The Pulpit Commentary — Exodus — Volume 1 — Section 50

Vers. 1-9.-The infancy of Moses. I. WE HAVE, IN THIS EXPERIENCE OF THE INFANT A!\"D HIS MOTHER, A MOST AFFECTING ll.LO'STRATION OF THE MISERABLE STATE TO WHICH IsRAEL HAD BEEN REDUCED. We come down from the O'eneral statement of the first chapter to the particular instance of the second. Mose;' was born, in all likelihood, just at the very height of Pharaoh's exasperation, and when the command of eh. i. 22 was in process of 'being carried out. His servants, ever becominO' more savage and brutal in disposition, as the very consequence of the harshne~s and i;everity they had daily to exercise, would be going about, watching the midwives and hanging round the abodes of the Israelites to listen for the first faint cry of the newborn child. In such circumstances, the work of the midwives most likely fell into abeyance; for the midwife became the unwilling her.tld of the murderer. Thus mothers in the crisis of their greatest need might be left without any ministry or sympathy whatever; their greatest safety in solitude, their greatest comfort to ~ow that the newborn infant's existence was utterly unknown to any Egyptian. No hour could well be darker, no circumstances more provocative of despair. We may depend upon it that God meant much to be suggested to.Israel in after generations, by the birth of Moses just at this time. "In which time Moses was born" (Acts vii. 20). May we not well ima.,,,oine that when in later years Moses _stole away from time to time, out of the splendours and luxuries of his royal home, to spend an hour or two with his own mother, she would tell him that, for all his relation to Pharaoh's daughter and all his privileges· about the court, he had been once, with many another helpless babe, the object of Pharaoh's bitterest animosity. Things were in a. very bad state when Moses was born. Bad for Israel in point of present suffering; bad for Egypt itself, seeing what a merciless and unscrupulous man_ sat upon the throne; bad for the prospects of Moses and aU the coming generation. .And so we cannot but feel that the whole world was in a very bad state when Jesus was born. He was exposed to the risk of a Herod; and Herod was but one of many like-minded oppressors. .And worse than any cruelty and oppression fn,m without was the state of the people in their hearts. Jew and Gentile were alike utterly departed from God. Romans, eh. i., does as much as human langUJ1.ge can do to give us the measure of the universal corrup~ion and degradation. We shall do well to mark in the New Testament the many thmgs that show what '1Il,regenerate, vile, and apostate hearts were those with whom Christ and his apostleR came in contact. Then, when we have the dark, repulsive picture of the times well before us, we may imitate Stephen, and say-" in which time Christ was born," Il. WE HAVE A MOST AFFECTING INSTANCE OF THE PECULIAR CARES AND BORROWS WHICH BELONG TO THE MATERNAL RELATION. "When she saw him that he was II, goodly child, she hid him three months." This can hardly mean that if he had been a. puny dwarfling, she would have cast him aside as not worth anxiety. We know that it is precisely the weakest, the least attract{ve to a stranger's eye, who most draws forth the mother's love ; thus furnishing a sweet suggestion of that Divine affection which yea.ms, with the greatest tenderness, over those who may seem to others hopelessly lost. But as Moses was a goodly child, she was bound by this fact to give all available chances for the promise that was in him. Who can tell what anxieties and alarms filled her thoughts during these terrible three months, and how often she skirted the extreme edge of disaster, always feeling that with each succeeding week her task became more difficult? How keen must have been the struggle before she brought her IJII, II, 1--!J,J THE BOOK OF EXODUS. 31