Moses in the Ark of Bulrushes

Author: Traditional Jewish

Time Period: 2499 BCE–1000 BCE

Country or Culture: Southern Levant

Genre: Myth

Overview

Moses—rebel prince, emancipator, lawgiver, and prophet—has haunted the popular imagination as have few other figures of sacred history, myth, legend, or fiction. According to the Bible, his equal did not exist in all Hebrew tradition, because he was the only prophet who knew God “face to face” (Deut. 34:10). Whether as the horned colossus of Michelangelo’s sculpture, enthroned in the basilica of St. Peter in Chains in Rome, or as a robed Charlton Heston in Cecil B. DeMille’s film The Ten Commandments, most people in the Western world have a ready mental image of Moses. But the Bible does not present him first performing his wonders in Pharaoh’s court, arguing with God at the burning bush, or even contending with the rebellious Israelites in the Sinai desert. He first appears in Jewish scripture as a threatened infant, with a sentence of death on his head, floating precariously down the Nile in a tiny ark. In the ancient world, little care was usually taken to preserve accounts of the early lives of heroes, so the few details that were transmitted to future generations are, therefore, especially tantalizing, however smothered in myth they may be.

Orthodox Jews, Christians, and Muslims accept Moses is a thoroughly historical figure, vouchsafed by their holy books. While some secular scholars have contended that Moses is purely mythological, most students of history and archeology do believe that he was a real person around whom legends gathered. But attempts to corroborate the events first narrated in the Bible have been largely unsuccessful. Judaism has traditionally credited Moses with the authorship, under divine guidance, of the first five books of scripture, the Pentateuch. Though his death and burial are described therein, this has not been seen as contradictory because he is credited with prophetic foresight. But whether or not he wrote the Pentateuch, it is still appropriately known as the “five books of Moses,” or Torah, because his personality dominates the text.

The prevailing scholarly opinion today—though not shared by all—is that the Pentateuch is a compendium of oral traditions and earlier writings. This documentary hypothesis of authorship was formulated by German scholar Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918). Wellhausen identified the chief sources of the text as “J” (the Jehovist or Yahwist), “E” (the Elohist), “D” (the Deuteronomist), and “P” (the Priestly). They are so designated because of stylistic features, preoccupations, and the names by which they refer to God. The Pentateuch in its present form, according to this theory, emerged near the end of the fifth century BCE. Rabbinical Judaism has traditionally calculated the dates of Moses’s life from about 1571 BCE to 1452 BCE. Christian scholars have generally dated him even earlier, while secular scholars who concede his historical reality have suggested a variety of dates.

While Moses’s career forms the major epic of the Hebrew Bible—his deliverance of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery, his receiving of the Ten Commandments from God while encamped in the desert, and his leading of the Israelites to the border of the Promised Land—the beginning of his life is especially significant because it provides the necessary backdrop against which his subsequent journey unfolds. The Bible, in typical laconic fashion, sets forth the plight of baby Moses. He comes from the priestly tribe of Levi, and his birthplace is in the Egyptian province of Goshen, where his people have been enslaved. Although a brother, Aaron, appears later in the biblical book of Exodus, mention is initially made only of a sister called Miriam. From birth, Moses is condemned under Pharaoh’s edict that all male children of the Israelites are to be killed. To give the baby a chance of survival, his parents set him afloat in the Nile, with his sister stationed nearby to watch over him. The fifth person in the infancy narrative is an unnamed royal princess, daughter of the murderous pharaoh, who comes to bathe in the Nile and finds the child.

Though Exodus remains the chief source of Moses’s nativity narrative, embellishments later appeared, some of them adding desired details to the intriguing, though brief, biblical account. Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century CE, is valued for the information he provides surrounding biblical events and personalities, gathered from many oral and written traditions. Though born in Jerusalem to Jewish parents, Josephus served two Roman emperors, Vespasian and Titus. Noting the Roman fascination with things Jewish, Josephus sought to introduce Romans to the history and religion of his people properly in The Antiquities of the Jews (ca. 93 CE), placing his subject in the broader context of the Greco-Roman world.

