Scripture Daily

Context No. 1398 of 4322 · Exodus

Context · Reflection

Exodus 2:1-6: in context

1A man of the house of Levi went and took a daughter of Levi as his wife. 2The woman conceived and bore a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. 3When she could no longer hide him, she took a papyrus basket for him, and coated it with tar and with pitch. She put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river’s bank. 4His sister stood far off, to see what would be done to him. 5Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe at the river. Her maidens walked along by the riverside. She saw the basket among the reeds, and sent her servant to get it. 6She opened it, and saw the child, and behold, the baby cried. She had compassion on him, and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.”

In the time when Pharaoh had ordered every Hebrew boy drowned, a Levite woman bears a son and hides him for three months. When she can hide him no longer, she does a desperate and daring thing: she makes a basket of papyrus, waterproofs it with tar and pitch, places the baby inside, and sets it among the reeds at the river's edge, while the child's sister watches from a distance to see what will happen. Pharaoh's own daughter comes down to bathe, sees the basket, and sends for it. She opens it, the baby cries, and she is moved with compassion: this is one of the Hebrews' children.

The mother's act is one of desperate, active faith. She cannot keep the child safe herself any longer; the order to kill him stands, and hiding is no longer possible. So she does what she can, builds the little ark, waterproofs it with her own hands, and then releases her beloved child to the river, which is to say, into God's keeping, because she has no other. It is an act of letting go of what she cannot protect into a danger she cannot control, trusting that the God who gave the child can guard him where she cannot. And notice how God answers that trust, weaving together the sister's watching, the timing of the princess's bath, and the compassion he stirs in the heart of the enemy's own daughter. The very household that decreed the boy's death becomes the instrument of his rescue and his upbringing. There is comfort here for the times we must release into God's hands what we cannot protect ourselves. When we have done what we can and can do no more, when we must set what we love on the water and let it go, God is not absent; he works through means we could never have arranged, even through unlikely and unexpected hands, to accomplish what we could not. The mother placed her son on the river in trust, and God met that trust by turning an enemy's daughter into his rescuer.

When I have done what I can and must release into God's hands what I love and cannot protect, can I trust as this mother did, setting it on the water in faith that God will guard it and work through means I could never arrange?

Sources