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About Jesus Steve Sweetman This Chapter 2 The
Birth Of Moses (ch. 2:1 - 10) In
verses 1 and 2 the text introduces us to a Levite couple
who have a baby. We learn
from Exodus 6:20 that the man's name is Amram and the wife's name is
Jochebed. This verse also
states that Jochebed was Amram's father's sister, or, his aunt.
Obviously Amram married a much older woman, but she did bare him
children. That being said, some suggest that Amram didn't marry an older
woman. Amram's father could
have easily married a young girl, as young as he himself.
That's not normally the case today, but did happen more
frequently back then. In
verse 3 we note that when Jochebed could not hide her baby son any
longer, she put him in a basket sealed with tar and pitch.
She then put him in the reeds of the Nile
Note
the words "tar and pitch".
This is the same material that Noah used to seal the ark.
After
the boy was put in the reeds, "his sister", Moses' sister,
stood at a distance to see what would happen.
It is thus clear that Moses mother had children before Moses.
She was clearly concerned about the boy.
You might wonder if Jochebed stood by too.
Apparently she didn't because the text doesn't say so.
I think if she did, the text would have mentioned it since it
mentions Jochebed's sister standing by watching.
Hebrews
11:23 might shed a bit of light on this event.
The author of Hebrews says that the parents hid Moses for three
months. This tells us that
Moses, not yet named Moses, was three months old when he was placed into
the basket in the reeds of the Nile The
author of Hebrews also states that Moses' parents hid him because of
their faith, since they knew that he was special.
We have two points here to consider.
One point is that the parents of Moses knew, not just believed,
but knew, their son was special. Did
they have some kind of revelation from God stating that Moses was
special? It is hard to say
for sure. In my thinking
there was some kind of spiritual element to this because of the parent's
faith, and because the writer of the book of Hebrews put this event in
his chapter on faith. The
parent's trust in God is important to this whole event.
Verse
7 starts with, "then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the When
Pharaoh's daughter saw the basket with the crying baby inside she had
her slave girl get the baby for her.
She knew right away that this was a Hebrew baby.
This
is what I think about this event. I
think that Jochebed knew that Pharaoh's daughter bathed in this spot on
a regular basis. She might
well have known the days and the times that Pharaoh's daughter would
arrive at this spot, and that is why she placed Moses their at that
particular time. It might be
possible, that even though Jochebed had faith in God, she could not
stand to watch what would happen to him, so her sister watched instead.
I think that Jochebed clearly wanted Pharaoh's daughter to take
her son home with her to raise. Verse
7 begins with, "then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter…"
I'm not sure who the word "his" refers to.
But it seems clear that one of the slave girls asked Pharaoh's
daughter if she should find a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby for her.
In verse 8 Pharaoh's daughter agreed and the slave girl ended up
fining Jochebed. What a
coincidence. This was no
coincident It was God's
will. Also, I'm sure that
Jochebed was not far off and she and her sister were probably the first
Jewish women the slave girl met. In
verses 9 and 10 we see that Jochebed took the baby boy, nursed him until
he was older, and then returned him to Pharaoh's daughter.
We don't know how long of a period of time that Jochebed had
Moses for. Jewish women
often nursed their children up to four years of age.
So here we have it. Moses
is now being looked after by his mother.
This is the providence of God. You
might wonder why Jochebed took Moses back to Pharaoh's daughter.
Why didn't she and her family just run away and hide someplace?
She would then get to keep Moses.
Well, it's only a guess, but as I have said earlier, Moses
parents, from what we learn in Hebrews 11:23, knew this was a special
child with the call of God on his life.
I tend to think that they knew it was God's will for Moses to be
raised in the Pharaoh's household. That
would be why Jochebed took Moses to the Pharaoh's daughter.
In
verse 10 we note that it was Pharaoh's daughter who gave the baby boy
his name. It was Moses
because she had "drawn him from the water".
That is what the name Moses means. Moses
Flees To Median (ch. 2:11 -
25) Most
scholars believe that there is a forty year period between verses 10 and
11. That means that Moses
had lived his first forty years in the king's palace. The
number forty in the Bible is the number of testing.
Numbers can be thought of in different ways.
Some people don't put any importance to them.
Liberal scholars know their significance so they say the events
of the Old Testament are merely stories.
All these special numbers had to be contrived.
It could not be a coincidence.
Still others say that the numbers are as they are stated and it
is God's intervention that causes these numbers to be seen as they are.
Moses spent forty years in In
verse 11 we see that Moses is now grown up.
He went out and saw his own people in hard labor.
