Moses – The Baby In The Bushes

Exodus 1 to Exodus 2:10

Joseph died in Egypt when he was a hundred and ten years old. A long time passed and the descendants of Jacob had become very numerous. There was a king of Egypt who treated them very badly. He tried to make slaves of them, setting them to all kinds of hard labor. The more he oppressed them, the more they increased in number. The Egyptians were afraid because the Israelites might turn against them, and make their escape out of the land of Egypt.

So the Pharaoh, the king, commanded that all the sons of the children of Israel, Hebrews as they were called, would be put to death as soon as they were born! But the Hebrews did not obey him. The king was so angry that he ordered his own people to throw all these poor little children into the river.

A Hebrew named Amram had a son, he was a beautiful child, and for three months his mother, Jochebed, succeeded in saving him from the Egyptians. The time came when she could no longer hide him so she made a sort of cradle, laid him in it, and then placed it among the bushes that grew by the riverside. His sister stood watching in the distance to see what would become of him.


The king's daughter and her servants went down to the river. She saw the basket among the bushes and sent one of her servants to bring it to her. When she saw that it was a poor little child crying, she was sorry for the child. She knew it must be one of the Hebrew children whom the king had commanded to be killed, and whose mother had laid it there, hoping that someone would have compassion on the child.

The child's sister, saw how the princess pitied him, approached the princess and asked if she should fetch a Hebrew woman to nurse the child for her. The princess told her do so. She returned with their own mother, and the princess told her to take the child away and nurse it for her. How happy she was to return home with her little child !

When he was old enough to be taken to Pharaoh's daughter, she called him her son and named him Moses, which means "drawn out of the water." Moses was taught all that was known to the Egyptians for they were a very learned people.