Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews' children.” Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, “Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, “Go.” So the girl went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
Exodus 2:5-10
Once again we see the interplay of suffering and blessing in the strange experiences that befell the infant Moses. The anxious parents, Amram and Jochabed, victims of the tyrannous and heartless decree of Pharaoh (1:22), 'lose' their precious child, yet receive him back from the dead, so to speak, and God ensures that they are in no wise the losers in the transaction. Their son is initiated into his divinely appointed preparation for his future destiny. And God so orders matters that his mother Jochabed is made his nurse! Thus easily God overrules the wickedness of evil men, and almost 'plays' with Pharaoh, as He arranges for the tyrant's destroyer to be brought up in his very court, and has him pay wages to Moses' mother for doing so! 'He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh’ (Psalm 2:4)! And so, thus early, the future deliverer of Israel was thrust into training for his onerous task, set apart unto God by his committal to the ark of bulrushes, passing through death, so to speak, and entering totally into an existence in grace. But was it not very daring of God so to thrust a helpless infant into the court of Egypt? Was He not afraid of his becoming polluted by the influences around him? Apparently not: nor can we say that there was really no option for Him either this way of preservation or death at the hands of Pharaoh. God was not in such straits as to be able to preserve Moses only by pitching him into a dangerous environment. He had His purposes in it. And here there may be a moral for us. There is too often a tendency today to seek to preserve, in an almost hothouse atmosphere, the spiritual life of young people. Some Christian parents try to shield their children from every conceivable outside influence in their concern to keep them unspotted from the world. But this is an unrealistic procedure because, short of contracting out of life itself, it is impossible of fulfilment. God is far less fearful of His own than we often are. Is it that He could count more on Jochabed's influence on her child than He can on ours today upon our young people?