2 After Yeshua was born in Beit-Lechem in the land of Y’hudah during the time when Herod was king, Magi from the east came to Yerushalayim ² and asked, “Where is the newborn King of the Jews? For we saw his star in the east and have come to worship him.”

³ When King Herod heard of this he became very agitated, and so did everyone else in Yerushalayim. ⁴ He called together all the head cohanim and Torah-teachers of the people and asked them, “Where will the Messiah be born?” ⁵ “In Beit-Lechem of Y’hudah,” they replied, “because the prophet wrote,

⁷ Herod summoned the Magi to meet with him privately and asked them exactly when the star had appeared. ⁸ Then he sent them to Beit-Lechem with these instructions: “Search carefully for the child; and when you find him, let me know, so that I too may go and worship him.”

⁹ After they had listened to the king, they went away; and the star which they had seen in the east went in front of them until it came and stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰ When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. ¹¹ Upon entering the house, they saw the child with his mother Miryam; and they prostrated themselves and worshipped him. Then they opened their bags and presented him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. ¹² But they had been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, so they took another route back to their own country.

¹⁷ “As the time drew near for the fulfillment of the promise God had made to Avraham, the number of our people in Egypt increased greatly, ¹⁸ until there arose another king over Egypt who had no knowledge of Yosef.^{[a] 19} With cruel cunning this man forced our fathers to put their newborn babies outside their homes, so that they would not survive.

²⁰ “It was then that Moshe was born, and he was beautiful in God’s sight. For three months he was reared in his father’s house; ²¹ and when he was put out of his home, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. ²² So Moshe was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became both a powerful speaker and a man of action.

²³ “But when he was forty years old, the thought came to him to visit his brothers, the people of Isra’el. ²⁴ On seeing one of them being mistreated, he went to his defense and took revenge by striking down the Egyptian. ²⁵ He supposed his brothers would understand that God was using him to rescue them, but they didn’t understand. ²⁶ When he appeared the next day, as they were fighting, and tried to make peace between them by saying, ‘Men, you are brothers! Why do you want to hurt each other?’ ²⁷ the one who was mistreating his fellow pushed Moshe away and said, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge over us? ²⁸ Do you want to kill me, the way you killed that Egyptian yesterday?’^{[b] 29} On hearing this, Moshe fled the country and became an exile in the land of Midyan, where he had two sons.

³⁰ “After forty more years, an angel appeared to him in the desert near Mount Sinai in the flames of a burning thorn bush. ³¹ When Moshe saw this, he was amazed at the sight; and as he approached to get a better look, there came the voice of Adonai, ³² ‘I am the God of your fathers, the God of Avraham, Yitz’chak and Ya‘akov.’ But Moshe trembled with fear and didn’t dare to look. ³³ Adonai said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, because the place where you are standing is holy ground. ³⁴ I have clearly seen how My people are being oppressed in Egypt, I have heard their cry, and I have come down to rescue them, and now I will send you to Egypt.’^[c]

³⁵ “This Moshe, whom they rejected, saying, ‘Who made you a ruler and judge?’ is the very one whom God sent as both ruler and ransomer by means of the angel that appeared to him in the thorn bush.