The Early Days of Moses

¹ A man from the household of Levi married a woman who was a descendant of Levi. ² The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a healthy child, she hid him for three months. ³ But when she was no longer able to hide him, she took a papyrus basket for him and sealed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and set it among the reeds along the edge of the Nile. ⁴ His sister stationed herself at a distance to find out what would happen to him.

⁵ Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself by the Nile, while her attendants were walking alongside the river, and she saw the basket among the reeds. She sent one of her attendants, took it, ⁶ opened it, and saw the child —a boy, crying! —and she felt compassion for him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.”

⁷ Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get a nursing woman for you from the Hebrews, so that she may nurse the child for you?” ⁸ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes, do so.” So the young girl went and got the child’s mother. ⁹ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him.

¹⁰ When the child grew older she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “Because I drew him from the water.”

¹¹ In those days, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and observed their hard labor, and he saw an Egyptian man attacking a Hebrew man, one of his own people. ¹² He looked this way and that and saw that no one was there, and then he attacked the Egyptian and concealed the body in the sand. ¹³ When he went out the next day, there were two Hebrew men fighting. So he said to the one who was in the wrong, “Why are you attacking your fellow Hebrew?”

¹⁴ The man replied, “Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Are you planning to kill me like you killed that Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, thinking, “Surely what I did has become known.” ¹⁵ When Pharaoh heard about this event, he sought to kill Moses. So Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, and he settled by a certain well.

¹⁶ Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and began to draw water and fill the troughs in order to water their father’s flock. ¹⁷ When some shepherds came and drove them away, Moses came up and defended them and then watered their flock. ¹⁸ So when they came home to their father Reuel, he asked, “Why have you come home so early today?” ¹⁹ They said, “An Egyptian man rescued us from the shepherds, and he actually drew water for us and watered the flock!” ²⁰ He said to his daughters, “So where is he? Why in the world did you leave the man? Call him, so that he may eat a meal with us.”

²¹ Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. ²² When she bore a son, Moses named him Gershom, for he said, “I have become a resident foreigner in a foreign land.”

²³ During that long period of time the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned because of the slave labor. They cried out, and their desperate cry because of their slave labor went up to God. ²⁴ God heard their groaning; God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. ²⁵ God saw the Israelites, and God understood.