A Baby in a Basket

“She named him Moses and explained, ‘I drew him out of the water.’” — Exodus 2:10

A new king came to rule Egypt. The kings of Egypt were called Pharaoh. This Pharaoh had never known Joseph, and he didn’t care what Joseph had done to save Egypt long ago.

Pharaoh looked at the Israelites and was afraid. “There are too many of them,” he said. “If war comes, they might join our enemies.” So he made them slaves. He put cruel slave drivers over them and made them build whole cities for him, with bricks and mortar, in the hot sun.

But the harder the Egyptians made them work, the more the Israelites grew.

So Pharaoh made a terrible plan. He told the Hebrew midwives, the women who helped mothers when their babies were born, to kill every baby boy. But the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, loved God more than they feared Pharaoh. They let the boys live. And God was kind to the midwives.

Then Pharaoh gave an even more terrible order to all his people: “Every Hebrew baby boy must be thrown into the River Nile.”

At that time, an Israelite woman had a baby boy. He was a beautiful baby, and she hid him for three months. But babies grow, and they cry, and soon she couldn’t hide him any longer.

So she made a little basket out of papyrus reeds and coated it with tar, so the water couldn’t get in. She laid her baby in the basket and set it among the tall reeds at the edge of the river. His big sister stood a little way off to see what would happen.

Then Pharaoh’s own daughter came down to the river to bathe. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant girl to fetch it. When she opened it, there was the baby, crying! She felt so sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

His sister was ready. She stepped forward and said, “Shall I go and find one of the Hebrew women to feed the baby for you?”

“Yes, go,” said Pharaoh’s daughter.

And who do you think the girl fetched? The baby’s own mother! Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and feed him for me, and I will pay you.” So the baby’s mother got to take her own son home, and look after him, and she was even paid for it!

When the boy was older, his mother took him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, which sounds like the Hebrew words for “drawn out”, because she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

Pharaoh wanted to destroy God’s people. But God used Pharaoh’s own daughter to save the very boy who would one day lead them all to freedom.

Read it in your Bible: Exodus 1–2:10

Dear God, thank you that you watch over little babies and children. Thank you that no one can stop your plans. Help me to be brave like Shiphrah and Puah and Moses’ sister. Amen.