038. Moses--Birth and Hiding

Moses--Birth and Hiding

Exo 2:1-10. And there went a man of the house of Levi. and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bare a son; and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could no longer hide him site took for hits an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein: and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his sister stood afar off to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river, and her maidens walked along by the river’s side: and when she saw the ark among the flags she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child; and behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, shall I go, and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she ma nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Go, And the maid went, and cared the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages: and the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son: and she called his name Moses, and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.

If the ingenious fictions of ancient bards afford an innocent and rational amusement, and be therefore held in high estimation; what superior obligation is the world under, to that divine Spirit who has vouchsafed to draw into light the most remote antiquity, and preserve from oblivion the venerable men who first cultivated and peopled the earth; and, in the language, not of fiction, but of truth, has delineated the ways of Providence, and unfolded the deep and intricate recesses of the human heart? Were it not for the sacred pages of divine revelation, we should have been entirely ignorant of what happened in the world for at least one half of its duration. But borne on the wings of inspiration, we fly back to the very birth of nature, we behold the first dawning of light scattering the gloom, and converse with the first man whom God created upon the earth. And how much more pleasant, as well as profitable, is it, to expatiate in the field of real history, than to wander and lose ourselves in the idle regions of romance! If we owe much to the illustrious poet of Greece, for his amusing pictures of early life and manners, how deeply are we indebted to the more illustrious Jewish historian and poet, who has furnished us with so much juster and more exalted ideas of Deity, more faithful and instructive pictures of human life; and who has so successfully interwoven the history of redemption with that of mankind. The sacred book which has afforded us during the year past, so much pleasing instruction, is altogether, extraordinary in its kind, whether we consider the beauty of the composition, the importance of the information which it contains, the internal marks of authenticity which it bears, or the noble purposes to which it has been, and may be made subservient. Moses its inspired author, who has with so much accuracy, elegance, and force, described the characters and lives of the patriarchs from Adam to Joseph, is now entering on his own wonderful and interesting story. The man who henceforth acts, is the same who writes: the events which he is about to record, come not from the information of others, but from his own immediate knowledge; and the simplicity and candor of his narration are sufficient vouchers of its truth and faithfulness.

Sixty-four years had now elapsed from the death of Joseph, and one hundred and thirty-four from the descent of Jacob into Egypt and what surprising changes have taken place! A little hand of seventy persons is multiplied into a great nation: the mild and gracious prince who took pleasure in cherishing and protecting the father and brethren of Joseph, is exchanges for a jealous and sanguinary tyrant, determined to depress and extirpate their descendants: the country which once gave them support and shelter, is now moistened with their tears, and with the blood of their infant offspring; and favored guests, made to dwell in the best of the land, are turned into odious slaves condemned to the furnace. Such are the alterations which time is continually producing in human affairs, such the impotency of man to secure blessings to his posterity, such the misery of a people subjected to the will of a despotic sovereign. In vain do men dream of national generosity and gratitude--they exist not: in vain do the claims of humanity and justice oppose themselves to the interest, the ambition, or caprice of princes. Joseph had very unwisely contributed to the aggrandizement of the Egyptian monarchs, and his own family is the first to feel the roil of that power which he had helped to raise. Injustice in princes is always bad policy. A nation so certainly favored of Heaven as Israel was, must have proved the strongest bulwark to Egypt, if treated as friends. Increased from seventy souls, to six hundred thousand men, besides women and children, it was dangerous to irritate them, and difficult, if not impossible to subdue. Too proud to enter into treaty with them as allies, too timid to attempt their extirpation by open force, and too suspicious to confide in their gratitude and attachment, Pharaoh adopts the barbarous policy of undermining their strength by excessive labor; of breaking their spirit by severity, and of preventing their future increase, by putting to death their male children as soon as they were born. Such a state of things was very unfavorable to marrying and giving in marriage. Nevertheless marriages were contracted, and children procreated; for it is absurd as it is wicked, for any earthly power whatever to set itself to counteract the great plans of God and nature. God has said, “increase and multiply;” in vain has Pharaoh said, “abstain.” Amram, of the family of Levi, accordingly, in these worst of times, takes to wife Jochebed of the same tribe, indeed his own father’s sister, by whom he had three children; Aaron, probably born before the bloody edict for destroying the males was published; Miriam, whose sex was a protection from the rigor of it, and Moses, who came into the world while it was operating with all its horrid effects.

