Then Pharaoh took the dominion in his own hands, and governed the people wisely and in good faith.
CHAPTER II.
MOSES—THE RECORDER.
The narrative in connection with the Storehouses of the King would be incomplete without a brief survey of the life of the inspired writer who recorded all the particulars regarding them; and as almost every existing religion is derived from his writings, it will not be deemed superfluous. Moses was born in 1571 B.C. At this time a proclamation was issued throughout the land of Egypt, dooming every male born to the Hebrews to immediate destruction. The elders and wise men advised the King to do this, because they feared that a war might come upon them, and they feared that the Israelites might so increase and spread in the land that they might drive them away from their own country. At first they gave the Israelites hard work to reduce their numbers, but, as that was unavailing, they advised the King, who did not know Joseph, nor remember all the good that he had done for the Egyptians, to adopt this barbarous method of reducing the numbers of the Israelitish inhabitants of Goshen.
It was foretold to Amram, a descendant of Levi, the son of Jacob, that the child, out of dread of whose nativity the Egyptians had doomed the Israelite children to destruction, should be his, and be concealed from those who watched to destroy him; and having been brought up in a surprising way, he should deliver the Hebrew nation from the distress they were under from the Egyptians. His memory should be famous while the world lasts; and this not only among the Hebrews, but foreigners also; and that this child should also have such a brother that he would himself obtain God’s Priesthood, and his posterity should have it after him to the end of the world. Amram and his wife Jochebed were in great perplexity, and fear increased upon them on account of this prediction. And when the child was born they nourished him at home privately for three months. But after that time Amram—fearing he would be discovered, and, by falling under the King’s displeasure, both he and his child would perish, and so he should make the promise of God of none effect—determined rather to entrust the safety and care of the child to God, than to depend on his own concealment of him, which he looked upon as a thing uncertain, and whereby both the child, so privately to be nourished, and himself should be in imminent danger; but he believed that God would in some way procure the safety of the child, in order to realise the truth of his own predictions. When they had thus determined, they made an ark of bulrushes, after the manner of a cradle, and of a size sufficiently large for an infant to be laid in without being too straitened. They then daubed it over with slime, which would naturally keep the water from entering between the bulrushes, and put the infant into it, and setting it afloat upon the river, they left its preservation to God; so the river received the child, and carried him along. Now Thermuthis, the daughter of Pharaoh, was diverting herself by the banks of the river; and seeing a cradle borne along by the current, she sent some that could swim, and bade them bring the cradle to her. When those that were sent on this errand came to her with the cradle, and she saw the little child, she was greatly in love with it, on account of its largeness and beauty. Thermuthis bade them bring her a woman that might afford her breast to the child. Now Miriam, the sister of Moses, was standing near when this happened, and, when she had this order given her, she went and brought the mother, and the child gladly took her breast, and seemed to stick close to it; and so it was that, at the Queen’s desire, the nursing of the child was entirely entrusted to its mother.
The following names were given to Moses by the different persons interested in him:—
Moses, “I have drawn him from out the water,” by Thermuthis, Pharaoh’s daughter.
Heber, “Because he was reunited to his family,” by his father Amram.
Yekuthiel, “I hoped in God,” by his mother Jochebed.
Yarah, “I went down to the river to watch him,” by his sister Miriam.
Abigedore, “For God had repaired the breach in the house of Jacob, and the Egyptians ceased from that time to cast the infants into the water,” by his brother Aaron.