Exodus
2
- Now a man of the house of Levi married a
Levite woman,
- and she became pregnant and gave birth to
a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.
- But when she could hide him no longer, she
got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed
the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
- His sister stood at a distance to see what
would happen to him.
- Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the
Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw
the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it.
- She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying,
and she felt sorry for him. "This is one of the Hebrew babies,"
she said.
- Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter,
"Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you
?"
- "Yes, go," she answered. And the
girl went and got the baby's mother.
- Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take
this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you." So the woman took
the baby and nursed him.
- When the child grew older, she took him
to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying,
"I drew him out of the water."
- One day, after Moses had grown up, he went
out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He
saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.
- Glancing this way and that and seeing no
one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
- The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews
fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, "Why are you hitting your fellow
Hebrew ?"
- The man said, "Who made you ruler and
judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?"
Then Moses was afraid and thought, "What I did must have become known."
- When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to
kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where
he sat down by a well.
- Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters,
and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father's flock.
- Some shepherds came along and drove them
away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.
- When the girls returned to Reuel their father,
he asked them, "Why have you returned so early today ?"
- They answered, "An Egyptian rescued
us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock."
- "And where is he?" he asked his
daughters. "Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat."
- Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave
his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage.
- Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses
named him Gershom, saying, "I have become an alien in a foreign land."
- During that long period, the king of Egypt
died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry
for help because of their slavery went up to God.
- God heard their groaning and he remembered
his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.
- So God looked on the Israelites and was
concerned about them.
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