Moses Saved

The day was hot, and King Pharaoh's daughter, Batya, came out to the river, accompanied by her maids, to take a bath in the cool waters of the Nile. Suddenly, she heard the wailing of a small child. Presently she found the basket, and in it, an infant boy.

Intrigued by the child's beauty, Batya tried to figure out a way to enable her to keep him for herself and save him from death, for she understood that this boy was one of the children born to a Jewish family, and therefore condemned to death.

The child refused to be nursed by any of the Egyptian maids-in-waiting, and continued to weep. At this moment, Miriam came over to the princess and offered to procure for the child a Jewish nurse, who would keep it as long as the princess thought necessary. Batya was glad of this solution. Miriam rushed home and brought her mother, whom she introduced as an experienced nurse.

For two years the baby was left in his mother's care. Meanwhile, Batya told Pharaoh about the boy she had found and adopted. Her father did not object, although the foundling was of Jewish descent, for his astrologers had told him that the one who, according to the constellation of the stars, had been predestined to become the liberator of the Jews and to threaten the life of King Pharaoh had already been placed at the mercy of the water.

Moreover, they said, it was the fate of this boy to die because of water. Thus, they felt sure that the danger had already been averted. Moses was taken to the royal court, where be grew up as the princely adopted son of King Pharaoh's daughter.