Exodus 2:9-10 (Daily Verse and Comment)

 

  Exodus 2:9-10

(9) And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the women took the child, and nursed it. (10) And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water. 
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In this long process of faith- and conviction-building in Moses, God was laying a foundation in him, in that people of faith parented him during his most formative years. One should never conclude that the first several years of a child's life are unimportant; in fact, it is in those first couple of years that he is started down the path of the rest of his life. What path will it be?

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6).

Train means "to hedge in," "to put walls around," "to narrow the way." God was doing this through Amram and Jochebed: They were starting Moses down the right path.

We do not know for sure how long Moses was with his real parents. It was at least until he was weaned. In those days, it seems to have been customary for a child to be on the breast for about two years before he was weaned. It is possible, some commentators say, understanding the culture of Egypt, it is likely that Moses was with Amram and Jochebed until he was about six years old. The reason, they say, was to get the child through those "bad years," for instance, "the terrible twos," because they had them too. By the time he was turned over to Pharaoh's daughter, he was over the hump, and she would not have such a hard time taking care of him. So, he may actually have lived with Amram and Jochebed through what we could call the pre-school years.

In verses 9-10, there is an ironic twist. God worked it out that the child who, by order of Pharaoh, should have been killed at birth is now under the secure protection of the powerful family that ordered his death. God has a sense of humor, does He not?

Not only that, the family of Moses not only received their precious baby back, but they were paid wages for doing something that they would gladly have done for free had the situation been different. It is examples like this that caused later writers to comment that God knows how to deliver the godly out of their temptations and trials. For instance, in Ephesians 3:20, Paul says that God can do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us, the Holy Spirit.

— John W. Ritenbaugh