By J.R. Miller
Exodus 2
Everybody is interested in a baby--that is, everybody who has a gentle heart. The babies of the Bible are especially interesting. Next to the infancy and childhood of Jesus, perhaps no Bible baby interests us so much as the infant Moses in his basket among the rushes.
We must bring up a little of background of the story. Pharaoh became alarmed at the rapid growth of the Hebrews. He determined to check their increase. He tried to do this, first, by making the people slaves, reducing them to bondage. He made them toil on the public works. He set taskmasters over them and compelled them to work in building storage cities. The intention was, by the burdens put upon them, to wear them out and check their increase. But the more he afflicted them--the more they grew. Yet more rigorous was the service made--and the more bitter the cruel bondage. But all availed nothing. They still increased marvelously.
Then a still more barbarous scheme was ordered. Every male infant was to be killed, cast into the Nile. It was while this edict was in force that Moses was born. The prospect was not bright for the child's future. But when God has a purpose and a work for a life, men's schemes do not avail. The king was no match for God.
It is a beautiful story we are to study. The king's own daughter becomes unwittingly the protector of the little child, not only rescuing him from the river--but also training him under royal shelter for his mission as liberator of his people. When Jochebed, the mother, looked into her baby's face she saw that he was "a fine child", very beautiful. The child's beauty was to play an important part in shaping his destiny. No doubt it influenced the princess, too, when she saw the child in the basket. It is not surprising that he seemed beautiful to his mother. What mother ever saw anything but beauty in her own child? Love transfigures the homeliest features. Every baby born into the world is the handsomest baby ever born--to one woman. God never sends a baby--but He sends love to make a nest for it. Yet there was something unusual in this infant's appearance, something which told the mother that he was to have a great destiny. "Cast this baby into the river!" she said. "Never!" So she hid him.
No doubt there were spies watching the Hebrew homes to drag every boy baby away to the Nile. Jochebed would keep the news of the little stranger's coming so secret, that it never would be known there was an infant in the house. Yet it is hard to hide a baby very long. How she must have trembled every time the child cried, lest some informant might be prowling round the door and should hear the sound and come in. Three months passed. Then she began to feel that she could hide him no longer. He was getting too large. The danger was too great. She must think of some other way to protect him. How should she do it?
Love is fertile in devices. Jochebed decided upon her course, and then she intelligently and very bravely set to work to carry it out. She wove a little ark of bulrushes, and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. She seemed to put it just where the king's watchers and guards would be surest to find the child. What did she mean? Just this--that when she could no longer conceal him herself she would put him altogether out of her own hands--into God's. That is the law of Providence--God does nothing for us which we can do for ourselves; but when we can do no more we may turn to God and be sure that He will work for us. Jochebed believed that God had a great purpose for her child, and she would let God take the whole care of him in the present peril.
Does any mother ever now place her child on the edge of such perils, committing him to God? Yes; there are more cruel rivers than the Nile, flowing by our very doors. Only think of intemperance, impurity, evil companionship, the myriad vices amid which every child has to be raised. The Christian mother cannot hide her child forever in her own home. Some mothers think this is their duty, and they try to keep their children sheltered in their home, not allowing them to mingle with other children. But this is not the true way to bring up a child in order to make him strong and ready for life's tasks and duties. He must meet temptation, or he will never be able to live victoriously. He must go out into the world. What can the mother do to shelter him from the dangers and the enemies? She can only build an ark for him, then put him out of her own hands, and ask God to take care of him.
See good Jochebed making this ark for the launching of her heart's treasure. She takes great pains in weaving it to make it strong. Then she plasters it with tar and pitch to make it watertight. No doubt many tears dropped upon it as she worked away, and she wove as many prayers as reeds into the little barque. At last it was finished. Then she took her three-month old baby and laid him in the ark, and told Miriam, the baby's sister, to carry the basket down to the river and leave it there at a certain spot among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
Well, that is just what good Christian mothers are doing all the while with their children. They must let them go out to meet temptation. So they build arks out of the promises, the good counsels, the Bible teachings, and the home influences. They line them with many prayers and much love. They consecrate them with tears. Then they put their children into them and push them out into the world, committing them to God.
