By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months by his parents, because they saw he was a goodly child; and they were not afraid of the king's commandment.- Heb_11:23.
1. The cruel and oppressive measures taken by Pharaoh to break the spirit of the Israelites and reduce them to a condition of utter bondage, perhaps destroying them altogether, had signally failed, in that the more they were oppressed the more they increased. The king next decided on what he hoped and confidently expected would be a master-stroke. The brutality of it exceeded that of Herod, who ordered all the male children from two years old and under found in Bethlehem to be slaughtered. Herod was inspired by his fear of the Christ, and the cruelty was limited to a small community; but Pharaoh decreed the death of all the male infants of the Hebrews and, moreover, ordered them to be strangled by the midwives at the time of their birth. These women, fearing God, refused to obey the king's commandment. Enraged at this frustration of his plan, the king next ordered the parents themselves to destroy their male offspring. This was the height of cruelty, and could have been carried out only by setting watchmen and spies, house-searchers and examiners, to work. So rigidly was this brutal decree forced on them that it was almost impossible to escape its execution.
2. Now, “there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi, and the woman conceived and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.” Already two children-Miriam, a daughter, and Aaron, a son-had been given to Amram and his kinswoman, Jochebed. Something in the babe's lovely countenance appeared to the mother's eye as the halo of special Divine affection. A voice whispered to her heart that her child was specially dear to God. Was not its smile the result of the Divine embrace? And did not those limpid eyes look into the face of the Angel of the Covenant? She was therefore encouraged to brave the royal edicts, and screen the little taper from the gale of destruction that was sweeping through the land. She probably hid him for three months in the apartments reserved for the women.
It was the beauty of this child: his exceeding fairness,-his fairness to God, or his being “fair to God,” for that is the signification of the expression,-which more especially stimulated his parents' faith. Some suppose the beauty of the child to have been supernatural, as an indication of what was in reserve for him. Josephus describes him as “Divine in form”: and the Roman historian Justin also speaks of his extraordinary beauty. There were promises too, which might have encouraged the parents to risk their own lives in the attempt to secure the life of their child, and to rise above the fear of the king's commandment.1 [Note: C. D. Bell, The Roll-Call of Faith, 182.]
3. For three months these God-fearing parents had succeeded in concealing their child. The searchers for hidden children were on their rounds again. Perhaps their secret had leaked out, and they knew well what would befall the babe if the searcher for male children should find him. Therefore a heroic device was speedily executed. A little basket cradle-boat was prepared, carefully made water-tight with bitumen or pitch. How tenderly and carefully the mother lined it! Then, with shrewd mother-wit, and, let us add, guided by the Spirit of God, she directed it to be placed among the rushes near to the place where the royal daughter of Pharaoh was in the habit of going daily to bathe. Little Miriam was placed near to watch events, and we may be sure the mother was not far off. A more romantic, pathetic, and thrilling situation could not well be conceived. Of course the mother could not know certainly what the daughter of Pharaoh would do; but she acted in faith, doing what seemed best as in the sight of God, making every earthly provision that human love and foresight could suggest.
Blow gently, wind! beneath the moon,
Across the river wavelets bright:
Make music like a cradle tune
Into the mother's ear to-night!
Flow, Father Nile! unvexed by storm,
And softly rock the bulrush ark,
Nor whelm the little dainty form,
A lily on thy waters dark.2 [Note: C. F. Alexander.]
The Basket of the Canephore was woven of rushes or reeds. In such primal ark (“scirpeus”-of rushes, not bulrushes), or Ark of Covenant, the first shepherd of the Jewish people is saved; and thus as the weed of the wide sea is the type of the lawless idleness which in heaven shall root itself no more on the wharf of Lethe, the flag of the river-usefullest, as humblest of all the green things given to the service of man-becomes the type of the obedient shepherd sceptre, which, by the still waters of comfort, redeems the lost, and satisfies the afflicted, soul.1 [Note: Ruskin, Proserpina, bk i. ch. v. (Works, xxv. 280).]
How much of the world's history that tiny coffer among the reeds held! How different that history would have been if, as might easily have happened, it had floated away, or if the feeble life within it had wailed itself dead unheard! The solemn possibilities folded and slumbering in an infant are always awful to a thoughtful mind. But, except the manger at Bethlehem, did ever cradle hold the seed of so much as did that papyrus chest? The set of opinion at present minimises the importance of the individual, and exalts the spirit of the period, as a factor in history. Standing beside Miriam, we may learn a truer view, and see that great epochs require great men, and that, without such for leaders, no solid advance in the world's progress is achieved. Think of the strange cradle floating on the Nile; then think of the strange grave among the mountains of Moab, and of all between, and ponder the same lesson as is taught in yet higher fashion by Bethlehem and Calvary-that God's way of blessing the world is to fill men with His message, and let others draw from them. Whether it be “law,” or “grace and truth,” a man is needed through whom it may fructify to all.2 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
She left her babe, and went away to weep,And listen'd oft to hear if he did cry;But the great river sung his lullaby,And unseen angels fann'd his balmy sleep,And yet his innocence itself might keep.The sacred silence of his slumb'rous smileMakes peace in all the monster-breeding Nile;For God e'en now is moving in the sweepOf mighty waters. Little dreams the maid,The royal maid, that comes to woo the waveWith her smooth limbs beneath the trembling shadeOf silver-chaliced lotus, what a childHer freak of pity is ordain'd to save!How terrible the thing that looks so mild!3 [Note: Hartley Coleridge.]
