Verse 2 reports that “the woman conceived and bore a son.” With the wider canon in view, it becomes clear that this baby son named Moses was not the firstborn in his family. Only two verses hence, an older sister appears in the story; and in Exodus 7:7 the reader is made aware that the brother of Moses, Aaron, was older than Moses. So Moses was not firstborn in his family, yet just as the parents of Moses had not been named in Exodus 2:1, so the elder siblings of Moses are given no mention in Exodus 2:2.
This reticence to identify the siblings is undertaken so that the focus remains fixed on the birth notice of the baby Moses. Like Isaac and Jacob before him, and like David after him, Moses was not firstborn in his family, yet akin to those three, Moses is the one chosen for special leadership.14
11See Exod 32:26-29; Num 3:12, 8:6-26; Deut 10:8-9, 21:5.
12Duane A. Garrett, Rethinking Genesis: The Sources and Authorship of the First Book of the Pentateuch (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991), 208, 210, 216-17.
13Ibid., 211, 216-17.
14Garrett, A Commentary on Exodus, 167.
“The woman conceived and bore a son.” Significant is the fact that in the book of Genesis, the Hebrew verbs translated “conceived” and “bore” are found grouped together fourteen times as the births of important figures are described, such as with Cain, Enoch, Isaac, Levi, Judah, and Joseph.15 The fifteenth and final time that these verbs are found arranged together in the entire Pentateuch comes at Exodus 2:2 where they are used to describe the birth of Moses. Moses is the writer of the Pentateuch, and this last pairing of “conceived” with “bore” describes his own birth. Douglas Stuart is probably on target when he suggests that Moses “understood himself to be the final figure in a long line of persons through whom God had been preserving and preparing the formation of a nation—not merely the family—of Israel.”16
The ‘Fine Child’ Hidden
Verse 2 continues by reporting that when Jochebed saw that her baby boy was a “fine child, she hid him three months.” The phrase “fine child” is curious.17 One wonders if Jochebed observed some positive moral value in her infant Moses. Perhaps Jochebed could somehow detect that her baby was already gravitating away from evil and toward the good. Or perhaps “fine child” describes the good behavior or the notable moral potential of the baby. However, if not a moral observation, then perhaps “fine child”
15I am claiming that Exod 2:2 gives the fifteenth and final combined use of ה ָר ָה and ד ַל ָי in the Pentateuch, but Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus, The New American Commentary, vol. 2 (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006), 86, claims that Exod 2:2 is the sixteenth and final use. I credit Stuart with alerting me to the phenomenon in question, but a search of the terms on Bibleworks yielded fifteen (not sixteen) uses.
16Ibid.
17In commentaries on the book of Exodus, much discussion surrounds the phrase אוּה בוֹט־י ִכּ.
Interpretations range from “healthy child,” e.g., John D. Currid, A Study Commentary on Exodus (Auburn, MA: Evangelical Press, 2000), 1:59; John I. Durham, Exodus, Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 3 (Waco, TX: Word, 1987), 16; to “well-formed child,” e.g., Cornelis Houtman, Exodus, Historical Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 1 (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters-Leuven, 1993), 271; to “longing to have/keep him,”
Stuart, Exodus 87-88. Though it is difficult to arrive at a completely satisfactory English rendering for אוּה בוֹט־י ִכּ, the approach of biblical theology points in the right direction: the repeated use of בוֹטin Gen 1 in the context of creation colors the meaning of בוֹט in Exod 2:2.
was a physical perception of some sort. Perhaps Jochebed concluded by looking at her infant boy that he was particularly healthy. Perhaps Jochebed perceived that as opposed to so many other infants of the day, a certain strength or robust-ness about Moses would bode well for his future survival. Or perhaps “fine child” simply implies handsomeness:
Jochebed observed the ‘strapping good looks’ of her boy.
