2:1-4 Observe the order of Providence: just at the time when Pharaoh's cruelty rose to its height by ordering the Hebrew children to be drowned, the deliverer was born. When men are contriving the ruin of the church, God is preparing for its salvation. The parents of Moses saw he was a goodly child. A lively faith can take encouragement from the least hint of the Divine favour. It is said, Heb 11:23, that the parents of Moses hid him by faith; they had the promise that Israel should be preserved, which they relied upon. Faith in God's promise quickens to the use of lawful means for obtaining mercy. Duty is ours, events are God's. Faith in God will set us above the fear of man. At three months' end, when they could not hide the infant any longer, they put him in an ark of bulrushes by the river's brink, and set his sister to watch. And if the weak affection of a mother were thus careful, what shall we think of Him, whose love, whose compassion is, as himself, boundless. Moses never had a stronger protection about him, no, not when all the Israelites were round his tent in the wilderness, than now, when he lay alone, a helpless babe upon the waves. No water, no Egyptian can hurt him. When we seem most neglected and forlorn, God is most present with us.

Verse 2. - And the woman conceived. Not for the first time, as appears from ver. 4, nor even for the second, as we learn from Exodus 7:7; but for the third. Aaron was three years old when Moses was born. As no difficulty has occurred with respect to him, we must regard the edict as issued between his birth and that of Moses. When she saw that he was a goodly child. Perhaps Jochebed would have done the same had Moses been ill-favoured, for mothers have often loved best their weakest and sickliest; but still it nard-rally seemed to her the harder that she was called upon to lose a strong and beautiful baby; and this is what the writer means to express - the clauses are not "simply co-ordinate." She hid him - i.e, kept him within the house - perhaps even in the female apartments. Egyptians were mixed up with the Israelites in Goshen - not perhaps in any great numbers, but still so that no Hebrew felt himself safe from observation.

And the woman conceived, and bare a son,.... Which was not her first child, nor indeed her first son, for she had both Aaron and Miriam before this: this son, which was Moses, was born, as the Jews say (t), in the thirty seventh year after the death of Levi, A. M. 2365, (or, as others, 2368,) on a Wednesday, the seventh of the month Adar, in the third hour of the day: some say it was on the twenty fourth of Nisan; but, according to Bishop Usher (u), he was born forty one years after the death of Levi, A. M. 2433, and in the year before Christ 1571:

and when she saw him that he was a goodly child; exceeding fair and beautiful, as Stephen expresses it, Acts 7:20, the Jews say (w) his form was like an angel of God, and Trogus (x), an Heathen writer, says his beautiful form recommended him: this engaged the affections of his parents to him, and who, from hence, might promise themselves that he would be a very eminent and useful person, could his life be preserved:

she hid him three months; in her bedchamber, some Jewish writers say (y); others (z), in a house under ground, that is, in the cellar; however, it was in his father's house, Acts 7:20.

(t) Shatshalet Hakabala, fol. 5. 2. Tzemach David, par. 1. fol. 7. 1.((u) Annal. Vet. Test. p. 18. (w) Pirke Eliezer, c. 48. fol. 57. 2.((x) Justin e Trogo, l. 36. c. 2.((y) Chronicon Mosis, fol. 3. 2. (z) Pirke Eliezer, ut supra. (c.48. fol. 57.2)

2. the woman … bare a son, &c.—Some extraordinary appearance of remarkable comeliness led his parents to augur his future greatness. Beauty was regarded by the ancients as a mark of the divine favor.

hid him three months—The parents were a pious couple, and the measures they took were prompted not only by parental attachment, but by a strong faith in the blessing of God prospering their endeavors to save the infant.

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