I would think that he had seen his people the Jews in hard labour
before, but this day must have been different.
For some reason the hard labor hit him, maybe as a revelation
from God. Maybe the fact
that he also saw an Egyptian beating up on a Hebrew hit him in the heart
as well. Whatever the case,
I believe this is a pivotal moment in the life of Moses.
He is now beginning to see the importance of the Jewish
community, his own nationality. Verse
12 tells us that after Moses looked around and saw no other people
around, he killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand.
This is a pretty drastic thing for him to do.
Maybe he didn't mean to kill the Egyptian.
We don't know. Still,
by this time in Moses' life the love for his people is now being seen. In
verse 13 we see the same concern for his own people.
Moses sees two Hebrew men fighting, and so he asks the one in the
wrong why he was hitting his brother Israeli.
It is clear that this disturbed Moses.
Here were his people in slavery to the Egyptians and they were
fighting among each other. He
most likely thought their should be solidarity in the ranks of the Jews,
not division, but that is the way it was and it is with God's people.
Whether it is the Jews or the Church, there is always infighting.
In
verse 14 Moses did not get the response that he might have expected, or
at least wanted to here. The
man answered him by saying, "who has made you ruler and judge over
us? Are you thinking of
killing me as you killed the Egyptian?"
First of all, word must have spread pretty fast that Moses killed
the Egyptian. Second of all,
I think we can safely say that this man, and probably many other Jews
did not like Moses. He was a
fellow Jew, but enjoying all the perks of an Egyptian while his brothers
were slaves. I think this is
what is behind the man's response to Moses.
The man's response is a bit ironic in the sense that Moses would
in fact become his ruler in a few years.
Also
in verse 14 we see that Moses is now afraid because the murder has
"now become known."
If the authorities found out that he, and adopted Jew, killed an
Egyptian, that would be the end of Moses. At
this point I'd like to stop and say something I've said more than once
in my commentaries. The
Bible doesn't hide the sins
of the men and women that God uses or calls to do something special.
Moses in one example among many.
In the church today we tent to want to hide these things, and
maybe for good reason, but in the Bible, this is not the way.
Sins are exposed. In
verse 15 we see that word of the killing got to Pharaoh and so Pharaoh
went after Moses to kill him, but Moses escaped to Midian.
Midian is east of Egypt. There Moses sat by a well.
Wells in those days, no matter where they were, seems to be
equivalent to our local coffee shops.
Women went to get water not only for their household but their
flocks. Women in most
cultures back then were the ones who watered the flocks. We
see an example of this in verse 17 where a certain Midian priest who had
seven daughters came to water their father's flock.
Besides
seeing women at the wells, men would hang out at the wells as well.
It would have been a common place for Moses to stop and rest. Wells
were also a good place to find a wife since the girls would come and
water the flocks. This is
how Jacob found a wife, and many others as well. In
verse 17 we see the caring heart of Moses again.
While at the well, some shepherds came and tried to drive these
seven woman away from the well. Moses
prevented this from happening. Moses
might well have been a big and strong man in order to drive a way some
shepherds, and also in order to have killed the Egyptian.
Once again, we see the sense of justice that Moses had, and that
was a good characteristic for him to have since God would later choose
him to institute the Law of Moses to God's people. In
verses 18 and 19 we see the girls return to their father and he wondered
why they were back so early. They
told him about how Moses had rescued them from the hands of the
shepherds and that he had helped water the flocks and that is why they
returned early Notice
that the girls thought that Moses was an Egyptian.
The reason for this is obvious.
He was raised as an Egyptian.
He was dressed as an Egyptian.
He then would be clean shaven.
Semitic men normally grew beards and would have had longer hair
than Egyptians. In
verse 20 the girls father had them go back and find Moses to invite him
for a meal. Moses agrees in
verse 21. We
also learn that the father gave Zipporah to Moses to be his wife.
So, like Joseph, Moses marries a non-Israeli, something that God
all along was not in favour of. Was
God in favour of this marriage? We
can't say for sure. We will
learn later that Moses will have another wife. In
verse 22 we note that Zipporah gave Moses a son and Moses called him
Gershom, because Moses felt like an alien in a foreign land, which he
was. The name Gershom,
probably a Midianite name, is very close the a Hebrew name meaning
"an alien." Between
verses 22 and 23 is another forty year period of time.
Moses is now about eighty years old.
We
learn in verse 22 that the Pharaoh that Moses knew had died but the Jews
were still in slavery, and it appears that things were getting worse.
They cried out to their God.
By now a new generation of Jews were in Verse
25 simply states that God was concerned with |