Exodus Chapter 2
Perhaps one of the Bible’s best-known parts is the story of Moses. It is a major historic event in the background and heritage of the Jewish people.
Moses, as the author and principal of the first four chapters of the Old Testament is perhaps the greatest Bible "legend" even known among non-Bible followers. The story of Moses has been the subject to hundreds of articles and books, and major Hollywood movie productions, including a popular children’s animated feature.
The background of Moses’ story is told in the first chapter of Exodus. Joseph had been a popular figure with the Pharaoh of Egypt, because Joseph saved the Egyptian people from a severe seven-year drought. The Pharaoh loved Joseph and allowed and encouraged Joseph to nourish and care for his father Jacob’s family (the family of Israel), which started as approximately 70 individuals as the heirs of Jacob’s twelve sons (the 12 tribes of Israel).
The family flourished in Egypt, truly becoming a "nation". Even with the deaths of Jacob and Joseph, the Israelite nation grew and prospered: "And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceedingly; and the land was filled with them. Exodus 1:7.
Approximately 350 years passed in Egypt from the times of Joseph until the birth of Moses. Numerous generations of Israelites grew and prospered. Egypt was subject to invasions by other nations and numerous changes in leadership, resulting eventually in a "king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph." Exodus 1:8.
The new Pharaoh had no appreciation for the background of the Israelites, and what Joseph’s contribution had one time meant to saving the Egyptian people from starvation. The new Pharaoh became afraid of the increasing population and prosperity of the Israelites, fearing: "the children of Israel are more mightier than we".
The Pharaoh created a life of hard labor and misery for the Israelites. He put them into hard labor and bondage; and insisted all new-born male Jewish children be killed. When that failed, the Pharaoh ordered all male Jewish children be thrown into the Nile River to drown. But God oversaw the Jewish people, and "the people multiplied" in spite of the Pharaoh’s reign of terror.
Exodus chapter 2 opens with the birth of a Jewish boy out of the Israel tribe of Levi: to "a man of the house of Levi" who took a wife from "a daughter of Levi." Exodus 2:1
The mother conceived "a goodly child" which she hid for three months to avoid the Pharaoh’s death command.
"When she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein;" the mother put the child and the small boat in the growth along the Nile river bank. The child’s older sister hid nearby to watch what happened to the small child.
A daughter of the Pharaoh came down to the river to wash. She spotted the small ark and ordered her maidens to fetch it. She opened it to find a small child crying. She noted it was a Jewish child and had compassion for the child.
Seeing this, the child’s watching sister made herself known and has Pharaoh’s daughter if she desired a Hebrew woman to nurse and care for the child. The Pharaoh’s daughter agreed and the young girl went and got the Hebrew mother to be nursemaid to her own child. Pharaoh’s daughter paid wages to the child’s mother to care for the child.
As the child grew. The mother brought the child back to the Pharaoh’s daughter who made the infant her son, and raised it in the Pharaoh’s house, and trained the child in the ways of the Egyptians. The Pharaoh’s daughter named the child "Moses" because she "drew him out of the water". Exodus 1:22 (See also Acts 7:17-22).
Moses learned and grew in the house of Egyptians, and became mighty in the words and ways and deeds of the Egyptians. Acts. 7:22. He became like and Egyptian price, not a castaway male of the Hebrews. That is, until he reached the age of 40. Things then changed dramatically in his life.