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Artwork for Drawn from the Water

Exodus 1:1-2:10

Drawn from the Water

Lyrics · Exodus

Drawn from the Water

Exodus 1:1-2:10

Lyrics

About this song

About this song

This song belongs to the Exodus collection. One recording is available to play here, with the complete lyrics below.

Bible book
Exodus
Collection
Exodus
Musical styles
Electronic
[Verse 1] Joseph's generation faded, but the children multiplied, A king who knew no kindness saw a nation at his side. Mortar, brick, and fieldwork made their living bitter clay, Yet every weight of bondage could not make the people fade. [Pre-Chorus] The midwives feared the LORD above the throne, And spared the sons that Pharaoh had condemned. [Chorus] Drawn from the water, hidden in the reeds, A child beneath a sentence became the answer to a nation's need. The river meant for death became the road by which he came, And Pharaoh's daughter raised the one whom Egypt later feared by name. [Verse 2] A mother hid her baby till the walls could hide no more, Then sealed a little basket and released it from the shore. His sister watched the current till compassion found the child, And brought his mother near again to nurse him for a while. [Bridge] The palace called him Moses, drawn out from the Nile, Born among the slaves, yet raised beneath imperial style. While Israel bent beneath the lash and cried beneath the load, The child preserved in water grew along a hidden road. [Final Chorus] Drawn from the water, hidden in the reeds, A child beneath a sentence became the answer to a nation's need. The river meant for death could not erase the covenant name, And mercy held the infant Egypt later feared by name. [Outro] The basket touched the current, And deliverance breathed inside.

Named in this songPharaohEgyptMoses

About the passage

Exodus 1: A growing people and a king who cannot stop them

Exodus opens by letting the names of Jacob's household give way to a population large enough to alarm a new king. Pharaoh treats Israel's multiplication as a military and political threat, then discovers that forced labor does not produce the result he wants. His policy escalates from taskmasters to a private order for Hebrew sons to be killed at birth, but Shiphrah and Puah refuse him because they fear God. Their resistance does not end the danger. Pharaoh responds by widening responsibility for the killing to all his people and ordering newborn sons cast into the river. The chapter therefore begins with continuity from Genesis and ends with a public death decree, while the people he is trying to suppress continue to multiply.

Study Exodus 1 in depth

Exodus 2: The child drawn from the water becomes a fugitive

Moses enters Exodus through a chain of preservation that repeatedly turns Pharaoh's policy against itself. His mother places him in a waterproofed ark among the reeds, his sister watches, and Pharaoh's daughter recognizes exactly what kind of child she has found and saves him anyway. The result is almost comic in its reversal: Moses' own mother is paid from the royal household to nurse the Hebrew boy marked by royal decree. Adulthood is rougher. Moses kills an Egyptian who is beating a Hebrew, discovers that the act is known, and flees when Pharaoh seeks his life. In Midian he again intervenes for people being pushed aside, builds a household, and still calls himself a stranger. The chapter closes with Israel groaning, and God hearing, remembering, seeing, and attending before Moses knows he will be sent.

Study Exodus 2 in depth