A further source of lore comes from a wealthy, highly sophisticated Hellenistic Jew, Philo of Alexandria (ca. 10 BCE–ca. 45 CE). Though he wrote at length about the Law of Moses and the Pentateuch, his chief concern was in presenting Judaism as a rational, philosophical system, acceptable to learned Greeks. Following a method developed by Greek philosophers in their readings of Homer, Philo heavily allegorized the Bible, particularly when it came to accounts of the miraculous. He sought to prove through his writings that Jewish thought was equal to that of pagan Greece, and his conception of God resembled the transcendent deity of the Greek philosophers more than the involved, suffering, loving, and sometimes angry God who wrestles with Moses in Exodus.

Through the centuries, rabbinical embellishments of the biblical narratives continued. Other tales of Moses, often from the oral tradition, came to be included in the Talmud, an enormous collection of Jewish law and lore, and the Midrash, rabbinical commentaries on biblical texts. When Christianity emerged from first-century Judaism, the Jewish scriptures were adopted as the Old Testament. Christians thought of Jesus as “the New Moses,” though they believed him to be greater still. Early compilers and readers of the Christian scriptures, the New Testament, interpreted the sacred Jewish writings as a catalog of symbols and foreshadowings of the coming messiah, whom they recognized in Jesus. They saw in the infancy account of Moses a keen parallel to the birth narrative of Jesus.

Another sacred scripture in which Moses appears prominently is the Qur’an, the holy book of Islam. He is mentioned in 502 verses, more than any other prophet. The Qur’an adds details of Moses’s infancy not found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Moses is believed to have foretold the coming of Mohammed, the prophet to whom the Qur’an was revealed. It is even likely that Mohammed identified in some ways with Moses, since both were children reared by foster parents and were called to rescue a people from idolatry.

While many tales have been told of the infancy of Moses, some of them contradictory, questions have arisen almost from the beginning about the child’s origin, what his position was in the pharaoh’s court, which pharaohs he knew, and how much influence the wisdom of Egypt had on him. Folklorists have noted that the story of his infancy follows the familiar archetypal pattern of great heroes and rulers who were abandoned or threatened at birth, were reared by foster parents, and achieved their destinies through struggle and hardship.

Summary

The Pentateuch provides a clear explanation of the plight of the Israelites in Egypt at the time of the birth of Moses. In a series of lively narratives, the books of Genesis and Exodus relate the wanderings of the patriarchs. Some four hundred years previous to Moses’s birth—though biblical chronology is sometimes difficult to follow—Joseph, the favorite son of the patriarch Jacob, is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. Slave traders eventually take him to Egypt. While there he becomes the servant of Potiphar, an honorable Egyptian official. Through treachery and the lust of Potiphar’s wife, he ends up in prison, but he is able to earn his release through his gift of dream interpretation. By forewarning Pharaoh of a coming famine throughout the land, he gains favor in the court and becomes an adviser to the ruler. Eventually the famine drives his entire family to Egypt, where they settle and establish their clans. By the time Moses appears a few centuries later, they have become a prolific people within the great nation.

At Moses’s birth, the ruling pharaoh no longer honors the accomplishments of Joseph. To enhance his reign, the pharaoh enslaves the Israelites and puts them to work building cities and other structures to display his might and dominance. Fearing a possible insurrection or, as some versions of the legend assert, warned by astrologers that a male of their number would cause him woe, he decrees that all male Israelite children be thrown into the river. Why a ruler so in need of slave labor would decide on this method of population control is not clear, but whatever the reason, Moses, like other Israelite male infants, is given a death sentence at birth.

When Pharaoh instructs the midwives who attend the Israelite women to kill all male children, they choose not to heed him and instead try to save the children. Hearing of this, Pharaoh questions them. They respond that “the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come unto them” (Exod. 1:19). This vitality and fecundity of the Israelites was later embellished by storytellers who report that the women did not merely have children but gave birth to “litters.”

These midwives later became objects of curiosity as the legend grew. One source claimed that they were Egyptian women who had converted to the Israelite way of life. Whatever their loyalties, Pharaoh, it is said, becomes so preoccupied with the slaughter of the innocents that he attempts to beguile the midwives, first with flattery and later with amorous propositions, which they promptly reject. The midwives are rewarded for their valor with fine homes and families.

