1
¶ And there went a man of the house of
Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. 2
And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he
was a goodly child, she hid him three months. 3
And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of
bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein;
and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. 4 And his sister stood afar off, to wit what
would be done to him.
Here is described a marriage between a man
and a woman from the tribe of Levi, the family of Levi, or, as it says here,
the house of Levi. The son she bore
was healthy and strong, a goodly child. To
keep him from being murdered she hid him as long as she could and when it was
impossible to hide him she built a small waterproof container and placed him in
the river near the bank with his older sister watching from a safe distance.
There is a reason for her actions and she is not just abandoning the child.
Remember the Ark that carried Noah and his family through the worst natural
catastrophe to hit the earth, the great Flood.
5 ¶
And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and
her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among
the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. 6
And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe
wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’
children. 7 Then said his sister to
Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women,
that she may nurse the child for thee? 8
And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the
child’s mother. 9 And Pharaoh’s daughter
said unto 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. 10 And the child grew, and she brought him unto
Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and
she said, Because I drew him out of the water.
It doesn’t say that the Pharaoh’s daughter
immersed herself or went swimming. It says that she came down to wash herself. As there were several gods associated
with the Nile River, which allowed Egypt to exist as a great civilization in
the desert, she may have been performing a ritual ablution. We can’t be sure,
going by the literal text. It is not likely that the Pharaoh’s daughter would
be swimming naked in the river especially considering the animals that lived in
the river. We will learn later the religious significance of washing oneself in
the Law given to Moses. In any event, she and her attendants were walking by
the river’s side when they saw the little ark, like a small boat, sitting in
the reeds.
The word flags refers to the reeds and rushes from which they derived
papyrus, early paper for documents.
Job
8:11 Can the rush grow up without mire? can the flag grow without water?
Isaiah
19:6 And they shall turn the rivers far
away; and the brooks of defence shall be emptied and dried up: the reeds and flags shall wither.7 The paper
reeds by the brooks, by the mouth of the brooks, and every thing sown by
the brooks, shall wither, be driven away, and be no more.
Isaiah
35:7 And the parched ground shall become
a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons,
where each lay, shall be grass with
reeds and rushes.
She easily identified the baby as a Hebrew
child but had mercy on the child. The baby’s sister, who had been watching
close by, offers to get a nurse for the child, seeing the Pharaoh’s daughter
wanted to save the baby. So, in this way the baby’s mother was able to nurse
him and care for him for the Pharaoh’s daughter until he was weaned. He became
the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, who named him Moses because he was drawn out of
the river and that’s what the name means, drawn out.
The son of Pharaoh’s daughter would have,
in all likelihood, been raised and educated with all of the worldly learning of
the Egyptian royalty. Some authorities say that Egyptian children stayed with
their mothers until around the age of four. The Prince’s school in ancient
Egypt, according to a source I read, taught history, writing, and math based on
a ten point system. It taught arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, as
well. Geography, science, and medicine rounded out the lessons. The
hieroglyphic, picture style of writing was very important. You have seen this
type of writing where the characters were, as in Chinese and Aztec,
pictographs. In this writing there was a tremendous religious significance
rather than just a utilitarian one of communication. While this is, perhaps, an
oversimplification, this is a general way to understand the general concept of
writing. This will become very important in a few chapters.
Moses was most likely raised in the arts
of war and peace and in governing. The Egyptian leadership was a top-down
organization with the Pharaoh the supreme authority and we have seen the
tendency toward government control of everything by what happened in Joseph’s
time. Keep these things in the back of your mind as we move forward in Exodus.
While we don’t know for certain from the text what Moses was taught we can be
sure he wasn’t raised in a box.
Here, in this passage we can see God's hand in moving His ministry of reconciling mankind to Himself forward in small steps, using mankind's choices whether good or bad to further His plan.
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