While elements of these suggestions may be on track, better is the approach of biblical theology in discerning the import of the phrase “fine child.” Once again, the prequel to Exodus is Genesis, and in Genesis 39:6 Joseph had been described as
“handsome.”18 Maybe the descriptive word “fine” in Exodus 2:2 (in describing Moses) is meant to hearken back to the story of Joseph. Perhaps the reader is meant to understand
“fine baby Moses’” as a new Joseph. Joseph had delivered his people from famine by bringing them intoEgypt; Moses will deliver his people from certain death by bringing them out of Egypt. Perhaps in Exodus 2:2 there is an allusion back to Genesis 39:6, but an even stronger connection takes the reader back to Genesis 1.19
The Hebrew word used to describe the baby Moses in Exodus 2:2 is the word ṭôb, which the English Standard Version has translated as the word “fine.” That same Hebrew word is used seven times in Genesis 1, where it translates in most English Bibles as the word “good”: God saw that his creative works were “good.” Jochebed sees that
18The suggestion offered in this paragraph was made by Peter Leithart, A House for My Name:
A Survey of the Old Testament (Moscow, ID: Canon, 2000), 75.
19Several scholars have noted the connection between בוֹט in Exod 2:2 and the same word in Gen 1. These scholars include Dale C. Allison, Jr., The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Eugene, OR:
Wipf and Stock, 1993), 203; Bruckner, Exodus, 27; Walter Brueggemann, The Book of Exodus:
Introduction, Commentary, and Reflections, in vol.1 of The New Interpreters Bible, ed. Leander E. Keck (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994), 699; Currid, A Study Commentary on Exodus, 59; Peter Enns, Exodus, The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), 61-62; Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses, in vol. 1 of The Schocken Bible (New York: Schocken, 1995), 263; Fretheim, Exodus, 38; Garrett, A Commentary on Exodus, 167; Hamilton, Exodus, 17; John Oswalt, Exodus, in vol. 1 of Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, ed. Philip W. Comfort (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 2008), 292; Nahum M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus: The Origins of Biblical Israel (New York: Schocken, 1986), 28; and Nahum M. Sarna, Exodus, The JPS Torah Commentary (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 9.
Moses is good, just as God had seen his creation as good.20 The reader wonders if Exodus 2:2 signals a new creative moment. Perhaps the presence of the word ṭôb is a clue that a new beginning has arrived, even as the serpent-like Pharaoh presides over the deathly chaos waters of the Nile.21 Perhaps life and a new beginning will arise from a dark and impossible situation. Perhaps the observation that Moses was ṭôb alerts the reader to the possibility that in some mysterious way Jochebed understood her baby to be what John Oswalt has called “a key part of God’s creative plan.”22 Such a perception on the part of Jochebed would certainly explain why she “hid the baby three months.”
Like Rahab, who would hide the Hebrew spies at a later point in redemptive history, and like Michal, who would hide David from her murderous father even later, so Jochebed hid her infant son in order to protect him from imminent danger.23 However, after three months, the cries of an infant grow stronger and louder. The baby becomes more difficult to conceal. Verse 3 reports that when Jochebed could hide Moses no longer, “she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She [then] put the child in [the basket] and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.” The irony here is that Jochebed effectively obeyed the decree that Pharaoh had given back at Exodus 1:22!24 Jochebed “casts” her Hebrew son into the Nile, so to speak, but as Rolf Rendtorff observes, “The child is not thrown into the Nile to be killed, but is
20Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 28.
21The Pharaoh of Egypt is “serpent-like” indeed, for Ezek 29:1-3 and 32:1-3 call him a
“dragon.” On Pharaoh presiding “over the deathly chaos waters of the Nile,” Boadt, “Divine Wonders Never Cease,” 58, observes, “Pharaoh tries to harness the Nile waters like the chaos waters of Genesis 1:2 to destroy Israel, but God’s blessing continues on the people.”
22Oswalt, Exodus, 292.
23Hamilton, Exodus, 20, notes that the “only two places in the Bible where a woman ‘hides’ a man from another man or men,” using the verb ן ַפ ָצ, are Exod 2:2 and Josh 2:4.
24As noted by both John H. Sailhamer, The Pentateuch as Narrative: A Biblical-Theological Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992), 242; and Houtman, Exodus, 278.
consigned to the Nile to be saved.”25 Tenderly and with motherly love and hope, Jochebed places Moses carefully in the basket, and then places the basket gently in the Nile.26 Philip Ryken describes the scene beautifully: “When she gently laid her baby down, she was tucking her heart inside the basket.”27 At this point, Jochebed could not have known for certain that things would go well for her infant, or even that she would see him again. “The most we can say,” writes John Currid, “is that God put [this plan]
into her heart so that his plan would proceed and unfold.”28