Either warned by God—according to some accounts—or simply through maternal love, Moses’s mother, Jochebed, refuses to allow her “goodly child” to be destroyed (Exod. 2:2). She cares for him in secret, and when it becomes impossible to hide him any longer, she fashions a teiva (ark) of bulrushes, sealing it with bitumen and pitch and placing it by the river. The Hebrew word teiva translates more properly as “chest,” but it is the same word employed for Noah’s ark in Genesis. “Bulrushes” probably refers to the familiar papyrus stalks that were abundant around the Nile and figure so prominently in the artwork that would later commemorate the event.

Whether through a fortuitous coincidence, a clever connivance of Jochebed, or divine providence, the daughter of Pharaoh comes with her ladies-in-waiting to bathe in the river. While Moses’s sister, Miriam, watches attentively from the banks of the river, Pharaoh’s daughter spies the tiny ark floating among the brush and sends her maids to retrieve it. On opening it, she sees the child, who bursts into tears. The kindhearted princess recognized at once that this is an Israelite child. (Exactly how she knows this—whether by the weave of the cloth surrounding him, his appearance, his circumcision, or some other factor—is not made clear, however.) The princess takes pity on the child, and when his sister emerges from her hiding place and offers to find a wet nurse for the child, she is pleased to offer wages for the service. Thus, Moses’s own mother is secured by Miriam to become his first caregiver. Later, the child is returned to the princess, who adopts him as her own son.

“And when she [the mother] could not longer hide him [Moses], she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.

And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side: and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept, and she had compassion on him. . . . “

Because Pharaoh’s daughter has retrieved the child from the river, she calls him Moses, meaning “drawn out” in Hebrew, the language of the Israelites. Secular scholars have also suggested that the name is derived from the Egyptian mose or messes, which, added to a proper name, means “born” or even “son of,” as in the name of the important pharaoh Rameses.

Other storytellers were quick to fill in details or clarify perplexities only hinted at in Scripture. According to Exodus, when God first calls the adult Moses, speaking to him from a burning bush and giving him the task of liberating the Israelites from slavery, one of the reluctant Moses’s first excuses is that he is “slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Exod. 4:10). This led to the conjecture that there was some speech impediment traceable to early childhood. In his Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus relates an episode not in the Bible but certainly from the Jewish oral tradition. Moses, Josephus alleges, is from the beginning an attractive, intelligent child, much loved by his adoptive mother and even a favorite pet of Pharaoh himself, despite warnings of court soothsayers that the alien child in their midst would bring trouble. One day when Pharaoh holds him, little Moses seizes Pharaoh’s crown, throws it on the floor, and tramples on it. While this might have been dismissed as a playful antic of an innocent child, the suspicious court sees sinister intent. Only the actions of his adoptive mother save Moses from her father’s anger.

In some later versions of this tale, the action cannot be entirely dismissed, and a test is devised to determine whether the child should be punished. Two cups are placed before the child. One cup contains precious jewels, the other a burning coal. In choosing the jewels, Moses would reveal exorbitant ambition, thus threatening Egyptian power. His life would be forfeit. As his small hand reaches out to take the dazzling jewels, an unseen angel seizes it and brings it down on the coal. Quickly putting his burning hand to his mouth, little Moses burns his tongue and lips, making him forever unclear of speech. Dreams were always important in ancient times, and Josephus additionally relates that Amram, Moses’s biological father, is given a revelatory dream before the child’s birth. It reveals that his son would deliver his nation from bondage and be revered ever after by all humankind.

Readers of the Bible have longed to know more about the gracious princess who adopts and nourishes Moses. Josephus provides her a name, Thermuthis. He writes that she has no children of her own and, thus, places Moses in line to become ruler of Egypt. She continues to love, educate, and protect him, even against suspicious courtiers. Rabbinical tales further elevate this Gentile woman. According to the rabbis, she eventually converts to monotheism, rejecting the gods of Egypt, and at the end of her life, she is taken directly to paradise.

