|
1. THE MOTHER OF
MOSES
'Take this child away and nurse it for me'
Exod. 2. 9.
All the sons of the Israelites
were condemned to die by Pharoah’s order. For three months,
Moses’ parents had hidden him. ‘They were not afraid of the
king’s commandment’, Heb. 11. 23, for themselves, but now
they could no longer keep him safely. The presence of any child
in any home soon becomes obvious.
We are left to imagine for
ourselves his mother’s tender and loving tears, her fears and
her earnest prayers, as she prepared her little ‘ark of
bulrushes’, a rush-work basket of a type which would have been
in common use, made waterproof with slime and pitch, all that
her simple faith had to hand. Three times we are told in the
Bible that Moses was a pleasing, handsome child, Exod. 2. 2;
Acts 7. 20; Heb. 11. 23, and as his mother laid him in the ark
among the flags, she would have kissed him and prayed for him,
as she asked his sister to watch over him.
God was watching over him too.
No one knew it, but this little baby was to be God’s chosen
servant, the one who was to be the great leader and deliverer of
His people from their cruel bondage, and to take them to the
land God had promised them.
What mighty purposes were bound up
in that little baby! It seems likely that the plan of Moses’
mother was to take him back home if nothing happened, and
continue putting him back among the flags until her faith was
rewarded. She had a mother’s heart, and we may be sure that
she had no intention of abandoning him to an uncertain fate.
But that very first day,
Pharoah’s daughter came to the place, and discovered the
child. Her natural instincts were roused by the apparently
abandoned, weeping child, and she became his protector. Such was
surely the ‘purpose of him who worketh all things after the
counsel of his own will’, Eph. 1. 11. Well might every child
of God in every circumstance be mindful of ‘how unsearchable
are his judgments, and his ways past finding out’, Rom. 11.
33. He knows the future history of every child in its mother’s
womb, Ps. 71. 6; Isa. 44. 2; Jer. 1. 5; Matt. 1. 20, 21; Luke 1.
15, 31; 2. 11; Gal. 1. 15. God’s purposes will always stand
and cannot be set aside, even by the commandment of a king. The
Israelites were in bondage and groaning under their hard
taskmasters, but God was mindful of them, Exod. 2. 24, 25. Even
when He chooses not to manifest Himself, He is still there,
watching.
God used a mother’s faith,
another woman’s natural compassion for children, and the
quick-wittedness of a little girl, who suggested ‘a nurse of
the Hebrew women to nurse the child’ for Pharoah’s daughter.
‘And the maid went and called the child’s mother’. As the
son of Pharoah’s daughter, Moses would become ‘learned in
all the wisdom of the Egyptians and mighty in words and in deeds’.
We learn of that wisdom from the monuments and relics of
Egyptian civilisation which has been unearthed for us, bearing
testimony to their achievements in building and architecture,
pottery, painting, sculpture, music, anatomy, medicine, law,
astronomy and other branches of human knowledge. It was the
Egyptians who first engaged in boat building. The opportunities
for Moses were without limit, and the wealth of Egypt was to lie
within his grasp if he so desired it. The Bible says, ‘all the
wisdom of the Egyptians’, Acts 7. 22.
But there were things he could
not learn from Egypt. It was his mother, who, as he became old
enough to understand, would have taught him about God, and ‘his
brethren’, God’s people. It was she who nurtured him in the
Lord, who set before him the way of life so that ‘when he came
to years’, he chose ‘rather to suffer affliction with the
people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season,
esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the
treasures of Egypt, for he had respect unto the recompense of
the reward’, Heb. 11. 24-26. Moses’ father’s God became
his God too, Exod. 18. 4. We may be sure that both Amram and
Jochabed were as one in their saving of Moses, and his
subsequent spiritual development, Acts 7. 20; Heb. 11. 23.
Every child who grows up
without the knowledge of God, and what are loosely defined as
‘moral standards’, testifies to the importance in every
generation of Christian mothers properly nurturing their
precious charges. The words of the Egyptian princess to Jochabed
remind us of the charge that is given to every Christian mother,
‘Take this child away, and nurse it for me’. God still
speaks to every mother today in the words of that Egyptian
princess. And God, as He often does, adds His bonus, ‘and I
will give thee thy wages’. ‘Them that honour me I will
honour’, 1 Sam. 2. 30. Moses’ mother would have been
content, overjoyed, to look after her son without payment, but
God is no man’s debtor and will give freely what will be
received in faith. It pleased Him that she should be paid as
well.
Moses is one of the most
influential men in all human history, and has a specially
honourable place in the roll of God’s servants. Remember, God
sets great store upon the calling of mothers and takes special
notice of them, 1 Tim. 2. 15; 5. 10.
‘O happy home
where little ones are given Early to Thee, in humble faith and
prayer, To Thee their Friend, who from the heights of heaven
Guides them, and guard’st them with more than mother’s care’
Karl Spitta
‘Lo, children
are an heritage of the Lord: and the fruit of the womb is his
reward’, Ps. 127. 3. |