Josephus in his Jewish Antiquities relates, that about the time of the birth of Moses, one of the Egyptian seers informed the king that a child was about to arise among the Israelites, who should crush the power of Egypt and exalt his own nation to great eminence and splendor, if he lived to the years of maturity: for, that he should distinguish himself above all his contemporaries by his wisdom and virtue, and acquire immortal glory by his exploits. He farther alleges; that the king, instigated by his own fears of such an event, and by the cruel counsels of the seer, issued the bloody decree which must be an eternal blot upon his memory. The distress of Jochebed upon finding herself pregnant, is to be conceived, not described. The anxiety and apprehension naturally incident to that delicate situation, must have been aggravated by terrors more dreadful than the pangs of child-birth, or even the loss of life itself. As a wife and a mother in Israel, she was looking and longing for the birth of another man child; but that sweet expectation was as often checked and destroyed by the bitter reflection that she was subject to the king of Egypt; that if she bare a son it was for the sword, or to glut some monster of the river. The Jewish antiquarian informs us, that the anxiety of the parents was greatly alleviated by assurances given to the father in a vision of the night, that the child with whom his wife was then pregnant, should be miraculously preserved, and raised up by Providence to the glorious and important work of delivering the seed of Abraham from their present misery. And indeed, this fact is countenanced and supported by the short hints which Scripture has given us of the subject. Among the other instances of victorious faith, recorded in the eleventh chapter of the Hebrews, that of the parents of Moses is marked with honor and approbation by the Apostle. “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.”[*]Heb 11:23 It is not unreasonable to suppose, that their faith might have some particular promise or intimation from Heaven to rest upon. The time at length came that she should be delivered; and she brought forth a son, according to the same historian, without the usual pains and consequent weakness of child-bearing; by which means no foreign aid being required, concealment was rendered more easy, and the exertions of the mother in behalf of her child, were scarcely, if at all, interrupted. “A goodly child” is the modest language which Moses employs in describing himself: “exceeding fair,” or fair to God, that is, divinely fair, is the stronger expression of St. Stephen, in his recapitulation of this period of the Jewish history. From which, without the fond encomiums of profane authors, we may conclude, that Providence had distinguished this illustrious person from his birth, by uncommon strength, size, and beauty. Every child is lovely in the partial eye of maternal affection: what then must Moses, the wonder of the world, have been to his enraptured parents! But the dearer the comfort, the greater the care, and that care increasing every hour. Not only the child, and such a child, was continually in jeopardy, but certain and cruel death was hanging every instant, by a single hair, over the heads of all who were concerned in the concealment; nay, the salvation of a great nation was at stake; nay, the promise and covenant of God was in question. In the conduct of these good Israelites, the parents of Moses, we have a most instructive example respecting many important particulars of our duty. They teach us, that no circumstances of inconveniency, difficulty, or danger, should deter us from following the honest impulses of our nature, or from complying with the manifest dictates of religion and, at the same time, reprove that would-be wise generation of men among us, who, from I know not what reasons of prudence, or others which they dare not avow, defraud their country, the world, and the church of God, of their due and commanded increase Their faith in God, employing in its service secrecy, vigilance, and circumspection, admonishes us ever to connect the diligent use of all lawful and appointed means, with trust in and dependence upon Heaven, as we wish to arrive safely and certainly at the end proposed. In them, as in a glass, we see confidence without presumption, diligence, zeal, and attention, free from incredulity; we see Providence firmly, undauntedly resorted to, with the consciousness of having done their utmost to help themselves. Without this trust and this consciousness, yielding their joint support, what must the wretched mother have been, compelled at length, by dire necessity, to expose the son of her womb on the face of the Nile, in a basket of rushes?

I love to see a perseverance of exertion that leaves nothing undone which is possible to be done; and a faith that holds out as long as hope exists. Why not cast the whole burden on Providence? Is not he who preserved the child floating in an ark of bulrushes, able to save him naked in the stream, or even in the jaws of the hungry crocodile? If an ark must be prepared, is it also necessary to employ all this curious attention in daubing it with slime and with pitch, to prevent the admission of the water! What, leave nothing to him who has marked the infant for his own, and solemnly charged himself with his safety? Yes; after we have done our all, much, every thing depends on the goodness of Heaven. But the careful mother did well when she pitched every seam and chink of the frail vehicle as attentively as if its precious deposit had been to owe its preservation solely to that care and diligence. “Cast all your care upon him; for he careth for you.”[*]1Pe 5:7 Mark it well, it is our care, not our work, which we are encouraged to cast upon that God who careth for us, and who hath said, “I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.”

