Earlier this year, I read through the book of Genesis, and now I’ve decided it’s time to start reading through the book of Exodus as well. Part 1 transitioning into Part 2, if you will. Exodus has some pretty flashy, memorable stories, and I assume most of us are pretty well acquainted with the opening scene where Moses’ mother faces the dilemma of bearing a male child during an Egyptian edict to kill all Hebrew male babies. As a way of trying to protect and save her son from the Egyptian abortionists, however, she put him in a “basket made of bulrushes and daubed with bitumen and pitch” and placed him among the reeds of a river bank (Ex. 2:3).
I was reading a commentary earlier this morning and came across a Hebrew word study of the passage that revealed something incredibly striking that the author of Exodus is trying to convey to its readers. Check this out:
“One can hardly imagine her (Moses’ mother) relief at secretly and successfully bearing a male child, followed by her pain at having to place him into the river, and to do so in a way that would actually save his life. The parallels to Noah’s ark—the Hebrew word for “basket” is used only one other place in the Bible, namely for Noah’s “ark”—let us know that God was acting not only to save one baby boy, or even one nation, but also to redeem the whole creation through Moses and Israel.”†
How interesting it is that the author invokes the meaning of Noah’s ark–a grand ship constructed to evade the waters of God’s righteous wrath and to carry the seeds of creation and humankind–and applies it to directly to the miniature ‘ark’ of a handmade basket, which will, similarly, evade the waters of Pharaoh’s evil wrath and carry the seed of God’s redemptive plan for all of creation and humankind.
Indeed, the story of Moses’ abortion-evading birth is not the only story happening here. In view of the author’s artful word usage, its apparent that the author is impregnating this scene in particular with the theme of biblical redemption in general.
This scene points backwards towards redemption (Noah’s ark) and points forwards towards redemption (God delivering Israel from Egyptian slavery in crossing the Red Sea, and also God using Israel as his instrument to bring redemption to the whole world, whose ultimate seed is Jesus Christ).
This scene does not simply function as merely the opening episode of the book of Exodus; rather, it is window through we which we can see the entirety of God’s purposes to redeem the world through the promise of Israel: Jesus Christ.
Something else to mull on… Do you happen to know any other Hebrew baby in the Bible who was born during an abortion edict, grew up in Egypt as a child, and was royalty yet was laid in a basket-like stable? You got it, Jesus Christ himself.
The Bible doesn’t mess around.
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† Theology of Work, The Work of Midwifery and Mothering | TOW Bible Commentary. https://www.theologyofwork.org/old-testament/exodus-and-work/israel-in-egypt-exodus-111316/the-work-of-midwifery-and-mothering-exodus-115-210/
