My mother sang an obscure lullaby to me which I then sang to my sons and now sing to my granddaughter:

In a little basket under skies so blue
Floating down the river where the rushes grew.
There where angels watched him baby Moses slept.
When the princess found him baby Moses wept.
God took care of the baby and in his Word we see
How our Father in heaven careth for you and for me.

While Moses owed his life to two Hebrew midwives and his brave mother, his life also depended on another woman—a privileged princess.

⁵ Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. ⁶ She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

⁷ Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”

⁸ “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. ⁹ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. ¹⁰ When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

Exodus 2:5–10 NIV

We don’t know who this woman is. Two popular explanations exist among Christian scholars depending on their dating system. Some think that she was Hatshepsut the wife of Pharaoh Thutmose II, a significant ruler in her own right in Egyptian history, the second of only two females to hold the title of Pharaoh (1503–1482 BC).¹

Others believe the princess was one of the sixty daughters of Rameses II (1303–1213 BC) or perhaps his older sister.² As such she may have been a prominent royal or simply the offspring of a mistress.³

According to Jewish tradition, Midrash scholars identify her as “Bithiah,” the woman mentioned in I Chron 4:18. They believe she turned to the God of the Hebrews and was then accepted as one of their own.⁴

As her identity is unclear, so are other details. How did she happen to be at the riverbank that day? According to Dr. Constable, “It was not uncommon for Pharaohs and other Egyptians to bathe ceremonially in the sacred Nile River. The Egyptians believed that the waters of the Nile possessed the ability to impart fruitfulness and to prolong life.⁵ But why that day?

She knew right away that the baby was Hebrew perhaps by his clothing or because he was circumcised. And she knew that this baby should have been killed (Ex 1:22). So what motivated her to defy the king? His tears tugged at her heart. And he was particularly attractive (Ex 2:2). She felt sorry for him and knew he was hungry, so accepted the offer of a Hebrew wet nurse. Her actions reveal her courage to disregard her father’s order, her mercy to save a helpless child, and her integrity to pay a woman to nurse him.

But did she know this wet nurse was actually the child’s mother, Jochebed? At what point did she decide to adopt him and when did she make that declaration? Did she visit the baby in this 2–3 year period so that the child would know her? Did he have a given Hebrew name that we don’t know? What was it like to take a slave child and raise him as your own? Was this transition traumatic for Moses? Did he resist going to the palace? Did adequate bonding with his new mother take place? Did she allow Moses to stay in contact with his birth family? Did she raise him to worship the Egyptian gods?

My curiosity will never be satisfied on these points so what do we know? We know that God used the princess—whatever her motives—to save Moses, educate him, and prepare him for his future role (Acts 7:22). She acted bravely and compassionately when she could have let him die. We see that the one with the power and privilege looked with compassion on the helpless one and gave him a second chance at life by adopting him as her own.

Likewise God used his power and agency to reach down and pull us out of the waters of destruction and bring us into his kingdom. He adopted us who were slaves to sin and gave us the rights and privileges of the firstborn son of the King of Kings (Eph 1:15; Gal 4:5–7).

How might you use your agency for the good of another who is helpless and dependent on you?

PRAYER

Father God, thank you for your mercy and your compassion, for seeing my tears, hearing my cries, and adopting me as your child. Show me how to look with eyes of compassion on those that are helpless and use my agency to assist others as this unnamed princess did.

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1. https://soniclight.com/tcon/notes/html/exodus/exodus.htm#head18 ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatshepsut ↩︎
2. https://www.biblicaltraining.org/library/pharaohs-daughter ↩︎
3. https://www.jesuswalk.com/moses/1_call.htm ↩︎
4. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/daughter-of-pharaoh-midrash-and-aggadah ↩︎
5. https://soniclight.com/tcon/notes/html/exodus/exodus.htm#head18 ↩︎