Mark yet again the diligent use of means, and the interpositions of Providence; how they tally with, unite, strengthen, and support each other. The anxious mother does not yet think she has done enough. Miriam her daughter must go, and, at a distance, watch the event. And here ends the province of human sagacity, foresight, and industry; and here begins the interposition of providential care. The mother has done her part. “The rushes, the slime, and the pitch,” were her prudent and necessary preparation. And the great God has at the same time been preparing his materials, and arranging his instruments: the heart of a king’s daughter, the power of Egypt, the flux of the current; the concurrence of circumstances too fine for the human eye to discern, too complex fox human understanding to unravel, and toe mighty for created power to control.

We pointed to the interposition of Heaven: but, we beseech you to observe, it interposes not by working a miracle, but by the seasonable, simple, and natural disposition of second causes, operating to one and the same end, without any design, consciousness, or concert of their own. And, be it ever remembered, that the wise, gracious, almighty Ruler of the world, pleases not himself, nor amuses his creatures, by a profuse, ostentatious exhibition of wonders, but by an intelligent, dexterous management of ordinary things. He carries on his righteous government not according to new and surprising laws, but by the surprising, unaccountable, unexpected methods in which he executes the laws which he has established from the beginning.

Let us dwell a little on the minuter circumstances of the case before us: as they serve to illustrate a subject of all others the most comfortable and tranquillizing to a race of beings, beyond measure wretched and pitiable, if there be not a God who rules in wisdom and in loving kindness all the affairs of men. We are first led to the humble cottage of Amram, and mingle in the tender solicitudes of an obscure family, in one of the most common situations of human life. From thence, we step immediately to the palace, to attend the humorous caprices and pleasures of a princess. Jochebed, the wife of Amram, and Termuthis, the daughter of Pharaoh! What can they have in common with one another, excepting those particulars in which all mankind resemble all mankind: and yet Providence brings them together, gives them a mutual concern, a mutual charge, a mutual interest. By how many accidents might this most fortunate coincidence have been prevented? A day, an hour earlier or later, in the active care of the one, and the contingent amusement of the other, and the parties concerned had never met. The slightest alteration in the setting in of the wind or the tide; the particular temperature of the fleeting air, or the more variable temperature of a female mind, apt to be corrupted by unbounded gratification and indulgence, unaccustomed to contradiction, governed by whim, following no guide but inclination, and occupied only with the object of the moment: the operation of all, or any ore of these, might have defeated the design. But these and a thousand such like contingencies, unstable as water, and changeable as the wind, subdued by the hand of Omnipotence, acquire the solidity of the rock, and the steadfastness of the poles of heaven. The mother could not part with her child a moment sooner, durst not I retain him a moment longer. The princess could betake herself to no other amusement or employment, could pitch upon no other hour of the day, could resort to no other part of the river, could divert her attention to no other object; the tide could not run, nor the wind blow in any other direction, nor with greater or less rapidity. Moses was not safer when king in Jeshurun, encompassed with the thousands of Israel, was not safer in the mount with God, is not safer within the adamantine walls of the New-Jerusalem than Moses in the flags, Moses at the mercy of the waves, of the monsters of the Nile, and of men more merciless than wild beasts. What power threatened the life of Moses? The king of Egypt. What power preserved it? The king of Egypt’s daughter. What were the steps which led to his elevation? Those which foreboded his destruction. What circumstances forwarded the accomplishment of the oracle? Those which attempted to defeat it. Could all this have been the work of man? No; it must have proceeded from “the Lord of Hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working.” “Who doth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, what doest thou?”[*]Dan 4:35 The usual train of common events led Pharaoh’s daughter to the river side; the ark in which little Moses was laid happened to catch her eye; curiosity prompted her to examine its contents, and pity at the sight touched her heart. If there be an object in nature more interesting and affecting than another, it was that which now presented itself to this great lady’s eye. A beautiful infant, of three months old, deserted by its own parents, exposed to ten thousand dangers, and expressing by the tender testimony of tears, its sense of that misery of which it had not yet acquired the consciousness.

“Behold the babe wept.” Pity is a native plant in a noble heart. The story told itself. The situation in which the child was found explained the cruel occasion. The sacrament he carried engraven on his flesh, declared to whom he belonged. Compassion was fortunately connected with power, and Providence wisely balanced one thing with another, the jealousy and severity of the father, with the tenderness and generosity of the daughter.

