1A man of the house of Levi went and took a daughter of Levi as his wife. 2The woman conceived and bore a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. 3When she could no longer hide him, she took a papyrus basket for him, and coated it with tar and with pitch. She put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river’s bank. 4His sister stood far off, to see what would be done to him. 5Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe at the river. Her maidens walked along by the riverside. She saw the basket among the reeds, and sent her servant to get it. 6She opened it, and saw the child, and behold, the baby cried. She had compassion on him, and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.”
7Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Should I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you?”
8Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.”
The young woman went and called the child’s mother. 9Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away, and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.”
The woman took the child, and nursed it. 10The child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, and said, “Because I drew him out of the water.”
11In those days, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his brothers and saw their burdens. He saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his brothers. 12He looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no one, he killed the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.
13He went out the second day, and behold, two men of the Hebrews were fighting with each other. He said to him who did the wrong, “Why do you strike your fellow?”
14He said, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you plan to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian?”
Moses was afraid, and said, “Surely this thing is known.” 15Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and lived in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.
16Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17The shepherds came and drove them away; but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock. 18When they came to Reuel, their father, he said, “How is it that you have returned so early today?”
19They said, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and moreover he drew water for us, and watered the flock.”
20He said to his daughters, “Where is he? Why is it that you have left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.”
21Moses was content to dwell with the man. He gave Moses Zipporah, his daughter. 22She bore a son, and he named him Gershom, for he said, “I have lived as a foreigner in a foreign land.”
23In the course of those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. 24God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25God saw the children of Israel, and God understood.
Moses provides an initial glance into the concern and purposes of Yahweh regarding His covenant with Abraham and his posterity who were in Egypt, something that he reiterates in Exod 3:6-10 on Mt. Horeb when Yahweh appeared as a burning bush and the mission of Moses before Pharoah was announced to him.
First of all, the author reveals the impact of the captivity on the children of Israel. Exodus 2:23 indicates that the people of Israel "sighed" because of their bondage; they "cried out"; they had a "cry for help," and "their bondage rose up to God."
For each of these words, Yahweh had a response. He "heard their groaning." He "remembered His covenant." He "saw" the people, and He "took notice" of them.
In his commentary on Exodus, Roy L. Honeycutt, Jr. explains that these responses of God. He says that God's remembrance of the covenant is a sign of His faithfulness to it. It speaks not to the faithfulness of the Jewish people under bondage but to the faithfulness of God. That he saw the people of Israel speaks to God's more in depth sense of knowing them, since He used the word ra'ah. When the text says that God knew, the word yadah' is used, which always indicates a personal and experiential knowledge of God.[1] Compare the use of this word when Yahweh speaks to Abram regarding his obedience to God regarding the sacrifice of his son Isaac (Gen 22:12). Yahweh knew from eternity what Abraham would do, but He now, in time, experienced this event.
Yahweh's words in Exod. 3:7-9 to Moses give a similar account of the people's condition of slavery in Egypt, but add the commitment of Yahweh to come down to deliver His people.
What is often not realized about this period of Israel's history is that God's empathy for people's pain is central to God's nature [3]. God's deliverance in Exodus is a type of God's deliverance through the pain and death of His son, Jesus the Messiah, when He comes into the world as a human to experience the sorrow of human pain because of God's love (John 3:16) and for the second person of the Triune God to understand in His humanity the struggles of humanity.
[1] Roy L. Honeycutt, Jr., "Commentary on Exodus," The Broadman Bible Commentary, Vol. 1: Genesis-Exodus (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1969) pp. 326, 327.
[2] See H. Wayne House, Does God Feel Your Pain? 2d ed. (Navasota, Texas: Lampion House Publishing 2024).