The Birth of Moses

Now it happened that the Egyptians grew soft and lazy about hard work, and gave themselves up to other pleasures, and above all to the love of gain. They also became very hostile toward the Hebrews, stung with envy at their prosperity. When they saw how the nation of the Israelites flourished, and had already become eminent for the abundance of wealth they had gained by their virtue and their natural love of work, they thought the Israelites’ growth was to their own harm. And since over a long time they had forgotten the benefits they had received from Joseph — particularly as the crown had now passed to another family — they treated the Israelites very abusively and devised many ways of afflicting them. They ordered them to dig a great number of channels for the river, and to build walls for their cities, and embankments, to hold the river back and keep its waters from standing in pools when it ran over its banks. They set them to build pyramids too, and with all this wore our people out, and forced them to learn every kind of craft and to grow used to hard labor. Four hundred years they spent under these afflictions; for each side strove to get the better of the other, the Egyptians wanting to destroy the Israelites by these labors, and the Israelites wanting to hold out under them to the end. [a]

While the Hebrews’ affairs stood like this, an occasion arose that made the Egyptians still more eager to wipe out our nation. One of their sacred scribes — men very skilled in foretelling the future truly — told the king that about this time a child would be born to the Israelites who, if he were reared, would bring the Egyptian rule low and raise up the Israelites; that he would surpass all men in virtue, and win a glory that would be remembered through all ages. The king was so afraid of this that, following this man’s opinion, he commanded that every male child born to the Israelites be thrown into the river and destroyed. Besides this, the Egyptian midwives were to watch the labors of the Hebrew women and observe what was born; for these were the women ordered to serve as midwives to them, and because they were the king’s own people they would not disobey his commands. He ordered too that if any parents disobeyed him and dared to save their male children alive in secret, they and their families should be destroyed. [c]

This was a cruel affliction for those who suffered it. They were robbed of their sons; they themselves, the parents, were forced to serve in the destruction of their own children; and it could only be supposed to tend toward the rooting out of their nation, since with their children destroyed and themselves gradually dying away, the calamity would become very hard and past all comfort. Such was the wretched state they were in. But no one can overpower the purpose of God, though he devise ten thousand cunning schemes to do it. This child, whom the sacred scribe foretold, was brought up and hidden from the watchers the king had appointed; and the man who foretold him was not mistaken about what would follow from his survival. It all came about in the following way.

A man named Amram, one of the more noble of the Hebrews, was afraid for his whole nation, that it would die out for lack of young men to be raised in the future. He was very troubled by this, for his wife was then pregnant, and he did not know what to do. So he turned to prayer to God, and begged him to have compassion on people who had in no way broken the laws of his worship, to give them deliverance from the miseries they were then enduring, and to bring to nothing their enemies’ hopes of destroying their nation. God had mercy on him and was moved by his prayer. He stood beside him in his sleep and urged him not to despair of his favors to come. He said further that he had not forgotten their piety toward him and would always reward them for it, as he had shown favor to their forefathers before and had made them grow from a few into so great a multitude. He reminded him that when Abraham had come alone out of Mesopotamia into Canaan, he had been made happy in other ways too, and in particular that when his wife was at first barren, she was afterward enabled by God to conceive, and bore him sons; and that Abraham left to Ishmael and his descendants the country of Arabia, to his sons by Keturah the land of the Troglodytes, and to Isaac, Canaan. Then he said, “By my help Abraham did great deeds in war, which you must still remember unless you yourselves are impious. As for Jacob, he became famous even among foreigners for the greatness of the prosperity in which he lived and which he left to his sons, who came into Egypt with no more than seventy souls, while you have now become more than six hundred thousand. Know, then, that I will provide what is good for all of you in common, and for you yourself in particular what will make you famous. For that child, out of dread of whose birth the Egyptians have doomed the Israelite children to destruction, will be this child of yours. He will be hidden from those who watch to destroy him, and when he has been brought up in a surprising way, he will deliver the Hebrew nation from the distress the Egyptians are putting them under. His memory will be famous as long as the world lasts, not only among the Hebrews but among foreigners too — all this will be the effect of my favor to you and to your descendants. He will also have a brother who will himself receive my priesthood, and his descendants will hold it after him to the end of the world.” [e]

When the vision had told him these things, Amram woke and told it to Jochebed, his wife. And now their fear grew because of the prediction in Amram’s dream; for they were anxious not only for the child but also because of the great good fortune that was to come to him. The mother’s labor, however, confirmed what God had foretold, for it went unnoticed by those who watched her: her pains were easy, and the throes of her delivery did not come on her violently. They nursed the child at home in secret for three months. After that Amram feared he would be discovered, and that by falling under the king’s displeasure both he and the child would perish, and so he would bring God’s promise to nothing. He decided to trust the safety and care of the child to God rather than to depend on his own hiding of him, which he considered uncertain, and a danger both to the child, nursed so secretly, and to himself; and he believed that God would surely find some way to keep the child safe, so as to make his own predictions come true. [g]

