Exodus 2:1-10

Friends, welcome back as we continue through the week.
Moving into chapter two of the Book of Exodus here,
and really,
I mean, this is where we pick up the story that most of us know of the
Exodus, which is the story of Moses.
The first chapter serves as backdrop to set the stage for
Moses’ birth and why it is that Moses is
born and hidden and raised the way that he is,
but it also sets the backdrop for the slavery of the people,
the treatment of the people,
and their situation.
So let’s move into this.
I’m going to read a few verses here,
and then we’ll try to expound on them a little bit.
“So there was a man from the house of Levi who went and married a Levite woman.
The woman conceived and bore a child,
and when she saw that he was a fine baby,
she hid him for three months.
When she could hide him no longer,
she got a papyrus basket for him
and plastered it with bitumen and pitch,
and she put the child in it,
and she placed it among the
reeds on the bank of the river.
His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.”
Stop there, probably, Michael.
“So Israelite women,
men,
a Levite
from the tribe of Levi,
she has a baby.
It’s a boy.
We ended yesterday with the knowledge that the Pharaoh has now given
a decree to all the people that whenever they see an infant son,
a male infant among the Hebrews,
they are to throw him in the river.
And so,
here she does what most mothers,
she hides him as long as she can,
and when she could no longer hide him,
she gets a basket and ironically
puts him in the river,
in the banks on the bank of the river among the reeds,
and then sends
his sister,
well, we’ll get the sense in the next part that she was sent,
but regardless,
the sister stands at a distance to sort of keep an eye out and watch over her younger brother.
So, Michael, I’m sure this is the kind of thing that may have been happening.
We don’t know if this is
a common event, but certainly there were parents trying to find their way to protect their children,
to keep them from this thing,
this monstrous thing that the Pharaoh has decreed and that
evidently the people are doing,
and that sets the backdrop for how it is that Moses is going to be
born and how he’s going to be named and how he’s going to make his way into the Pharaoh’s house.
If you remember your high school English literature classes,
I suspect that at some point
you went through the beginnings of stories, introduction,
the importance of how you introduce
a character in the context,
and we’ve had a lot of the backstory told in the first chapter.
Now that we’ve turned to chapter two,
there is a kind of pace that we’ve now hit as we introduce
Moses, who is going to be this very heroic type figure.
And I think when I use heroic there,
I’m meaning it in the more literature sense,
because there’s some really interesting elements
that you might miss if you don’t take the time to see them.
Look, for instance, at the fact that
his parents in verse one are not named.
They go nameless, though we had the midwives name,
so it’s not as if the author has been unwilling to name people,
but here they’re left nameless,
much like in literature when you have a hero being born,
you’ll have this where the parents can see,
but they aren’t named.
They will later be named in the story,
interestingly, but not here.
Note that it says that they’re from the house of Levi,
which at this point in the story is not as
significant as what it will be later on when the lineage of being from Levi and therefore coming
from a priestly tradition or background is significant and a part of Moses’s ability,
that gets named right off of the start here in the text.
So right away, these details, they may pass by so we don’t slow enough to see them,
but here we have the beginning of the story of
an extraordinary person, someone who, of course, God is going to use in substantial ways.
And
it’s not that the parents aren’t important.
I mean, clearly, they’ve named that his mother
not only concedes, but she is the bravery to keep him,
to hold him, to care for him for three months
in the midst of him ostensibly being sought out by the deputized population.
And so obviously, it’s important and her faith sticks out here.
But there’s also clearly a sense in the text already
that in his libidical heritage,
Moses has some credentialing in his parents not being named.
There’s a sense that this is the telling of a story of someone who’s going to be significant.
There’s a lot of sort of small details that add up here to a bigger point.
Yeah, well, it’s really interesting, Michael, as we continue here and we get into some of those
details.
Let’s circle back to some of them.
Pick this up in verse five.
“The daughter of Pharaoh
came down to bathe at the river while her attendants walked beside the river.
She saw the basket among the reeds.
She sent her maid to bring it.
When she opened it,
she saw the child.
He was crying.
She took pity on him.
‘This must be one of the Hebrew children,’ she said.
Then his sister said to the Pharaoh’s daughter,
‘Shall I go get a nurse from the Hebrew women
to nurse the child for you?’ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her,
‘Yes.’ So the girl went and called the child’s mother.
Pharaoh’s daughter said to her,
‘Take this child and nurse him for me,
and I will give you your wages.’ So the woman took the child and nursed it.
When the child grew up,
she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter and she took him as her own.
She named him Moses because she said,
‘I drew him from the water.'” So very interesting.
One of the conjectures about this
text is that this is a setup,
that the daughter is waiting,
that they knew the Pharaoh’s daughter
was coming or would be by,
that this is a deliberate attempt to try and find a person
of influence, to find this boy.
And I don’t know,
it’d be hard to say one way or another on that.
The Bible does sort of,
as a Middle Eastern document,
kind of reward shrewdness or it likes
the idea of plans coming together sometimes.
But here we have this connection.
This young girl says,
‘Hey, I know a woman who’s nursing,’ and obviously there would have been many if the male
children are being taken,
then they would have had many women who were probably not raising children
that they had delivered.
So this doesn’t seem strange,
and the Pharaoh’s daughter said yes.
And so Moses actually gets to go back to his home.
He gets to grow up there to some age,
and it’s not clear if this is when he’s weaned perhaps,
maybe most likely,
possibly older.
But at that point,
then the parents have to take Moses back to the Pharaoh’s daughter.
