob and Rachel, were distinctly forbidden."
Faith, not just a mother's instinct
Hebrews 11:23 credits the hiding of the baby to faith. Writers press the point that something more than affection was at work when she looked at her newborn:
William KellyThe mother's heart regarded the beauty of the babe as a sign from God to preserve him from the murderous fate intended by the king. But there was more than natural feeling. "By faith" Moses when born was hid three months by his parents, because they saw the child fair; and they did not fear the injunction of the king (Hebrews 11:23).
What that faith actually expected can be traced to the promises the family had inherited:
William KellyThey looked for the people's deliverer from Egypt before long; they looked for the Deliverer from Satan, they knew not when. Might not this very babe be the leader out of Egypt for Canaan in the fourth generation? Certainly they believed in God's intervention for His people and judgment of their enemies, and acted on their faith in hiding their child for three months.
Obedience with an ark
Pharaoh had ordered every Hebrew boy thrown into the Nile. Jochebed's answer was neither open defiance nor surrender, and one writer draws out how carefully she threaded the two:
George C WillisPharaoh had charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born you shall cast into the river. Jochebed obeys the king. She owns that the king's command applies to her son, and she casts him into the river — but hidden in an ark, so that not one drop of those waters of death could touch him.
The palace pays her to raise him
When Pharaoh's daughter found the basket, Miriam offered to fetch a Hebrew nurse — and brought the baby's own mother. Commentators see the whole scheme of Egypt turned inside out:
C. H. MackintoshThe beautiful faith of Moses' mother here meets its full reward; Satan is confounded; and the marvellous wisdom of God is displayed. Who would have thought that the one who had said, "every son that is born you shall cast into the river," should have in his court one of those very sons, and such a son. The devil was foiled by his own weapon, since Pharaoh, whom he was using to frustrate the purpose of God, is used of God to nourish and bring up Moses.
Those nursing years were not idle. Before Egypt's schooling ever reached him, his own mother had him:
Samuel RidoutGod's tender care had given him also all the benefit of a mother's love and training in the fear of God and His ways. How diligently that dear mother must have made use of 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 was identified with those bondsmen who yet were the people of God!
What her story leaves with parents
Jochebed is held up as a model for anyone raising children they cannot fully protect:
C E StuartThe one did what she could for the salvation of her infant. She cast it on God… What encouragement for parents to trust God for their offspring does Jochebed's history afford.
Summary
- Named. Jochebed, of the tribe of Levi, wife and aunt of Amram, mother of Miriam, Aaron and Moses — a woman Scripture names only in two genealogies, yet all three of her children became servants of God.
- Faith. Hiding the baby three months was not merely a mother's instinct; Hebrews 11:23 calls it faith, resting on God's promise of a deliverer.
- Wisdom. She obeyed Pharaoh's word to the letter and still saved her son — the river received him, but sealed inside an ark.
- Reversal. The court that decreed his death paid his own mother wages to nurse him; the weapon aimed at Israel became the means of Israel's rescue.
- Reward. The years she was given were spent filling a young mind with the promises of God — proof that a parent may trust God with a child before that child can trust Him personally.