Having decided this, they made a basket woven of papyrus in the shape of a cradle, large enough for an infant to lie in without being cramped. They daubed it over with bitumen, which would naturally keep the water from coming in between the reeds, put the infant into it, and set it afloat on the river, leaving his safety to God. So the river received the child and carried him along. Miriam, the child’s sister, went along the bank opposite him, as her mother had told her, to see where the basket would be carried. And here God showed that human wisdom is nothing, and that whatever he chooses to do comes to a good end: that those who condemn others to destruction for their own security, and take great pains over it, fail in their purpose, while others are saved in a surprising way and come to prosperity almost from the very midst of their calamities — those, I mean, whose dangers come about by God’s appointment. And indeed, such providence was exercised over this child as showed the power of God.

Thermuthis was the king’s daughter. She was amusing herself by the riverbank, and seeing a cradle carried along by the current, she sent some swimmers and told them to bring the cradle to her. When those sent on this errand came to her with the cradle and she saw the little child, she was greatly taken with him because of his size and beauty. For God had taken such great care in forming Moses that he made him thought worthy of being raised and provided for by the very people who, out of dread of his birth, had made the most deadly resolutions to destroy the rest of the Hebrew nation. Thermuthis told them to bring her a woman who could give the child the breast; but the child would not take her breast and turned away from it, and did the same with many other women. Miriam was there when this happened — not so as to seem to be there on purpose, but only as if she had stayed to look at the child — and she said, “It is no use, my queen, calling for these women to nurse the child, since they are no relation to him. But if you order one of the Hebrew women to be brought, perhaps he will take the breast of one of his own nation.” Since she seemed to speak sensibly, Thermuthis told her to find such a woman and bring one of the Hebrew women who were nursing. So, given this authority, she went back and brought the mother, whom nobody there knew. And now the child gladly took the breast and seemed to cling to it; and so, at the queen’s wish, the nursing of the child was entrusted entirely to his mother.

It was then that Thermuthis gave him the name Mouses, from what had happened when he was put into the river; for the Egyptians call water mou, and those who are saved out of it eses, and so they put these two words together and gave him this name. And by everyone’s admission he was, as God had foretold, the best of all the Hebrews, both for greatness of mind and for contempt of hardship. Abraham was his ancestor in the seventh generation: Moses was the son of Amram, who was the son of Kohath, whose father Levi was the son of Jacob, who was the son of Isaac, who was the son of Abraham. Moses’ understanding outgrew his age, and far beyond that standard; even in his play he showed a maturity beyond his years, and his actions even then promised greater things when he should come to manhood. God also gave him a remarkable height when he was only three years old. As for his beauty, no one was so indifferent to beauty as not to be greatly struck by the beauty of his face on seeing Moses. It often happened that people who met him as he was carried along the road turned around on seeing the child, left what they were doing, and stood still a long while to look at him; for the child’s charm was so great and so unmixed that it held all who saw him. [j]

So Thermuthis, seeing what a remarkable child he was, adopted him as her son, since she had no child of her own. One day she brought Moses to her father and showed him to him, and said she had thought of making him her successor, if it pleased God that she should have no legitimate child of her own. She said to him, “I have brought up a child of divine form and of noble mind. Since I received him, in a wonderful way, from the bounty of the river, I thought it right to adopt him as my son and the heir of your kingdom.” When she had said this, she put the infant into her father’s hands. He took him and hugged him to his chest, and to please his daughter he playfully put his diadem on the child’s head. But Moses pulled it off and threw it to the ground — out of childishness, as it seemed — and trod on it with his feet — which seemed to carry an evil omen for the kingdom of Egypt. When the sacred scribe saw this (he was the one who had foretold that the child’s birth would bring that kingdom’s rule low), he made a violent rush to kill him, and crying out frightfully, he said, “This, O king — this child is the one God foretold, that if we kill him we will be in no danger. He himself bears witness to the prediction by trampling on your government and treading on your diadem. Take him out of the way, then. Free the Egyptians from the fear they are in because of him, and take from the Hebrews the hope they have of being encouraged by him.” But Thermuthis stopped him and snatched the child away. And the king was in no hurry to kill him, for God himself, whose providence protected Moses, inclined the king to spare him. So he was brought up with great care. The Hebrews depended on him and had good hopes that great things would be done by him, while the Egyptians were suspicious of what would follow from such an upbringing. Yet because, if Moses were killed, there was no one, related or adopted, who had any oracle on his side to give him a claim to the crown of Egypt and who was likely to be of greater advantage to them, they held back from killing him. [l]