'And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to
wife a daughter of Levi. 2. And the woman conceived, and
bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly
child, she hid him three months. 3. And when she could
not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes,
and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the
child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's
brink. 4. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would
be done to him. 5. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down
to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked
along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among
the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. 6. And when
she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the
babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This
is one of the Hebrews' children. 7. Then said his sister
to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse
of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for
thee? 8. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the
maid went and called the child's mother. 9. And Pharaoh's
daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse
it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman
took the child, and nursed it. 10. And the child grew,
and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he
became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she
said, Because I drew him out of the water.'--EXODUS ii. 1-10.
I. It is remarkable that all the persons in this narrative are
anonymous. We know that the names of 'the man of the house of Levi' and
his wife were Amram and Jochebed. Miriam was probably the anxious
sister who watched what became of the little coffer. The daughter of
Pharaoh has two names in Jewish tradition, one of which corresponds to
that which Brugsch has found to have been borne by one of Rameses' very
numerous daughters. One likes to think that the name of the
gentle-hearted woman has come down to us; but, whether she was called
'Meri' or not, she and the others have no name here. The reason can
scarcely have been ignorance. But they are, as it were, kept in shadow,
because the historian saw, and wished us to see, that a higher Hand was
at work, and that over all the events recorded in these verses there
brooded the informing, guiding Spirit of God Himself, the sole actor.
'Each only as God wills
Can work--God's puppets, best and worst,
Are we: there is no last nor first.'
II. The mother's motive in braving the danger to herself involved in
keeping the child is remarkably put. 'When she saw that he was a goodly
child, she hid him.' It was not only a mother's love that emboldened
her, as it does all weak creatures, to shelter her offspring at her own
peril, but something in the look of the infant, as it lay on her bosom,
touched her with a dim hope. According to the Septuagint translation,
both parents shared in this. And so the Epistle to the Hebrews unites
them in that which is here attributed to the mother only. Stephen, too,
speaks of Moses as 'fair in God's sight.' As if the prescient eyes of
the parents were not blinded by love, but rather cleared to see some
token of divine benediction resting on him. The writer of the _Hebrews_
lifts the deed out of the category of instinctive maternal affection up
to the higher level of faith. So we may believe that the aspect of her
child woke some prophetic vision in the mother's soul, and that she and
her husband were of those who cherished the hopes naturally born from
the promise to Abraham, nurtured by Jacob's and Joseph's dying wish to
be buried in Canaan, and matured by the tyranny of Pharaoh. Their
faith, at all events, grasped the unseen God as their helper, and made
Jochebed bold to break the terrible law, as a hen will fly in the face
of a mastiff to shield her brood. Their faith perhaps also grasped the
future deliverance, and linked it in some way with their child. We may
learn how transfiguring and ennobling to the gentlest and weakest is
faith in God, especially when it is allied with unselfish human love.
These two are the strongest powers. If they are at war, the struggle is
terrible: if they are united, 'the weakest is as David, and David as an
angel of God.' Let us seek ever to blend their united strength in our
own lives.
Will it be thought too fanciful if we suggest that we are taught
another lesson,--namely, that the faith which surrenders its earthly
treasures to God, in confidence of His care, is generally rewarded and
vindicated by receiving them back again, glorified and sanctified by
the altar on which they have been laid? Jochebed clasped her recovered
darling to her bosom with a deeper gladness, and held him by a surer
title, when Miriam brought him back as the princess's charge, than ever
before. We never feel the preciousness of dear ones so much, nor are so
calm in the joy of possession, as when we have laid them in God's
hands, and have learned how wise and wonderful His care is.
III. 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.
IV. The sweet picture of womanly compassion in Pharaoh's daughter is
full of suggestions. We have already noticed that her name is handed
down by one tradition as 'Merris,' and that 'Meri' has been found as
the appellation of a princess of the period. A rabbinical authority
calls her 'Bithiah,' that is, 'Daughter of Jehovah'; by which was, no
doubt, intended to imply that she became in some sense a proselyte.
This may have been only an inference from her protection of Moses.
There is a singular and very obscure passage in I Chronicles iv. 17,
18, relating the genealogy of a certain Mered, who seems to have had
two wives, one 'the Jewess,' the other 'Bithiah, the daughter of
Pharaoh.' We know no more about him or her, but Keil thinks that Mered
probably 'lived before the exodus'; but it can scarcely be that the
'daughter of Pharaoh,' his wife, is our princess, and that she actually
became a 'daughter of Jehovah,' and, like her adopted child, refused
royal dignity and preferred reproach. In any case, the legend of her
name is a tender and beautiful way of putting the belief that in her
'there was some good thing towards the God of Israel.'