Some of the ancient rabbis also sought to explain the first encounter between the baby and the pagan princess, adding a few miraculous incidents. God, they say, sends a plague of scorching heat down upon Egypt. To cool off, Pharaoh’s daughter seeks the waters of the Nile. When she sees the little ark bobbing in the water, her arm becomes elastic, growing so long that she is able to reach the basket herself. At the touch of the ark, she is cured of fierce boils that had broken out on her skin. Other rabbis contend that the princess flees to the waters of the Nile in order to purify herself from the idolatry she constantly witnesses in the pagan court of her father. Her attendants, according to this account, do not receive the baby lightly and try to persuade her to abandon him. But God sends the angel Gabriel (who does not appear at this juncture of the biblical scriptures) to bury these evildoers alive. God himself then bestows upon the princess the name of Batya, meaning “daughter of God” (Kirsch 53–54).

The Bible does not give the age or marital status of the princess. Still, the versions of the myth that report that she is childless provide further motivation for her adoption of Moses, in addition to her natural compassion. Philo of Alexandria, attempting to impress his Greco-Roman and Hellenized Jewish readers, is more philosophical in his presentation of Moses’s life. For this reason, he minimizes the extravagant details in the infancy narrative in De vita Mosis (The Life of Moses). According to Philo, from the beginning Moses displays the perfection that would be admired in any Greek or Roman hero. Philo does not mention an ark of reeds, writing only that the child’s parents expose him on the banks of the river and depart in tears, leaving him to the care of God. Philo contends that in order to confuse her father, the princess pretends to be pregnant, using “contrivances” to make herself appear thus (qtd. in Kirsch 61). After the proper time, she presents Moses to her father as her biological son.

Not surprisingly, Moses became a central figure in Jewish mystical traditions and later movements among the Jews of the Diaspora. Lubavitch Hasidic lore tells that Moses’s mother, Yocheved, is born “between the boundary walls” of Egypt, belonging neither to Egypt nor to the Holy Land. Thus, she possesses a vision in which geographic and cultural limitations are transcended, a universal vision she bestows on her son, making him especially fit for leadership. After Pharaoh’s decree, Moses’s parents choose to live apart and thus deprive Pharaoh of future victims. But their wise daughter, Miriam, tells them it is their duty to have children, saying, “Your decree is worse than Pharaoh’s.” While he only wishes to rid the Israelites of males, she tells them, their choice would put an end to the Israelites altogether. Persuaded by her impeccable logic, her parents reunite and beget Moses.

The Hebrew Bible reports no miracles attending the birth of Moses. Yet according to Lubavitcher legends, miraculous signs and portends abound at his birth. The house of his parents is filled with a radiance symbolizing the enlightenment the infant would bring to humankind. Because Egypt is filled with astrologers, soothsayers, and magicians, Moses, growing up in the royal court, is well situated to learn the wonder-working skills he later uses so effectively when he confronts Pharaoh to demand the liberation of the Israelites and when he parts the Red Sea.

The Qur’an, the holy book of Islam, gives high honor to Moses. God, according to the Qur’an, commands the mother of Moses to put her son in the Nile, assuring her that the river will cast him up gently. The Qur’an also tells how Moses is restored to his natural mother through the planning of his sister, after Moses rejects the breasts of the Egyptian wet nurses. At this point, the Qur’an deviates from earlier accounts. Now it is Pharaoh’s wife, traditionally called Āsiya, who rescues the child, convinces her husband to allow her to adopt him, and loves him as her own (Q28:1–13). This righteous foster mother further desires to become a true believer, though she lacks the strength to revolt against her own people and their pagan beliefs.

The Qur’an adds an interesting encounter between the adult Moses and Pharaoh, who reminds him that he had been brought as an infant to the court, stayed there for several years, and enjoyed many advantages. Now, his foster father wants to know why he is so ungrateful. Moses replies that although he committed ungrateful deeds in his misguided youth and fled the court in fear, it is now the Lord of the Worlds who gives him wisdom and calls him to rescue the Israelites (Q26:16–24).

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