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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comKeil and Delitzsch Commentary - Exodus 2:1 - 2:1
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Birth and Education of Moses. - Whilst Pharaoh was urging forward the extermination of the Israelites, God was preparing their emancipation. According to the divine purpose, the murderous edict of the king was to lead to the training and preparation of the human deliverer of Israel.
Exo 2:1-2
At the time when all the Hebrew boys were ordered to be thrown into the Nile, “there went (הָלַךְ contributes to the pictorial character of the account, and serves to bring out its importance, just as in Gen 35:22; Deu 31:1) a man of the house of Levi - according to Exo 6:20 and Num 26:59, it was Amram, of the Levitical family of Kohath - and married a daughter (i.e., a descendant) of Levi,” named Jochebed, who bore him a son, viz., Moses. From Exo 6:20 we learn that Moses was not the first child of this marriage, but his brother Aaron; and from Exo 2:7 of this chapter, it is evident that when Moses was born, his sister Miriam was by no means a child (Num 26:59). Both of these had been born before the murderous edict was issued (Exo 1:22). They are not mentioned here, because the only question in hand was the birth and deliverance of Moses, the future deliverer of Israel. “When the mother saw that the child was beautiful” (טֹוב as in Gen 6:2; lxx ἀστεῖος), she began to think about his preservation. The very beauty of the child was to her “a peculiar token of divine approval, and a sign that God had some special design concerning him” (Delitzsch on Heb 11:23). The expression ἀστεῖος τῷ Θεῷ in Act 7:20 points to this. She therefore hid the new-born child for three months, in the hope of saving him alive. This hope, however, neither sprang from a revelation made to her husband before the birth of her child, that he was appointed to be the saviour of Israel, as Josephus affirms (Ant. ii. 9, 3), either from his own imagination or according to the belief of his age, nor from her faith in the patriarchal promises, but primarily from the natural love of parents for their offspring. And if the hiding of the child is praised in Heb 11:23 as an act of faith, that faith was manifested in their not obeying the king's commandment, but fulfilling without fear of man all that was required by that parental love, which God approved, and which was rendered all the stronger by the beauty of the child, and in their confident assurance, in spite of all apparent impossibility, that their effort would be successful (vid., Delitzsch ut supra). This confidence was shown in the means adopted by the mother to save the child, when she could hide it no longer.
Exo 2:3-4
She placed the infant in an ark of bulrushes by the bank of the Nile, hoping that possibly it might be found by some compassionate hand, and still be delivered. The dagesh dirim. in הַצְּפִינֹו serves to separate the consonant in which it stands from the syllable which follows (vid., Ewald, §92c; Ges. §20, 2b). גֹּמֶא תֵּבַת a little chest of rushes. The use of the word תֵּבָה (ark) is probably intended to call to mind the ark in which Noah was saved (vid., Gen 6:14). גֹּמֶא, papyrus, the paper reed: a kind of rush which was very common in ancient Egypt, but has almost entirely disappeared, or, as Pruner affirms (ägypt. Naturgesch. p. 55), is nowhere to be found. It had a triangular stalk about the thickness of a finger, which grew to the height of ten feet; and from this the lighter Nile boats were made, whilst the peeling of the plant was used for sails, mattresses, mats, sandals, and other articles, but chiefly for the preparation of paper (vid., Celsii Hierobot. ii. pp. 137ff.; Hengstenberg, Egypt and the Books of Moses, pp. 85, 86, transl.). וַתַּחְמְרָה, for תַּחְמֶרָהּ with mappik omitted: and cemented (pitched) it with חֵמָר bitumen, the asphalt of the Dead Sea, to fasten the papyrus stalks, and with pitch, to make it water-tight, and put it in the reeds by the bank of the Nile, at a spot, as the sequel shows, where she knew that the king's daughter was accustomed to bathe. For “the sagacity of the mother led her, no doubt, so to arrange the whole, that the issue might be just what is related in Exo 2:5-9” (Baumgarten). The daughter stationed herself a little distance off, to see what happened to the child (Exo 2:4). This sister of Moses was most probably the Miriam who is frequently mentioned afterwards (Num 26:59). תֵּתַצַּב for תִּתְיצֵּב. The infinitive form דֵּעָה as in Gen 46:3.
