Young Moses

2 Now a man from the house of Levi took as his wife a daughter of Levi. ² The woman conceived and gave birth to a son. Now when she saw that he was delightful, she hid him for three months. ^{[a] 3} But when she could no longer hide him, she took a basket of papyrus reeds, coated it with tar and pitch, put the child inside, and laid it in the reeds by the bank of the Nile. ⁴ His sister stood off at a distance to see what would happen to him.

⁵ Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe, while her maidens walked along by the riverside. When she saw the basket^[b] among the reeds, she sent her handmaiden to fetch it. ⁶ When she opened it, she saw the child—a baby boy crying! She had compassion on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrew children.”

⁷ Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Should I go and call a nurse from the Hebrews to nurse the child for you?”

⁸ Pharaoh’s daughter told her, “Go!” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. ⁹ Then Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. ¹⁰ After the boy grew older she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. So she named him Moses saying, “Because I drew him out of the water.”^[c]

¹¹ Now it happened in those days, after Moses had grown up, that he went out to his brothers and saw their burdens. He noticed an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. ^{[d] 12} So he looked around and when he saw that there was nobody, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. ¹³ Then he went out the following day, and saw two Hebrew men fighting. So he said to the guilty one, “Why are you beating your companion?”

¹⁴ But the man answered, “Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Are you saying you’re going to kill me—just as you killed the Egyptian?”

Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “For sure the deed had become known.” ¹⁵ When Pharaoh heard about this, he tried to kill Moses.

But Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian,^[e] where he sat down by a well. ¹⁶ Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters who came and drew water. They filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. ¹⁷ But shepherds came and drove them away, so Moses stood up, helped them and watered their flock.

¹⁸ When they came to Reuel their father, he said, “How come you’ve returned so soon today?”

¹⁹ So they told him, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds. He also drew water for us and watered the flock.”

²⁰ “Where is he then?” he said to his daughters. “Why did you leave the man behind? Invite him to have some food to eat!”

²¹ Moses was content to stay on with the man. Later he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. ²² She gave birth to a son and he named him Gershom, saying, “I have been an outsider^[f] in a foreign land.”

²³ Now it came about over the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. Bnei-Yisrael groaned because of their slavery. They cried out and their cry from slavery went up to God. ²⁴ God heard their sobbing and remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. ²⁵ God saw Bnei-Yisrael, and He was concerned about them.