The Birth of Moses

Exodus 2:1-10
The Birth of Moses
1 Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
5 Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. "This is one of the Hebrew babies," she said.
7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?"
8 "Yes, go," she answered. And the girl went and got the baby's mother. 9 Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you." So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, "I drew him out of the water."

In Exodus 1 we find that Pharoah is concerned that the Hebrew slaves were becoming too great in number and could someday join the enemies and leave or even overtake the Egyptians. He orders the midwives who delivered the Hebrew womens babies to kill the males. They did not because the feared God. The final order was to throw all the male babies into the Nile and let them drown.

In Exodus 2 a baby boy who would be named Moses was born to a Levite woman and after 3 months she can no longer hide him so she places him in a waterproof basket and floats him down the Nile where the Pharoah's daughter finds him and retrieves him. She feels sorry for him and keeps him even though she knows he is a Hebrew baby. A servant girl goes and gets a Hebrew woman to breast feed the boy and she ends up getting Moses' mother to care for him. When he was old enough for her not to nurse him she takes Moses back to Pharoah's daughter and she adopts him.

Summary: I love how this story plays out. Had she taken Moses to Pharoah's daughter directly this whole event probably wouldn't have played out. The mother had the faith to place her son in the water and she was reward with getting to nurse and raise him anyway. The upside of this whole deal is that Moses ends up being royalty even though he was born as a slave.

This past Sunday our pastor preached on the Legend of Moses. He quickly summarized the whole story which covers Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy and Numbers. My goal in getting back into the word is to blog about the life of Moses throughout these books of the bible and leave some of my own comments.

Feel free to comment.