Exo 2:5
Pharaoh's daughter is called Thermouthis or Merris in Jewish tradition, and by the Rabbins בתיה. עַל־הַיְאֹר is to be connected with תֵּרֶד, and the construction with עַל to be explained as referring to the descent into (upon) the river from the rising bank. The fact that a king's daughter should bathe in the open river is certainly opposed to the customs of the modern, Mohammedan East, where this is only done by women of the lower orders, and that in remote places (Lane, Manners and Customs); but it is in harmony with the customs of ancient Egypt,
(Note: Wilkinson gives a picture of bathing scene, in which an Egyptian woman of rank is introduced, attended by four female servants.)
and in perfect agreement with the notions of the early Egyptians respecting the sanctity of the Nile, to which divine honours even were paid (vid., Hengstenberg's Egypt, etc. pp. 109, 110), and with the belief, which was common to both ancient and modern Egyptians, in the power of its waters to impart fruitfulness and prolong life (vid., Strabo, xv. p. 695, etc., and Seetzen, Travels iii. p. 204).
Exo 2:6-8
The exposure of the child at once led the king's daughter to conclude that it was one of the Hebrews' children. The fact that she took compassion on the weeping child, and notwithstanding the king's command (Exo 1:22) took it up and had it brought up (of course, without the knowledge of the king), may be accounted for from the love to children which is innate in the female sex, and the superior adroitness of a mother's heart, which co-operated in this case, though without knowing or intending it, in the realization of the divine plan of salvation. Competens fuit divina vindicta, ut suis affectibus puniatur parricida et filiae provisione pereat qui genitrices interdixerat parturire (August. Sermo 89 de temp.).
Exo 2:9
With the directions, “Take this child away (הֵילִיכִי for הֹולִיכִי used here in the sense of leading, bringing, carrying away, as in Zec 5:10; Ecc 10:20) and suckle it for me,” the king's daughter gave the child to its mother, who was unknown to her, and had been fetched as a nurse.
Exo 2:10
When the child had grown large, i.e., had been weaned (יִגְדַּל as in Gen 21:8), the mother, who acted as nurse, brought it back to the queen's daughter, who then adopted it as her own son, and called it Moses (מֹשֶׁה): “for,” she said, “out of the water have I drawn him” (מְשִׁיתִהוּ). As Pharaoh's daughter gave this name to the child as her adopted son, it must be an Egyptian name. The Greek form of the name, Μωΰσῆς (lxx), also points to this, as Josephus affirms. “Thermuthis,” he says, “imposed this name upon him, from what had happened when he was put into the river; for the Egyptians call water Mo, and those who are rescued from the water Uses” (Ant. ii. 9, 6, Whiston's translation). The correctness of this statement is confirmed by the Coptic, which is derived from the old Egyptian.
(Note: Josephus gives a somewhat different explanation in his book against Apion (i. 31), when he says, “His true name was Moüses, and signifies a person who is rescued from the water, for the Egyptians call water Moü.” Other explanations, though less probable ones, are attempted by Gesenius in his Thes. p. 824, and Knobel in loc.)
Now, though we find the name explained in the text from the Hebrew מָשָׁה, this is not to be regarded as a philological or etymological explanation, but as a theological interpretation, referring to the importance of the person rescued from the water to the Israelitish nation. In the lips of an Israelite, the name Mouje, which was so little suited to the Hebrew organs of speech, might be involuntarily altered into Moseh; “and this transformation became an unintentional prophecy, for the person drawn out did become, in fact, the drawer out” (Kurtz). Consequently Knobel's supposition, that the writer regarded מֹשֶׁה as a participle Poal with the מ dropped, is to be rejected as inadmissible. - There can be no doubt that, as the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter, Moses received a thoroughly Egyptian training, and was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, as Stephen states in Act 7:22 in accordance with Jewish tradition.
(Note: The tradition, on the other hand, that Moses was a priest of Heliopolis, named Osarsiph (Jos. c. Ap. i. 26, 28), is just as unhistorical as the legend of his expedition against the Ethiopians (Jos. Ant. ii. 10), and many others with which the later, glorifying Saga embellished his life in Egypt.)
Through such an education as this, he received just the training required for the performance of the work to which God had called him. Thus the wisdom of Egypt was employed by the wisdom of God for the establishment of the kingdom of God.