BRAGADAYJAH 166

The Birth of Moses While the Children of Israel were laboring under the yoke of their hard task masters, and while the King’s edict was still in force whereby all the male children of the Hebrews were to be killed or cast into the river if they were born alive, a child was born to one of the daughters of Levi; and the child’s mother looked upon him and seeing he was an exceptionally beautiful child, hid him away in order to conceal his birth. In course of time however, the mother decided that the time had come to try and spirit the child away, as she could no longer keep him hidden; so she built an ark, and sealed the bottom thereof and placed the child in it and put the ark in among the reeds at the side of the river. The mother’s intention and her hope was that the little ark would somehow be borne safely away by the river and taken to some place beyond the jurisdiction of the Pharaoh; but while his sister was watching from afar, she saw that one of Pharaoh’s daughter’s maids had while walking along the river’s bank discovered the ark. The maid then took the ark to Pharaoh’s daughter and when she opened it, she found the child therein. As the child cried, Pharaoh’s daughter had compassion on it, even though she knew it was a child of the Hebrews. Pharaoh’s daughter then commanded that one of the Hebrew women be fetched to nurse the child and the messenger went and brought back the child’s very own mother. Then Pharaoh’s daughter contracted with the mother of the child that she should nurse and care for the child for wages. So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew older, the mother brought the child to Pharaoh’s daughter and she accepted it as her very own son; and she called his name Moses, because she had taken him out of the water. More