And interestingly enough, she names him.
And the word Moses traditionally is translated
to be drawn up or brought up.
It also is very similar,
that’s the Hebrew version,
it’s very similar in Egypt to the word son.
And I wonder, Michael, if part of why this lineage
has been lost is that Moses doesn’t get the traditional naming of a male child.
You know, you would kind of think that the Bible would have maybe known,
but it may have been very
difficult for Moses who may not have remembered his parents or this story.
I don’t know.
It’s interesting to wonder about the unnamed parents and why it is maybe that we don’t know their names
in this story, but I wonder if it has something to do with the way that his own name is given to them.
There are some really interesting details that actually the early church picked up as well.
And I definitely don’t want you to miss this.
When we come into this part of the text about this
basket,
what you might not know here in verse five,
when the daughter of Pharaoh,
who by the way,
also is not named,
which is worth noting,
that fundamentally all of the power players in this
are all of the people who are taking action are not named.
And it’s only later that we even find
out Moses’s sister’s name.
That comes later in the story as well.
But that’s not the point.
The point here is when you see in verse five, the basket,
that’s the exact same word as the ark
used in the Noah stories.
And this is a very compelling idea that this little thing,
this rudderless object is going to be the thing that God is going to direct and use to bring
deliverance,
to bring freedom, to bring new life on the other side of a really bad situation.
And what is striking here is somewhat knowing the specialness of this moment,
you know, the Pharaoh’s daughter names Moses as the one drawn out,
right?
And like you said,
there’s this detachment from the lineage.
There’s a detachment from the life he would have lived otherwise.
And on one hand,
she would have thought of that as the child that she pulled out of the water.
She rescued,
she would have attributed that to her action,
pulling Moses out.
But from a Hebrew perspective,
Moses in that moment has been lifted out by God’s providential love and care.
God has used the Pharaoh’s daughter to essentially save the one who will be made a vessel of God’s
deliverance for the people.
And so the people oppressed might actually see the very name given
by this woman to be a sign or symbol of a much larger providential act of God.
It’s details like this that aren’t accidental.
I mean, it’s a layered story on purpose,
and we’re supposed to
see all of those layers.
And I guess I didn’t get to the early church saw in the being drawn out
metaphor, also an image of Jesus Christ,
that ultimately he was fully God,
fully human, that he would be the chosen one that would draw,
would be drawn out and would be the one who would provide
the path for salvation for others.
Yeah, I think there’s two
things that are of interest to me or
two things that I would want to include Michael.
And the first is that it’s a really,
I think it’s really good storytelling that the water here for the Hebrew people represents danger.
And yet it is also
the mechanism
by which Moses is delivered.
So it is that the children are to go into the river
as their death sentence,
and yet then he is drawn out by the Pharaoh’s daughter potentially through
the planning and wisdom of his own mother and sister.
And that leads to the second point,
I would say, we don’t know anything about this daughter of Pharaoh.
It could be that she’s simply spoiled.
But for whatever reason,
she acts to preserve life.
She finds a three month old child,
she disregards at some level, her father’s directive,
and instead takes this child,
she does so from a place of privilege,
probably a place of some power, some authority.
No one is likely to argue with her except her father who doesn’t seem to,
for whatever reason.
But it is interesting, Michael, that so far in this first chapter and a half in Exodus,
every female character we’ve seen works toward preserving life.
The midwives,
Moses’ mother,
his sister, now the daughter of the Pharaoh,
we have much to be said of the active role of women in this first
part of the story who are at their own risk in some cases seeking to do what saves children,
what preserves life.
And I don’t know how intentional that is in the story,
but I think
we’ve talked in Genesis,
the Bible as a product of its time and its culture doesn’t always
celebrate women the way that we wish that it did.
But I think a case could be made in this chapter
and a half that every female character we see is to be applauded and commended.
Yeah, one thing worth noting here is so much of our Genesis conversation,
if you were with us for
that, was about the idea of barrenness for women and the idea that God would be faithful and provide
even in the midst of not being able to have children and therefore not being able to carry on the lineage.
That’s very different here in Exodus where in some ways the table has turned.
Here the Hebrew women are having so much success in carrying their children.
They’re so
virulent that they’re ultimately a threat to Pharaoh.
And so the fact that here once again,
the story is pushed forward in this case by deeply courageous women and by women whose
blessing has extended and made them able to not only have this child but have the courage to
protect that child.
And then maybe to your point, Clint,
the willingness,
the providential
need to pull this child out of the war and to save it is an action that by no means
should be expected for this princess.
I mean, there’s a sense in which we should be surprised
by it.
And here we find that God is able to make a way because of people’s faithfulness,
because of people’s courage,
because of their willingness to listen and to trust.
And in the midst of it,
God is working of this substantial kind of figure for the sake of ultimately freeing God’s people.
And I just think it’s striking here when you look at the end of this section, verse 10,
“I drew him out of the water.” We’re going to see so much more drawing out
in the rest of this story in so many literal and figurative ways of play on the water,
a play on who’s the one who has the authority and ability to save and to pull out.
This is almost like in naming Moses and in sensing this moment,
this non-Israelite has somehow
intuited and spoken almost the thread that will go over the whole.
And if we’re attentive to it,
I think it’ll stick out as we go.
Yeah, we’ll cover a lot of ground tomorrow.
This chapter moves through Moses’ story
fairly quickly in order to get us on to the primary task of this book,
of this story.
But join us tomorrow if you can.
We’ll see the next step in Moses’ growth.
Thanks for being with us, everyone.