Josephus, with whom Moses is justly a favorite object, has recorded many little particulars relating to this part of his history. And, among others, that when the child was applied to the breasts of several successive Egyptian nurses, he turned from them with signs of much disgust and aversion, and that this encouraged his sister Miriam, who was anxiously attending the event, and observed the eager concern of the princess about her little foundling, to propose a nurse of her own nation, and thereby artfully introduced the mother herself to the tender office of suckling her own child. Whatever be in this, one useful lesson is taught us, on better authority than that of Josephus, namely, that perseverance in difficult and painful duty is the shortest and safest road to the attainment of our just and reasonable desires. What a blessed change! The mother of Moses is permitted to do that for princely hire, and under royal protection, which she would have purchased with her life the privilege of doing for nothing, could she have done it with safety to her child. Moses finds shelter in the house of Pharaoh, from the wrath of the king; and he who was destined to be the plague of Egypt, and the deliverer of Israel, is trained to power, wisdom, and consequence, by the Egyptian Magi, and the favor of her who was next the throne.

But, the Providence which saved him amidst so many perils, is pleased to record and perpetuate the memory of his deliverance in his name. It was customary to name the child on the day of circumcision, the eighth from its birth. Perhaps the anxiety and distress of their situation might have broken in upon some of the ceremonies practiced upon that occasion; or, if a name had been given him by his parents, he has not thought proper to hand it down to posterity. It being his own design and the will of God, that he should be known to all generations by the appellation which Pharaoh’s daughter gave to the babe whom she saved from perishing; Moses, “drawn out,” “because,” said she, “I drew him out of the water.” The Jewish writers take delight (and who can blame them?) in expatiating on the extraordinary accomplishments, external and mental, natural and acquired, of their great lawgiver. They ascribe to him the most perfect symmetry of features, uncommon height of stature, a noble, commanding demeanor, the most engaging sweetness of disposition, the most winning address and eloquence, the most undaunted courage, the most profound erudition. Indeed, the singular beauty of his person is hinted in no obscure terms in many places of Scripture, and the additional lustre which it afterwards acquired by intercourse with Heaven, luster which remained unimpaired to the latest old age, convey to us a very high idea of his external appearance. But he stands in no need of the pen of a Philo or a Josephus to make his panegyric. His own actions and writings are his noblest monument; and will live to instruct, delight, and bless mankind, as long as good sense and good taste, virtue, patriotism, and religion exist, and are held in estimation in the world. The parallel between the Jewish and the Christian legislators is so striking, and supported by so many Scripture authorities, that he who runs may read it. Previous to the birth of Moses, the Isrealitish state was reduced to the lowest ebb of distress and despondency; the birth of Christ found a lost world sunk into the most deplorable corruption, guilt, and misery. Of the appearance of Moses there was a general expectation over all the land of Egypt. Christ, “I the desire of all nations,” was earnestly looked for by “all who waited for the consolation of Israel,” who searched the Scriptures, and observed the appearances of the times; and by infallible signs was his approach announced to mankind. The deliverer of the seed of Jacob was no foreign potentate, with a strong hand and stretched out arm, but a child of their own nation. And who is the Savior of perishing sinners? “Verily he took not on him the nature of angels: but he took on him the seed of Abraham. Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful High Priest, in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.”[*]Heb 2:16-17 “As the, children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself took part of the same, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil.”[*]Heb 2:14 The extraordinary circumstances attending the birth of Moses were ascertained to the world, and transmitted to posterity, by means of an edict of the king of Egypt. The birth of Christ, in like manner, as to time, place, and situation was marked out for the knowledge of mankind by a decree of Caesar, the emperor of Rome. Both the one and the other, but for the special interposition of Heaven, had fallen victims to the jealousy and apprehensions of two bloody and ambitious princes. Moses escaped the hands of Pharaoh by falling into those of his daughter. Christ avoided the cruelty of Herod by retiring for a while into Egypt. All history agrees in representing Moses as a person of extraordinary grace, wisdom, and comeliness; and of whom is the prophet speaking, when he says, “Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips; therefore God hath blessed thee for ever.”[*]Psa 45:2 Moses was brought up in all the learning of the Egyptians. Christ was anointed with the Spirit without measure. Moses stands distinguished by a name which commemorates a temporal deliverance. Christ by two names, descriptive of his high and important office, “Jesus,” the Savior, and of the manner in which he was set apart to it, “Christ,” the anointed of God. Moses began not to exist till the day that his mother Jochebed bare him in Egypt, but Christ says of himself, “Before Abraham was, I am.” Moses from the beginning was faithful as a servant to Him who appointed him; but “Christ as a son over his own house; for in all things he must have the pre-eminence.” Now to God in Christ be ascribed, by all nations, and generations of men upon earth, and by every angel in heaven, kingdom, power, and glory forever. Amen.