Baby Moses in the Basket
To save her son from Pharaoh's decree, Moses' mother places him in a basket on the Nile, where Pharaoh's daughter finds him.
A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. Alarmed by the Israelites' growing numbers, he enslaved them and ordered that every Hebrew baby boy be thrown into the Nile.
A Levite woman named Jochebed gave birth to a son and saw he was a fine child. She hid him for three months, but when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket, coated it with tar and pitch, placed the child in it, and set it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister Miriam stood at a distance to see what would happen.
Pharaoh's daughter came down to the Nile to bathe. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. When she opened it, she saw the baby, crying. Her heart was moved with compassion. 'This is one of the Hebrew babies,' she said.
Then Miriam appeared. 'Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?' she asked.
'Yes, go,' the princess answered. The girl went and got the baby's own mother.
Pharaoh's daughter said to her, 'Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.' So Jochebed took her own son and nursed him. 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.' The name sounded like both the Hebrew word for 'draw out' and an Egyptian word for 'son.'
God had preserved the deliverer in the very household of the one who sought to destroy him. Moses would be raised with the education and skills of Egyptian royalty—training that would one day serve God's purposes.