A Child Hidden in the Reeds
2 1 Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi. 2 The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 When she could hide him no longer, she took a papyrus basket and coated it with tar and pitch. She placed the child in it and set it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. 5 Then Pharaoh's daughter came down to bathe in the Nile, while her attendants walked along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant girl to get it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child — a baby boy, crying. Her heart went out to him, and she said, "This is one of the Hebrew children."
7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call a Hebrew woman to nurse the child for you?"
8 "Yes, go," Pharaoh's daughter answered. So the girl went and called the child's mother.
9 Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages." So the woman took the child and nursed him.
10 When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, "Because I drew him out of the water." a a v10 The name Moses echoes the word for “to draw out” — naming him for the moment he was lifted from the water.
Moses Among His Own People
11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his own people and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He said to the one in the wrong, "Why are you hitting your companion?"
14 The man replied, "Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?" Then Moses was afraid and thought, "Surely this thing is known."
15 When Pharaoh heard about this, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, where he sat down beside a well.
16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father's flock. 17 When the shepherds came and drove them away, Moses got up, rescued them, and watered their flock. 18 When they returned to their father Reuel, he asked, "Why have you come back so early today?"
19 They answered, "An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock."
20 "And where is he?" he asked his daughters. "Why did you leave the man behind? Invite him to have something to eat."
21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 She gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, "I have become a foreigner in a foreign land." b b v22 The name Gershom sounds like the Hebrew for "a foreigner there" — Moses named his son for his own life as a stranger far from home.
23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out, and their cry for rescue from their bondage rose up to our Father. 24 Our Father heard their groaning, and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 Our Father looked on the Israelites, and he understood.