(Exodus 2:1 - 2:22)
There was a certain Levite man who married a woman of his own tribe. She conceived and bore him a son, and seeing that he was a fine, healthy boy, she hid him for three months. When it became no longer possible to keep his existence a secret, she constructed for him a basket of papyrus reeds, caulked and sealed water-tight with tar and pitch. She placed the child inside the basket and set it adrift amid the rushes along the river bank. The baby's sister watched from afar to see where the basket would be borne by the river’s current.
It happened that one of the daughters of the Pharaoh had come down to the river to bathe, accompanied by handmaidens who strolled along the bank. She noticed the basket among the sedge grass and ordered one of her handmaidens to fetch it. When it was brought to her, the Pharaoh's daughter opened it and found it contained a baby. The baby cried and the heart of the Pharaoh's daughter was touched; she took pity on the child, observing, "This must be one of the Hebrews' children."
The baby's sister approached the Pharaoh's daughter and asked her, "Shall I go and find you a Hebrew woman to be a wet nurse for the child?"
"Yes, do so," she replied and the sister went and got her mother. "Take the child with you," the Pharaoh's daughter instructed her. "Nurse him for me and I will pay you."
And so the Levite woman took her own son and nursed him. After he had been weaned, she presented the boy to the Pharaoh's daughter, who adopted him as her own son. She called him "Moses," because, she said, "I drew him out of the water."
When Moses had grown to manhood, he went out among own people to witness the harsh terms of their bondage and the hardships they were forced to endure. On one occasion, he happened to catch sight of an Egyptian giving a beating to a Hebrew, one of his own people. After looking around to see that no one was there, Moses killed the Egyptian and then concealed his body in the sand.
On the following day, Moses came upon two Hebrews brawling. He demanded of the one who seemed to have started the scuffle, "Why are you fighting with one of your own people?”
He answered back, "Who made you master and judge over us? Are you going to kill me like you did that Egyptian yesterday?"
Moses was alarmed. “Doubtless the deed has been found out!” it dawned on him.
When the Pharaoh learned what Moses had done, he set out to have him killed. Moses, therefore, fled Egypt and went into exile in the land of Midian.
There, he happened to sit down by a well. It was here that the seven daughters of the priest of Midian came to draw water to fill the troughs and water their father's flocks. A group of shepherds arrived at the well and drove the sisters away. Moses sprang to his feet and defended the women from the shepherds. He gave water to their flocks as well.
When the sisters returned to their father Jethro (the son of Reuel), he questioned them, "Why have you come back earlier than usual?"
"An Egyptian man rescued us from a gang of shepherds. He drew water for us and watered our flocks," they explained.
He berated his daughters, "Well, where is this man? Why did you let him get away? Call him so he can share a meal with us!"
Content, Moses agreed to remain and reside with Jethro, who gave to him as a wife his daughter Sephora. She bore Moses a son he named Gershom, for, Moses said "I have been an stranger in a foreign land." He was given another son, Eliezer, saying "The god of my fathers has saved me from the power of the Pharaoh."
Notes
1. Moses sounds like the Hebrew word for “pull out,” however it is more likely an Egyptian name. Some have suggested it is from words meaning “water” and “saved”. Another explanation is very possible: “mose” in Egyptian meant “child”, such as in Ramose, son of Ra, or Tutmose, son of Thoth.
2. Many translations have Moses’ birth mother returning him to the Pharaoh’s daughter after he had “grown up”. Since the Pharaoh’s daughter obviously had had her maternal instincts awakened by the child in the basket, it is absurdly unlikely she would wait fifteen or twenty years to satisfy them. An adopted child would regularly be given to a wet nurse to be breast fed and returned after it had been weaned.
3. It is not known whether Midian was an ethnic or a geographic term. If the latter, most scholars believe it refers to the eastern, Arabian coast of the Gulf of Aqaba or, as some have suggested, Sudan. This, however, is impossible in the context of Moses’ story: Moses was herding Jethro’s sheep in the vicinity of Mount Horeb, usually located in the Sinai, so at least some Midianites must have dwelled in the Sinai. The Midianites, at any rate, were supposedly descendants of Midian, son of Abraham and Keturah. They were nomads much like the Ishmaelites, with whom they are often identified.
4. Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, is originally called Reuel or Raguel, but therefore referred to as Jethro. He may have had two names or may have been Jethro, the son of Reuel. Those of the Druze religion (who live mostly in Syria and Lebanon) regard Jethro as a prophet and ancestor
5. Unlike the Vulgate, the Hebrew Bible does not mention the birth of Moses' second son Eliezer, yet, later it refers to Moses having "sons."
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