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By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents: the parents of Moses were as eminent in this faith as their progenitors; for by it Amram and Jochebed, both of them of the tribe of Levi, Exo_6:20, (paterwn) here put by a metaphrase for goneiv, and though in the history ascribed to the mother only, yet it was by the father’s direction, as Exo_2:2; compare Act_7:20), hid Moses, born under the bloody edict of a tyrant for drowning all the Hebrew males in the Nile. He was born three years after Aaron, and sixty-five after Joseph’s death. They kept him three months from the destroyers, and they adventured the penalties threatened by the edict, Exo_2:2,3; faith overcoming their fears and difficulties about it, and, in all probabililly, ordered their fitting the ark, and disposal of it for his preservation, with the other acts attending it.
Because they saw he was a proper child: the reason of faith’s work was their seeing of him to be asteion, fair, beautiful, proper; and this not in himself only, but, as Stephen interprets it, asteion tw yew, fair to God, Act_7:20. Some glorious aspect was by God put upon him as a signal of some great person, and of great use in God’s design to his church; some extraordinary stamp of God on his countenance, which faith could discern there, and so influence them to conceal and preserve him.
And they were not afraid of the king’s commandment; faith made them fearless; for they were not afraid that the king’s edict should frustrate God’s purpose concerning the child, or keep him from its service to the church, wherein God would employ him, and of which he had given them a signal in that lustre cast on his person; and therefore they used means to preserve him, even when they exposed him, and which had a suitable success, Exo_2:3-10.