Exodus 1:15-22
The order, and the midwives
Every Hebrew boy is to be thrown into the Nile. The midwives refuse first, and are dealt with kindly for it, and then the order is given to all the people.
People of the Bible
Jochebed
Obeyed the letter of the order to put her son in the river, and built him something to float in.
Jochebed is not named until long after the scene she is famous for. In Exodus 2 she is simply a woman of the house of Levi who has a son, sees that he is good, and hides him for three months. When she cannot hide him any longer she does exactly what the king commanded, and casts him into the Nile, inside a basket she has waterproofed with tar and pitch. The word for that basket is the same word used for Noah’s ark, and it is used nowhere else in the Bible.
Scroll down to the storyThe movements, in the order the text gives them.
The story of Jochebed
- 01
- 02
Exodus 2:1-4
Three months, and a basket
She hides him as long as a newborn can be hidden, then coats a basket inside and out and puts it among the reeds at the edge of the river, and leaves his sister watching.
- 03
Exodus 2:7-10
Paid to nurse her own son
The daughter of Pharaoh takes him, and by way of the sister the child comes back to his mother with wages attached, until he is old enough to be given up a second time.
Why it matters
Everything the exodus becomes rests on three months of concealment and one piece of sealed basketwork. Scripture names her twice afterwards, in the genealogies, as the mother of Aaron, Moses and Miriam, which is a household that produced the priest, the lawgiver and the prophetess. Hebrews credits the hiding to faith and notes that his parents were not afraid of the king’s edict.
4 songs
The music
Every song in the catalogue whose passage falls inside these chapters.