Now what did God do? He took charge of this child. How wonderfully He arranged everything! All the promises to Abraham and all the hopes of the nation hung upon that baby, born in slavery, with the doom of death pronounced upon it, and now laid actually outside of the mother's care in a little basket by the river's edge. Yet all was perfectly safe, for God was watching. "Steer boldly," said Caesar to his pilot in a storm. "Steer boldly, good pilot, for you bear Caesar and his fortunes." More than Caesar's fortunes lay in this little basket, and no wave could wreck it, no great beast could crunch the baby or trample it into the mire.
The sister did her part well. She kept faithful watch over that basket, and did not go off to gather flowers, nor sit down to play with her dolls. She attended to her duty. Her baby brother's life was in her keeping. We shall see, as we read on, what she was to him, not only then but afterward. Many an older sister has been God's angel to her younger brother. Sometimes noble sisters sacrifice their own pleasure and happiness in unselfishly living for their brothers, that they may obtain an education and become noble men. In many a home there is a boy exposed to danger and temptation, and there is an older sister who has it in her power to be guardian and friend to him, doing for him what Miriam did for her brother. Will the young girls who read these words--think what they can do for their brothers?
Was it an accident that the princess came down that way just at that time? She did not know any reason for taking a stroll but for the common one--that she might bathe in the Nile. Yet she was really on an errand for God. She did not even know God, for her religion was heathen--but God knew her, and had her unwittingly do this beautiful work for Him. So we all go on our way each day, each intent on his own purposes--but all the while God is using us to help carry out His greater purposes. Any daily walk we take--may accomplish an errand for God, may touch some life with blessing, or decide some destiny.
Had the mother thought it all out? Did she know the habits of the princess? Did she put her baby in the ark and place it carefully so that the princess would be the first to see it? Then did she depend upon the appeal the child would make by its helplessness to her woman heart? So it would seem. When the princess had the ark opened--the baby was crying, and this cry touched her compassion. She would have been an unnatural woman if she had remained unmoved, or if she had bidden her maidens cast the baby into the river.
We cannot but admire Miriam's beautiful doing of her part in this wonderful life-drama. Someone has said of her and her words, "A little girl by one speech changed the history of the world." She was watching faithfully, and the moment the little basket was brought to the princess this artless Hebrew maiden was close beside her. A picture of the scene represents Miriam standing with her hands behind her back, looking into the basket as innocently as if it were all a perfect surprise to her. With wondrous artlessness she suggested that she would run and find a nurse for the child among the Hebrews.
What woman should she call to nurse that baby--what one but the baby's mother? How the little maiden must have hastened! How the mother's heart must have leaped when she was called to become nurse to the little foundling! And now we see the princess of Egypt, unawares committing the beautiful baby she had found, back into his own mother's hands to be nursed by her!
We can imagine the feelings of Jochebed's heart as she took her child into her bosom again. She did not need to hide her baby now. The princess of Egypt had adopted him and the protection of the throne was over him. No one dared touch him.
When God took charge of the training of this child for his great mission--the first teacher He sent him to was his own mother. No one can ever take the true mother's place in the training of a child. Some things God gives twice--but He never gives a mother twice to a child. It was especially important that Moses should be brought up in his earliest days by his own mother. He must be trained as a Hebrew, with Hebrew sympathies, with the knowledge of the true God. If he had been brought up from the first in the palace of Egypt, with Egyptian teachers, he never could have become the deliverer of his people.
At length, however, the child was removed from the mother's care, and taken to the palace to occupy his place as the son of the princess. His mother must be his first teacher--but she could not teach him all he needed to learn for his life's mission. So God arranged at the proper time to have him taken to another school. He would have to wrestle with Egypt by and by, and deliver his people out of Pharaoh's hands. He would also have to take a great company of slaves, form them into a nation, train them for self-government, and fit them for a glorious mission. To be prepared for all this work, Moses was placed in a position to learn the best of the world's wisdom. He never became an Egyptian, however--but remained a loyal Hebrew.
