Chapter 2
We remember a baby boy was born in Egypt to two non-descript people. Unfortunately, he was a boy with, as we would say today, a price on his head. The Pharaoh had ordered all baby boys of the Hebrews to be thrown in the Nile. His mother kind of obeyed. She didn’t throw him into the Nile but she did put him in the Nile in a woven, waterproofed basket.
As we know, the boy was found by the Pharaoh’s daughter. Praise the Lord, the Pharaoh’s daughter was not much like her father. She saved that baby. All the while that baby’s sister had been watching all the action and she was brave enough to offer her mother, as a wet nurse, to nourish that boy. Pharaoh’s daughter was very amendable to that plan.
That young sister, Miriam by name, went to retrieve her mother and to bring her to meet the Pharaoh’s daughter. When they met there was no conversation as to the why and how Miriam’s mother would or could be a “wet nurse”. Of course, no Egyptian woman would ever consider nursing a slave’s baby but there were plenty of Hebrew women whose infant boys were killed and they would be able to wet nurse a child.
Upon meeting the Hebrew woman, who was willing to nurse this child she had found, the Pharaoh’s daughter said, (2:10) “Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will pay thy wages.” Pharaoh’s daughter was nothing like her father. Not only did she save a Hebrew boy baby but she was paying a slave money to nurse it for her.
Can you even imagine how very caring and generous this young woman was? When that baby boy grew up, we assume somewhere between three and five, his own mother took him to Pharaoh’s daughter, who made him her son. She named him Moses explaining, “I drew him out of the water.” In Hebrew the word Moses is derived for a word that means “I drew him out.” But Moses is also an Egyptian name, the name Moses (Hebrew Moshe) is derived from Egyptian mose (“is born”). We have to assume that even though Moses was raised as an Egyptian he recognized he was also a Hebrew because Scripture says, he went out to his kinfolk and witnessed their labors and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own.
When you consider that Moses had been given the best of both worlds you have to wonder why, he was chosen and even willing to be the exceptional man chosen by God to deliver the Israelites from bondage. Put yourself in his shoes: his younger years were spent with a mother who was willing to break the law to keep him alive and then to give him up to another mother and family where he lived a life of luxury and ease with an adopted mother who gave him every advantage her world had to offer.
Moses was exceptional when you consider: Moses fights evil. He is instinctively intolerant of suffering and injustice. He does whatever he can to stop the evil. Later, Moses will command the respect of the Israelites because he was not raised with them. He was far worldlier than his own people, who were raised as slaves. He actually chose to be a Hebrew when he could have led a completely charmed life as an Egyptian prince. Moses was not demoralized, he does not just cry out, he takes action.
We see his character in action when we go back to the time he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Scripture says, “He turned this way and that and, seeing no one about he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.” There are two ways that verse can be interrupted. One is Moses looked around to make sure there was no one to witness that illegal act that he is about to commit.
To determine this, it would require judging his actions: It was a fact of that time that to protect a slave -let alone to kill an Egyptian, was a major transgression of Egyptian law and if he were caught, he would be executed. Or, the other possibility is he checked to see whether there was “a man,” someone who would intercede on behalf of the slave? The Hebrew word that means MAN is ish. Moses’s question was would there be a MAN who would intercede?
We use that word ish in English, also. It means “a morally upstanding individual”. We use that word when we say man-ish, which means acts like a man.
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