LONG AGO the Israelites were slaves in the land of Egypt. They multiplied so fast that the Egyptians were afraid they might become stronger than themselves and cease to serve them. So Pharaoh, the cruel Egyptian king, gave orders that every son born among the Israelites should be cast into the river Nile.
How great must have been the sorrow to mothers to have their baby boys taken from them and drowned in the river! Well, there was one God-fearing mother who had a little baby boy and she felt that she could not let him be taken from her. So she hid him in the house for three months, but at last she found she could hide him no longer. Perhaps the little fellow cried out so loudly at times that she was afraid her secret would be found out.
What was she to do? We believe she and her husband prayed to the Lord a good deal about it. She made an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and pitch to keep the water out, and then she put her dear little son into the ark, carried it to the river and put him among the flags, or reeds, by the bank. Leaving his older sister behind to watch, she went away.
By and by Pharaoh’s daughter came down to wash herself in the river and she spied the little ark. She sent her maid to fetch it, and when she opened it how astonished she was to see the little babe. He was crying, and her womanly heart so pitied the little fellow that she determined to save him. She sent Moses’ sister to get a nurse and who else should she get but her own mother, of course. So the mother could now nurse her little boy openly and unafraid, she could love him to her heart’s content, and be paid wages for doing it. That is the first and last time I ever heard of a mother being paid wages for nursing her own little child in this way. How she and her husband must have poured out their hearts in thankfulness and praise to God for the way He had undertaken for them! But “is anything too hard for the Lord?”
Pharaoh’s daughter called the little child Moses, which means “Drawn out,” because she drew him out of the river. He became her adopted son, and when he grew up he became the one chosen of God to deliver His people out of Egypt and to lead them across the desert toward Canaan’s land. So that is how God honored his noble mother.
ML-06/10/1973