The Birth and Adoption of Moses
1. Now a man of the house of Levi married a daughter of Levi,
2. and she conceived and bore a son. When she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him for three months.
3. 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 set it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
4. And his sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
5. Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. And when she saw the basket among the reeds, she sent her maidservant to retrieve it.
6. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew children,” she said.
7. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and call a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?”
8. “Go,” Pharaoh’s daughter told her. So the girl went and called the child’s mother.
9. And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him.
10. When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “Because I drew him out of the water.”
The Rejection and Flight of Moses
11. 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.
12. Looking around and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
13. The next day, he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you attacking your fellow Hebrew?”
14. But the man replied, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you planning to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “Surely the matter is known.”
15. When Pharaoh heard about this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, where he sat down by a well.
16. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock.
17. But some shepherds came along and drove them away, so Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.
18. When the daughters returned to their father Reuel, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”
19. “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds,” they replied, “and he even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
20. “So where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why then did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”
21. Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage.
22. And she gave birth to a son, whom Moses named Gershom, saying, “I have become a stranger in a strange land.”
God Hears the Cry of the Israelites
23. After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned and cried out under their burden of slavery, and their cry for deliverance from slavery ascended to God.
24. So God heard their groaning, and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
25. God saw the Israelites and took notice.