MOSES IN THE BULRUSHES

The great lawgiver of Israel saved from destruction by the protection of the king’s daughter.

The people of Israel had been living in Egypt for a long time, and Pharaoh, the king, made them labor very hard. Indeed, they were enslaved and were made to do the hardest kind of work. Joseph was no longer there to help them, for he had been dead many years before Pharaoh became king.

Pharaoh made the people of Israel build treasure houses to hold grain. He made them work with brick and mortar, and in the fields, and do all manner of services. He set task masters over them to beat them if they refused to work or did not labor fast enough.

Finally he gave an order that all boy children should be killed as soon as they were born, but that the girl children should be allowed to live. He did that because he was afraid to have too many Hebrew men in the kingdom since they might rise up and rebel against his cruelty.

But there was a Hebrew woman who had a beautiful little boy, and she hid him until she made a little ark or cradle of bulrushes, and daubed it with mud and pitch.

She then took the little boy and wrapped him warmly and put him in the cradle and hid him in the reeds and flags along the banks of the river. She hoped to keep him there in case the officers of Pharaoh came to her house to see if there were any male children whom they could destroy.

The boy’s sister was set to watch the cradle to see that nothing happened to the little boy. One day the daughter of Pharaoh came down to the river to bathe. She and her maidens walked along the side of the river until they came to the place where the cradle was hidden.

Seeing the cradle, the daughter of Pharaoh sent one of her maidens to bring it to her. When she opened the cradle the little boy cried, and Pharaoh’s daughter felt very sorry for him. She said: “This is one of the Hebrew children.”

The boy’s sister came up and said:

“Shall I go and call a nurse of the Hebrew women; that she may nurse the child for thee?” And Pharaoh’s daughter said: “Go,” and the little maid went and called the boy’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said:

“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 after a while the mother brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son, and she called his name Moses, because she said: “I drew him out of the water.”

Moses grew to be a great and wise man. He learned all the laws of Egypt, and when he was old became the leader of the Hebrews when they left Egypt to go back to their home in Canaan.