The Story of the Birth of Moses

Transcript:

Abraham's great-grandson Joseph was a person of great responsibility over Egypt. He asked his father Jacob and his entire family to come live with him. They lived there for many long years until Jacob, Joseph, all his siblings, and their entire generation died.

The children of the second generation of Hebrews grew and multiplied until they filled the land of Egypt. The new Pharaoh at that time didn’t know Joseph. He was so afraid of the increasing number of Hebrews that he said to his people, “We need to come up with a strategy to stop them from increasing in numbers in case they join forces with our enemies in a war against us and drive us out of our land!”

Therefore, he ordered to humiliate them by tasking them with harder work. However, the more they added to their humiliation and exhausted them, the more their numbers increased. The Egyptians became more and more afraid of them, so they enslaved them and were harsher with them until they were miserable.

Pharaoh also gave this order to the midwives, “When the Hebrew women give birth, if it’s a boy, kill him but if it’s a girl, let her live.” The midwives feared God and did not obey the Pharaoh’s commands to kill the newborn males. When the Pharaoh asked the reason why, they said, “The Hebrew women are very strong, not like the Egyptians. They always give birth before we get to them.”

So the Pharaoh gave an order to his people to throw into the Nile every newborn Hebrew male. There was a Hebrew woman who couldn’t throw her son in the Nile, so she hid him for three months. When she was no longer able to hide him, she put him in a basket and released him in the Nile. The sister kept watching from a distance to see what would happen to him.

Pharaoh’s daughter was swimming in the Nile with her servants. She saw the basket. When she opened it, she realized that the baby was a Hebrew, from God’s people. His sister ran to Pharaoh's daughter and said, “Do you want me to get you a woman to nurse the child?” She said, “Okay.” So the girl called her mother, who was Moses’ mother.

Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse him, and I will pay you for it.” And so it was. When the child grew up, she brought him back to Pharaoh’s daughter who adopted him and named him Moses. Moses was raised by her in the palace and mastered all the Egyptian science and wisdom.

One day, Moses went to visit his people. He saw an Egyptian beating one of them, so Moses struck the Egyptian, killed and buried him in the sand. The next day, he found two Hebrews quarreling. So he said to one of them, “Why are you fighting with your brother?” So he answered, “Who made you the judge over us? Do you want to kill us the same way you killed that Egyptian yesterday?"

Moses was then afraid because he realized that the news about his crime spread. When Pharaoh heard the story, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses ran away to the desert to a far away city. There, he met a man from Midian, married his daughter, and worked for him as a shepherd.

Moses' mother, his sister and the midwives chose to disobey the Pharaoh's order even though it meant risking their lives. Why? What proves that Moses knew he was from Hebrew descent even though he was raised in the palace as the Pharaoh's son? One single event changed Moses's life entirely. What about you? What events turned your life upside down?