But, passing from that, how the true woman's heart changes languid
curiosity into tenderness, and how compassion conquers pride of race
and station, as well as regard for her father's edict, as soon as the
infant's cry, which touches every good woman's feelings, falls on her
ear! 'One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.' All the centuries
are as nothing; the strange garb and the stranger mental and spiritual
dress fade, and we have here a mere woman, affected, as every true
sister of hers to-day would be, by the helpless wailing. God has put
that instinct there. Alas that it ever should be choked by frivolity or
pride, and frozen by indifference and self-indulgence! Gentle souls
spring up in unfavourable soil. Rameses was a strange father for such a
daughter. How came this dove in the vulture's cage? Her sweet pity
beside his cold craft and cruelty is like the lamb couching by the
lion. Note, too, that gentlest pity makes the gentlest brave. She sees
the child is a Hebrew. Her quick wit understands why it has been
exposed, and she takes its part, and the part of the poor weeping
parents, whom she can fancy, against the savage law. No doubt, as
Egyptologists tell us, the princesses of the royal house had separate
households and abundant liberty of action. Still, it was bold to
override the strict commands of such a monarch. But it was not a
self-willed sense of power, but the beautiful daring of a compassionate
woman, to which God committed the execution of His purposes.
And that is a force which has much like work trusted to it in modern
society too. Our great cities swarm with children exposed to a worse
fate than the baby among the flags. Legislation and official charity
have far too rough hands and too clumsy ways to lift the little life
out of the coffer, and to dry the tears. We must look to Christian
women to take a leaf out of 'Bithiah's' book. First, they should use
their eyes to see the facts, and not be so busy about their own luxury
and comfort that they pass the poor pitch-covered box unnoticed. Then
they should let the pitiful call touch their heart, and not steel
themselves in indifference or ease. Then they should conquer prejudices
of race, pride of station, fear of lowering themselves, loathing, or
contempt. And then they should yield to the impulses of their
compassion, and never mind what difficulties or opponents may stand in
the way of their saving the children. If Christian women knew their
obligations and their power, and lived up to them as bravely as this
Egyptian princess, there would be fewer little ones flung out to be
eaten by crocodiles, and many a poor child, who is now abandoned from
infancy to the Devil, would be rescued to grow up a servant of God.
She, there by the Nile waters, in her gracious pity and prompt wisdom,
is the type of what Christian womanhood, and, indeed, the whole
Christian community, should be in relation to child life.
V. 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 which 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. It was a strange irony of Providence
that put him so close to the throne which he was to shake. For his
future work he needed to be lifted above his people, and to be familiar
with the Egyptian court as well as with Egyptian learning. If he was to
hate and to war against idolatry, and to rescue an unwilling people
from it, he must know the rottenness of the system, and must have lived
close enough to it to know what went on behind the scenes, and how
foully it smelled when near. He would gain influence over his
countrymen by his connection with Pharaoh, whilst his very separation
from them would at once prevent his spirit from being broken by
oppression, and would give him a keener sympathy with his people than
if he had himself been crushed by slavery. His culture, heathen as it
was, supplied the material on which the divine Spirit worked. God
fashioned the vessel, and then filled it. Education is not the
antagonist of inspiration. For the most part, the men whom God has used
for His highest service have been trained in all the wisdom of their
age. When it has been piled up into an altar, then 'the fire of the
Lord' falls.
Our story teaches us that God's chosen instruments are immortal till
their work is done. No matter how forlorn may seem their outlook, how
small the probabilities in their favour, how divergent from the goal
may seem the road He leads them, He watches them. Around that frail
ark, half lost among the reeds, is cast the impregnable shield of His
purpose. All things serve that Will. The current in the full river, the
lie of the flags that stop it from being borne down, the hour of the
princess's bath, the direction of her idle glance, the cry of the child
at the right moment, the impulse welling up in her heart, the swift
resolve, the innocent diplomacy of the sister, the shelter of the happy
mother's breast, the safety of the palace,--all these and a hundred
more trivial and unrelated things are spun into the strong cable
wherewith God draws slowly but surely His secret purpose into act. So
ever His children are secure as long as He has work for them, and His
mighty plan strides on to its accomplishment over all the barriers that
men can raise.
How deeply this story had impressed on devout minds the truth of the
divine protection for all who serve Him, is shown by the fact that the
word employed in the last verse of our lesson, and there translated
'drawn,' of which the name 'Moses' is a form, is used on the only
occasion of its occurrence in the Old Testament (namely Psalm xviii.
16, and in the duplicate in 2 Sam. xxii. 17) with plain reference to
our narrative. The Psalmist describes his own deliverance, in answer to
his cry, by a grand manifestation of God's majesty; and this is the
climax and the purpose of the earthquake and the lightning, the
darkness and the storm: 'He sent from above, He took me, He drew me out
of many waters.' So that scene by the margin of the Nile, so many years
ago, is but one transient instance of the working of the power which
secures deliverance from encompassing perils, and for strenuous, though
it may be undistinguished, service to all who call upon Him. God, who
put the compassion into the heart of Pharaoh's dusky daughter, is not
less tender of heart than she, and when He hears us, though our cry be
but as of an infant, 'with no language but a cry,' He will come in His
majesty and draw us from encompassing dangers and impending death. We
cannot all be lawgivers and deliverers; but we may all appeal to His
great pity, and partake of deliverance like that of Moses and of David.