Moses has been placed by his mother in a basket among the reeds along the side of the Nile River. Moses' older sister Miriam is watching from a place nearby to see what happens to him. I think Moses' mother couldn't go to watch over him because she has to stay home with her four-year-old son Aaron. She can't count on being able to keep her toddler son Aaron quiet as she hides herself near the river to watch over baby Moses. Miriam is old enough to do what she is told and remain silent in her hiding place near the Nile. Also, I think Moses' mother realizes that an Egyptian lady will be more likely to take pity on the baby if she thinks he has been abandoned by his mother.
"Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. 'This is one of the Hebrew babies,' she said." (Exodus 2:5-6) I recall from my childhood seeing an illustrated children's Bible depicting Pharaoh's daughter as a very young lady, looking like she was somewhere between the age of twelve and fifteen. The picture gave me the idea that Moses was like a baby doll to this young girl and that her father indulged her whim to keep the child because he enjoyed spoiling his daughter. But what's going on here is something quite different than the children's Bible in the pediatric office would have had me believe.
The fact that this wealthy woman is ceremonially dipping herself in the waters of the Nile tells us that she's a grown woman and a married woman. Infertile Egyptian women believed dipping themselves in the waters they considered magical and sacred might result in a blessing of fertility from their gods. Since Pharaoh's daughter is undertaking this experiment, we can safely assume she's been married enough years to know that something is physically preventing her from bearing a son. She's probably already tried every potion, magic spell, and medical treatment available to her from all the top magicians and pharmacists and physicians in Egypt. As the daughter of the king, she can afford the very best, but everything she's tried has failed.
She didn't have to bathe in the Nile River for cleanliness. She lived in a palace where servants would have heated water and poured it in a bathtub for her to bathe in privacy and luxury. You can Google images of ancient Egyptian bathtubs to get an idea of what the bathroom in a wealthy person's home might have looked like. I don't believe the king's daughter is taking her clothes off at the Nile and washing herself in the waters with a bar of soap. Her attendants would help her to bathe if she were taking an actual bath, since wealthy Egyptian women did practically nothing for themselves, but they're walking on the riverbank. I think she waded into the water wearing the magnificent robes of a priestess (women of the royal Egyptian household served as priestesses in the temples of female fertility gods) to call upon those gods and to plead with them to bless her with a son.
The gods of Egypt aren't listening. They can't because they don't exist. But there is a God who hears prayer and He is the God who prevented this woman from conceiving a son of her own because He's going to place another woman's son in her arms. He's going to make her the adoptive mother of Moses who will, in time, lead God's people out of bondage in Egypt. He answers the prayers of Pharaoh's daughter for the sake of the Hebrew people who believe in Him and call upon Him every day. The blessings God pours out on His people overflow onto this sad pagan woman. Though she doesn't believe in Him, He loves her and uses her in His plan by allowing her to raise the man who is going to deliver the nation of Israel from slavery.
When Miriam sees the Egyptian princess taking pity on Moses, and when she realizes Pharaoh's daughter regards the finding of the baby as a gift from the gods, she emerges from her hiding place and speaks to Pharaoh's daughter. "Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, 'Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?'" (Exodus 2:7)
Moses is only three months old and can't eat solid food yet. He needs a nursemaid. Ancient baby bottles have been found but I assume they were used only if the mother could not nurse her baby and could not afford to hire what was known as a "wet nurse". A wet nurse was a woman who had recently given birth to a baby who was stillborn or who died soon after birth. The woman could hire herself out to nurse the baby of a woman who either couldn't nurse her own baby or who was wealthy enough to hire someone to do it for her. That was an important job in a time before the invention of nutritionally complete baby formula. To use a bottle they'd have had to fill it with cow's milk or goat's milk, and those can be difficult for babies under the age of one to digest.
Miriam doesn't reveal her identity as Moses' sister, likely because the family doesn't want Pharaoh's daughter to feel as if this whole situation is a "set up" to find an adoptive mother for Moses. They want the princess to continue feeling like the baby is a gift from the gods. Miriam passes herself off as someone just passing by who happens to notice what's going on. Hearing the princess remark that the baby is a Hebrew, and Miriam being obviously a Hebrew herself, the sister of Moses makes herself of service to the princess by casually offering to see if she can find a wet nurse for the baby. Miriam intends, of course, to fetch her own mother.
"'Yes, go,' she answered. So the girl went and got the baby's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her, 'Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.' So the woman took the baby 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.'" (Exodus 2:8-10) Children were typically nursed til about the age of three in those times, so Moses' mother takes him home with her and keeps him there until he is weaned.
When Moses is fully weaned, his mother brings him to the palace and Pharaoh's daughter legally adopts him as her own son and gives him a name of her own choosing. We don't know what name Moses' family gave him at birth. But the princess gives him a name she personally chooses for him. In Hebrew his name sounds similar to a word that means "drawn out", and while it's possible that's the meaning of his name, I find it doubtful that an Egyptian woman would give her son a Hebrew name. She does make reference to the fact that she drew him out of the water, but it was in the moment when she drew him out of the water that she intended to make him her son. The instant she held him in her arms, she wanted him with all her heart. She knew she would never let him go. So I think his name means more than simply being taken from the water. We would expect an Egyptian woman of the royal household of Pharaoh to give her son a name that reflects his exalted status. In ancient Egypt the suffix "moses" meant "son of", and we find it used in the names of the pharaohs of a particular dynasty of Egypt---the Tutmoses dynasty. (Tutmoses meant "son of Thoth", Thoth being the Egyptian god of writing, magic, wisdom, and the moon. It's interesting to note that Acts 7:22 tells us that once Moses became a member of Pharaoh's household he was educated in the "wisdom" of Egypt. This could be a reference to his being named after Thoth, the god of wisdom.)
I think it's highly likely that Moses originally had some sort of idolatrous prefix to his name and that he may have once borne the name of Tutmoses but dropped the prefix when he rejected the gods of Egypt and gave his allegiance only to the one true God. If this is the case, then Pharaoh's daughter could have been the powerful Egyptian princess (who later reigned as a king) known as Hatshepsut. She was the daughter of Tutmoses I and his queen, Ahmoses. She was given in marriage to her half-brother, Tutmoses II, who was the son of Tutmoses I and his secondary wife, Mutnofret. This incestuous marriage was arranged in order to strengthen the claim of Tutmoses II to the throne, for as the son of a secondary wife his right to the throne could have been challenged by close male relatives of Tutmoses I. By marrying the daughter of his queen to the son of his secondary wife, Tutmoses I hoped to give his son a "double right" to rule. Hatshepsut and her husband Tutmoses II had no sons together. It is believed this couple experienced the stillbirth of one or more female babies before having one daughter who survived to become an adult. If Hatshepsut did adopt Moses, then his Egyptian name may have been Tutmoses III until Hatshepsut's husband eventually fathered a son by a secondary wife. At that point he gave his biological son the royal title of Tutmoses III and made him heir to the throne. In tomorrow's study we will make our case for believing Hatshepsut could have been the Egyptian princess who adopted Moses and we will see how the timeline of the Tutmoses dynasty in Egypt lines up with the number of years the Bible tells us passed between the exodus and the building of the first temple in Israel.
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