1 Mar. Exodus 2:1-10

1 Mar. Moses is rescued by the pharaoh’s daughter

“Now a man from the family of Levi married a woman who was also from the family of Levi [one of Jacob’s sons]. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son.”

"When she saw how wonderful the baby was, she hid him for three months. But after three months she was not able to hide the baby any longer, so she got a basket and covered it with tar so that it would float. She put the baby in the basket.”

“Then she put the basket among the tall stalks of grass at the edge of the Nile River. The baby’s sister stood a short distance away to see what would happen to him.”

“Then the daughter of the king of Egypt came to the river to take a bath. And her servant girls were walking beside the river. When she saw the basket in the tall grass, she sent her slave girl to get it.”

“The king’s daughter opened the basket and saw the baby boy. He was crying, so she felt sorry for him and said, ‘This is one of the Hebrew babies.’”

“Then the baby’s sister asked the king’s daughter, ‘Would you like me to go and find a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby for you?’ The king’s daughter said, ‘Go!’ So the girl went and got the baby’s own mother.”

“The king’s daughter said to the woman, ‘Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.’ So the woman took the baby and nursed him.”

“When the child grew older, the woman took him to the king’s daughter, and she adopted the baby as her own son. The king’s daughter named him Moses, because she had pulled him out of the water.”

          (Exodus 2:1-10)

 


 

In c.1528BC a Hebrew baby boy was floated in the shallows of the River Nile by his mother in an attempt to disobey the king’s command to kill the child and to save his life.

He was placed in a basket of reeds, covered with tar, and his sister Miriam was sent to keep watch at a discrete distance. Miriam may well have known the fabled story of Sargon, King of Akkadia, who had also been conceived secretly and saved from death by being floated in an ‘ark’ made of bulrushes waterproofed with pitch.

The baby was discovered by the pharaoh’s wife, daughter of the previous pharaoh, who later adopted the baby boy and brought him up in the Egyptian court. The Bible calls him 'Moses' (Hebrew ‘Moshe’, meaning ‘drawn out of the water’) - a shorter form of his Egyptian name ‘Hapimose’ meaning ‘offspring of the floods’.

Prince Moses was raised in the pharaoh's household - probably that of Pharaoh Khaneferre Sobekhotep IV (c.1532-1508BC) at the royal palace in Avaris (Raamses).

As part of his royal training, he learnt to read Egyptian hieroglyphs and Akkadian cuneiform. He studied the Babylonian Law Code recently established by Hammurabi, King of Babylon, and was trained to lead the pharaoh’s armies. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Prince Moses also saw active service defeating the Kushites who invaded from the south in c.1510BC.

The photo shows a bridge on the River Nile near Luxor.

You can read more about Moses’s life in the royal court at Avaris (Raamses) @ https://www.thebiblejourney.org/biblejourney2/25-the-israelites-journey-from-egypt-to-mt-sinai/the-israelites-in-egypt

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