Monday, March 17, 2025  

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Today's Scripture
Exodus 2:1–10

Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him, “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.” (NRSV) 

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Reflection

Women drive the Exodus story, don’t they? Moses and Pharaoh may be the central human figures in the divine drama of deliverance, but they are surrounded by a cast of women whose character and decisions are at least as consequential to the outcome as the leading men.

Prior to today’s reading, Exodus’ first chapter gave us Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives who defied Pharaoh’s infanticidal edict and then lied to his face about it. Later in Exodus, Miriam and Zipporah (Moses’s sister and wife, respectively) will play critical roles in the Israelites’ march to freedom.

Today’s reading features Moses’s mother (why is she not named?) daringly hiding her newborn baby for three months before making the impossible decision to save him by setting him in a basket in the river.

There’s Miriam, watching all the while.

On the other side of the narrative, then, is Pharaoh’s daughter (why isn’t she named?). She discovers the basket and then sees the crying baby inside. She immediately takes pity on him, knowing full well that it’s one of the babies her father has commanded killed.

I can’t help but see a parallel between her compassion and the compassion of God. When God addresses the full-grown Moses from the burning bush in the following chapter, God acknowledges having observed the people’s misery, having heard their cry, and having known their suffering.

The first expression of such holy sympathy comes from one of the people’s captors, a royal Egyptian who risked her own neck to raise an abandoned baby as her own son.

All praise to pity, then, without which love’s greater accomplishments might never come to fruition.

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Prayer
As Pharaoh’s daughter’s heart was moved to pity by a crying baby; as the prophets’ hearts are moved to pity by the injustice inflicted upon the vulnerable poor; as Jesus’ heart is moved to pity by the ones who seem like sheep without a shepherd — may our hearts be moved to pity, O God, for your sake, and for the sake of the world’s redemption. Amen.

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Written by Rocky Supinger, Senior Associate Pastor

Reflection and Prayer © Fourth Presbyterian Church

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