The Birth of Moses
1A man from the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi. 2The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was beautiful, she hid him for three months. 3When she could hide him no longer, she took a basket of papyrus reeds, coated it with tar and pitch, laid the child inside, and set it among the reeds at the edge of the river. 4His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. 5Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. 6When she opened it, she saw the child — a baby boy, crying — and she felt pity for him. “This is one of the Hebrews’ children,” she said. 7Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and call a nursing woman from the Hebrews to nurse the child for you?” 8Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.” So the girl went and called the child’s own mother. 9Pharaoh’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. 10When the child grew, 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.”
Moses Flees to Midian
11Years later, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his own people and watched them at their forced labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people, 12and he looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck the Egyptian down and hid him in the sand. 13The next day he went out again, and there were two Hebrew men fighting. He said to the one in the wrong, “Why are you striking your fellow?” 14He answered, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me, as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and he thought, “So the thing is known.” 15When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, and he sat down there beside a well. 16Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17But the shepherds came and drove them away, so Moses stood up and came to their defense, and watered their flock. 18When they came to Reuel their father, he asked, “Why have you come back so soon today?” 19They said, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds, and he even drew water for us and watered the flock.” 20“And where is he?” he asked his daughters. “Why did you leave the man there? Call him, so he may eat.” 21Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah in marriage. 22She bore a son, and he named him Gershom, “for,” he said, “I have been a foreigner in a foreign land.”
God Hears the Groaning of Israel
23After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help rose up to God from the slavery. 24God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25God saw the Israelites, and God knew.
