In yesterday's passage we learned that the Egyptian midwives feared God more than they feared Pharaoh. They refused to obey his instructions to kill the newborn baby boys while they were helping the Hebrew women give birth. Because they feared God, He blessed the midwives with families of their own. We talked about how in ancient Egypt the midwives were usually married women who were unable to have children. Married barren women in ancient times tended to find employment outside the home since they had no children at home to supervise, so naturally some of these women gravitated to the midwifery field because obstetrics was a trade not performed by men in those days. But now the midwives who were willing to work with with Hebrew women have children of their own to raise and are staying home, so Pharaoh comes up with another plan to rid his nation of the Hebrew males for whom he's developed an irrational and racist fear.
"Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: 'Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.'" (Exodus 1:22) Egyptian citizens are now given permission---indeed are ordered----to cast any Hebrew baby boy they find into the Nile River. Previously I believe he intended the midwives to murder the newborn boys stealthily, perhaps smothering them as soon as they cleared the birth canal, before the mothers were able to see what was happening. I think the midwives were supposed to pass the dead babies off as stillbirths. It doesn't make sense that the Hebrew women would have had any inkling what was happening, for if that were the case then none of them would have called for an Egyptian midwife to help them give birth. But now the king isn't even going to bother hiding his motives. He passes a law that makes infanticide legal against Hebrew baby boys. He puts his seal of approval on it. I am not certain whether the people who carried out his orders were mainly soldiers or whether any Egyptian citizen learning about the birth of a baby boy could seize the baby and throw it into the river. There may have been "bounties" placed upon these male infants so that anyone who performed this dark deed received financial compensation for each child he killed. In ridding himself of males he thought would be a threat in the future, Pharaoh probably also intended that these babies become offerings to his false gods. Since the Nile River was considered utterly sacred to the Egyptian people, anything thrown into it was regarded as an offering to the gods.
What a dreadful day of darkness has come upon the land! What heinous sin! What callous disregard for the sanctity of human life! In time Pharaoh's law would have resulted in the complete extinction of the Hebrews as a people. But as always, God brings light into dark circumstances. As the psalmist said in a day of trouble, "Even in darkness light dawns for the upright." (Psalm 112:4a) The one whom God has chosen to lead His people out of Egypt is born during the worst time the Hebrew people have yet experienced. Deliverance is almost at hand.
"Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months." (Exodus 2:1-2) The author of Genesis (Moses) backs up in time a little bit here to tell us of the marriage of his parents, whom we will be told later in Exodus were named Amram and Jochebed. We can safely assume that Moses' parents had already been married for several years before Pharaoh passed a law that allowed the murder of Hebrew male infants since they already have two children together. We will learn in our passage today that Moses has an older sister; later on in Exodus we'll learn that her name is Miriam. Also later on in Exodus we'll be told that Moses has a brother named Aaron who is four years his elder. If Aaron had been born after Pharaoh passed his horrifying law, he would no doubt have been killed, so we can conclude that only Moses was born to this family after Pharaoh made infanticide of Hebrew baby boys legal.
Infant mortality rates were generally pretty high in ancient times due to natural causes. In fact, infant mortality rates were still quite high only a century or so ago in our own nation. In my family cemetery there is one couple who suffered a number of such losses. Beside them are buried four or five children who did not survive their first and second years of life back in the early 1900s. I can't recall right now the exact number of young children this couple lost but I'm certain there are at least four gravestones of infants beside the graves of the parents. Both my grandmothers lost a child before those children grew out of the toddlers years. My husband's paternal grandmother lost one child to premature birth and one toddler to a severe case of colitis. So I think infant mortality rates may explain what Moses means when he says his mother hid him for three months and saw that he was "a fine child". If he'd been born with any serious birth defects, those first three months is when he'd have been most likely to perish. Those first three months is when a condition that's still sometimes mysterious in our own day (a "failure to thrive") would become apparent. But instead he's developing normally, growing and gaining weight like he should.
Moses' mother was successful in hiding her pregnancy whenever Egyptians were present in Goshen, and I think Egyptians were always present in Goshen by now. She was successful in giving birth in her own home without the birth becoming known. Imagine the dread that fell upon her when she gave birth and saw that the baby was male. Imagine her fear that the wrong person would hear his cries during those first three months. Imagine the constant anxiety of knowing that she can't hide a growing child much longer, for soon he will begin to babble and crawl and eventually walk. She can't keep him indoors forever. He needs sunlight and exercise for his physical and mental development. She can't supervise three children and be certain that a toddling Moses won't ever slip out the front door and be seen by an Egyptian soldier. One commentary I consulted stated that, if nothing else, Jochebed's clothesline would soon have revealed the presence of a baby in the house. This is because Miriam is old enough to be out of diapers and Aaron is already four years old. No one will believe for much longer that Aaron isn't yet potty trained, so the sight of washed cloth diapers hanging outside to dry would have given away Jochebed's secret. An Egyptian soldier passing by would become suspicious about the presence of an infant and would invade the house to confirm his suspicious. Desperate to protect her son, Jochebed comes up with a wild idea that she hopes will save his life.
"But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him." (Exodus 2:3-4) Jochebed puts Moses into the Lord's hands. She gives up ownership of her son and gives up all semblance of control over her circumstances. She has no choice but to trust the Lord with her child. Ironic as it may seem, though her trust is in the Lord, her son's survival depends on the pagan beliefs of the Egyptian people. I think the Lord may have directed her to place Moses in the Nile because He knows as no one else does just how thoroughly sacred the Egyptians consider the Nile. Infertile married Egyptian women go down to the Nile to perform ceremonial bathing rituals in the river in the hopes that their gods will take pity on them and take their barrenness away from them. Their gods do not exist and therefore their rituals and their pleas to non-existent gods are pointless. But the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob exists! The God of Jochebed exists and He is going to take pity on her, on her child, and even on an idolatrous Egyptian princess who wants to be a mother more than anything in the world.
Join us tomorrow as this unnamed princess saves the life of Moses by adopting him as her own son. We will discuss some popular theories about who this princess may have been, and in taking a look at her possible identity we will find some clues regarding the identity of the dynasty in power in Egypt during the time of Moses' birth and during the time of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt.
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