Moses in the Bulrushes: The Child of Two Worlds

Pharaoh has issued a death decree: every son born to a Hebrew woman is to be thrown into the Nile. The Israelites are slaves in Egypt, growing faster than the Egyptians can manage their fear of them, and the king has decided that the male children must be eliminated at the source.

A Levite woman bears a son and sees that he is beautiful. She hides him for three months. When she can hide him no longer, she takes a papyrus basket and covers it in pitch and tar — a tiny ark — and places the child in it among the reeds at the edge of the Nile. His sister stations herself at a distance to watch what happens.

Pharaoh's daughter comes to the river to bathe. She sees the basket among the reeds and has it brought to her. When she opens it, the baby is crying. She has compassion: This is one of the Hebrew children. She does not turn away. The sister, watching, steps forward: Shall I go find a Hebrew nursing woman for the child? Pharaoh's daughter says yes. The sister fetches the baby's own mother.

Pharaoh's daughter pays the Hebrew woman to nurse her own son. The child grows, and she brings him to Pharaoh's daughter, who adopts him. She names him Moses — Moshe in Hebrew, explained as drawn out of the water — and he becomes her son.

He grows up in the palace of the man who wanted him dead. He is educated as an Egyptian prince, speaks the language of power, and moves freely in the world of the oppressor. But he knows who he is. When he goes out and sees the labor of his people, he sees their burdens. When he watches an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, he looks this way and that — makes sure no one is watching — and kills the Egyptian.

The next day, two Hebrews are fighting, and Moses intervenes. One of them says: Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? It is known. Moses flees to Midian, and the life that was prepared for him in the palace falls away. The real education is only beginning.