4. The providence of God, ever working through means, brought the princess to the river-brink at the critical moment, accompanied by the high-born maidens who constituted her personal attendants. It was His hand that guided her eye to the ark half concealed by the rushes; and it was at His prompting that her maid was sent to fetch it. All this came forth from the Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in effectual working. With her own hands the princess opened the lid of the little basket. It is not impossible that she guessed what its contents were. In any case, she was not surprised when she saw the babe. Was it the Hebrew physiognomy, as marked then as now, or a swift intuition, that made her exclaim, “This is one of the Hebrews' children”? Whatever it was, she was more than willing to fall in with the shrewd suggestion of Miriam that a nurse of the Hebrew race would be the more fitting to rear it. So it befell that Moses' life was saved, that he was nourished from the breasts of his own mother, and received as his earliest impressions those sacred teachings which had come down as a rich heritage from the tents of Abraham. Till he had grown probably to the age of three years, he remained under the protection of the princess, though in his parents' home, and Jochebed's wages were duly paid until he was brought to the palace and became her son. “And she called his name Moses.”
The great lesson of this incident, as of so much before, is the presence of God's wonderful providence, working out its designs by all the play of human motives. In accordance with a law, often seen in His dealings, it was needful that the deliverer should come from the heart of the system from which he was to set his brethren free. The same principle that sent Saul of Tarsus to be trained at the feet of Gamaliel, and made Luther a monk in the Augustinian convent at Erfurt, planted Moses in Pharaoh's palace and taught him the wisdom of Egypt, against which he was to contend.
I saw, the other day, two well-known pictures side by side in a shop window. The one represented Lord Roberts, with the inn-keeper's child on his knee at Pretoria, saying, to a member of his staff who approaches him with some message, “Don't you see I'm busy?” The other was that one in which a little child is pictured as crossing a crowded street and the policeman is holding up his hand to stop the traffic until it gets safely over. It is entitled “His Majesty the Baby.” A difference might have been observed on the faces of most of the passers-by as they took a glance at the window for a few moments. They may have approached with a look of abstraction, or even a frown in their business absorbment, but as they went away their faces were lit up by a kindly smile, and one was even seen to smile upon the somewhat troublesome importunity of several newsboys who assailed him with their cries immediately after, and reached over each other towards him with their papers. Both pictures seem to be very popular, and no wonder. They touch a tender chord in most hearts. It has been the same in all time, and all the world over. The baby always reigns. The little Moses in his bulrush cradle captivated the royal heart. There was a mightier majesty in the babe than in Pharaoh's daughter. It is said that some men are born booted and spurred to ride, and some are born saddled and bridled to be ridden. These distinctions may come out in later years, but the truth is we are all born with the boots and spurs.
Moses came by and by to rule from a nobler than his cradle throne. He made a noble decision when he was grown, a decision that involved great sacrifice; and though his brethren spurned his rule at first, they came later to prize the sacrifice he made, and the beautiful service he rendered. “He that is greatest among you shall be your servant,” said Jesus. In that sense Moses came to be great indeed, and in heaven they sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb.1 [Note: J. S. Maver.]
5. “She called his name Moses, and said, Because I drew him out of the water.” This is a case of popular etymology, examples of which we find everywhere. We are all of us familiar with the popular local derivations of the names of persons, villages, hills, and rivers. Generally they are artless attempts to interpret the names and then connect them with definite events. The events themselves may have occurred, but their connexion with the names is a figment of the imagination. The name “Moses,” interpreted as a Hebrew word, would mean really “the one who draws out,” i.e., the deliverer, redeemer. But this is a case of the assimilation of a foreign word to the Hebrew language, influenced by the thought of Moses' life-work. The word, however, is really Egyptian, and means “son.” It is the same word that we find in Egyptian compound names, e.g., Dhutmoses. The fact that the leading figure in the Israelite history of this period bears not a native but a foreign name is strong proof that he is historical, and also that the Israelites did sojourn in Egypt.2 [Note: R. Kittel, The Scientific Study of the Old Testament, 171.]
Josephus and Philo derive the name from the Coptic mo, “water,” and ushe, “saved”; this is implied in their spelling Mouses, also found in LXX and New Testament. It is more plausible to connect the name with the Egyptian mes, mesu, “son.” Perhaps it was originally coupled with the name of an Egyptian deity-cf. Ra-mesu, Thoth-mes, and others-which was omitted under the influence of Israelite monotheism.1 [Note: A. H. McNeile, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible (Single-volume), 632.]
