The Baby in the Basket

Many, many years went by in Egypt. Joseph grew old and died, and his brothers died too, and their children had children, and their children had children after them. The family of Israel grew and grew until there were more of them than anyone could count, and the whole land was full of them. Then a new king came to rule over Egypt — a king who had never known Joseph and did not care what Joseph had done. He looked at all those people and he was afraid. He said to his own people, “Look how many the children of Israel are! They are stronger than we are. We must be clever with them, or one day they will fight against us and march right out of our land.” So the king made them slaves. He set hard masters over them with whips, and made them dig clay and pack it into bricks and build cities for him under the hot sun. Their lives were bitter with all that work. But the harder Egypt pushed them down, the more they grew.

Then the king did a terrible thing. He gave an order to all his people: every baby boy born to the Hebrews was to be thrown into the great river. But there were two brave women, Shiphrah and Puah, who helped the Hebrew mothers when their babies were born. They feared God, and they would not do what the king said. They let the little boys live. And God was good to them, and gave them families of their own.

In one of those houses a baby boy was born, and he was beautiful. His mother hid him — one month, two months, three months — but a growing baby cannot be hidden forever. So she made a little basket, and she painted it with tar until no water could get in. She laid her baby inside it, and she carried it down to the river and set it among the tall green reeds at the edge of the water. And the baby’s big sister stood a little way off, watching to see what would happen to him.

That very morning the king’s own daughter came down to the river to bathe, and her maids walked along the bank beside her. She saw the basket in the reeds, and she sent her maid to lift it out. She opened it — and there was a little baby, crying. Her heart went out to him, and she said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” Then the baby’s sister came running and said, “Shall I go and find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” And the princess said, “Go.” So the girl ran and brought — his own mother! And the princess said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the baby went home to his own mother’s arms, and she kept him and fed him until he was big. Then she brought him back to the king’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, and she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

Moses grew up in the palace, but he never forgot who his people were. One day, when he was a grown man, he went out and watched them working, and he saw an Egyptian beating one of his own brothers. Moses looked one way and the other, and when he saw no one, he struck the Egyptian down and hid him in the sand. The next day he saw two Hebrew men fighting each other, and he said to the one who was in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your neighbor?” And the man answered, “Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Are you going to kill me the way you killed the Egyptian yesterday?” Then Moses was afraid. Everybody knew. And when the king heard about it, he wanted Moses dead — so Moses ran away, far across the desert, to a country called Midian, and sat down beside a well.

Seven sisters came to that well to water their father’s sheep, and rough shepherds drove them away. But Moses stood up and helped them, and drew the water himself, and watered every sheep. When the sisters came home early, their father Jethro said, “Why are you back so soon today?” They told him about the stranger who had helped them, and he said, “And where is he? Why did you leave the man out there? Go and call him in to eat with us.” So Moses stayed with them. He married Jethro’s daughter Zipporah, and a son was born to them, and Moses kept his father-in-law’s sheep out in the wide quiet hills. The boy from the basket had become a shepherd in a faraway land.

And all that time, back in Egypt, the children of Israel were still slaves. They groaned under their heavy work, and they cried out — and their cry went up to God. And God heard them. God remembered his forever promise to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob. And God looked on the children of Israel, and he made himself known to them.