A Story of God and All of Us - By Roma Downey Page 0,20
to village, house to house--to kill every Hebrew boy.
Mothers wail as their infant sons are snatched from their hands and carried off in broad daylight. The grisly sight of pushcarts filled with screaming baby boys is commonplace. But they will not scream for long. Egyptian soldiers merely throw these swaddled young infants into the Nile, where they either drown or make a quick meal for the legendary Nile crocodile.
Yet one brave Jewish woman is taking extraordinary measures to save her child. For three long months she has successfully concealed her boy from the Egyptian soldiers. Now she fights for her baby's life by wrapping him in a blanket and concealing him in a basket. The simple basket, known as a tevah , which means "ark," is this nameless mother's version of Noah's ark.
Just as God sent Noah to save the world, she has fashioned a second ark that will carry a boy who will become a man and continue the job that Noah had begun.
Then comes the hard part--so hard that she cannot bear to witness it herself.
Instead, she sends her daughter, Miriam, to hide the basket in the reeds along the Nile's edge, knowing that the number of terrible
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things that might happen to her child is almost endless: crocodiles, six-foot-long cobras, the deadly asp. And, of course, the infant boy could be swept away on the current, leaving Miriam to helplessly stand on the shore and watch her brother float off to his death.
Miriam doesn't want to do this, but she has no choice. Either she hides her brother in the reeds, or he is sure to die at the hands of Egyptian soldiers.
Better to do something--even something foolish--than to let her brother be pulled from her mother's breast and hurled into the dark blue waters of the Nile. Now she watches helplessly. She tries to remain calm as she follows the little ark along the water's edge.
Every morning, the Pharaoh's daughter Batya is in the habit of stepping down to the Nile with her maids to bathe. There she removes her
diaphanous robe and steps into the water. On this morning her face is serene in the morning light. Miriam, who has been watching the progress of her brother's basket, bites her lip in anticipation as the tevah holding the boy bobs nearer and nearer to where the princess wades.
The current carries the basket right into Batya's head as she glides through the water. Miriam, hidden behind the reeds on the water's edge, follows the ark. The princess covers herself as she stands up in horror and backs toward the shore. Her maids are hysterical, which is quite a cacophony, for there are more than a few of them, and they are all prone to squealing and wailing.
Miriam cannot rush to her brother's defense, but knows that unless someone retrieves the basket, it will be swept downstream.
A startled Batya does nothing. The tevah slips farther and farther away. Then she hears a baby cry. "Be quiet, all of you," she commands her maids, as she makes a long, stretching reach for the basket.
Miriam's heart soars as Batya lifts the young boy from the basket and clumsily attempts to cradle him. Batya is too young to have a child of her own, knows nothing about holding or taking care of a baby, and immediately grasps that this child is not an Egyptian, but an Israelite slave.
"Please put it back, my lady," beseeches a maid, as if the infant is a dangerous being.
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Miriam, a girl of great faith, knows nothing of Batya's character, and begins to pray. If the princess is mean, evil, or simply goes along with Pharaoh's wishes, she could hurl the child out into the current. Miriam prays for intervention, that God would touch Batya's heart and spare her brother's life, so that she can bring her mother good news. "Please God," begs Miriam.
Batya smiles at the baby boy. "This one lives," she proclaims, pulling the child to her bosom.
"But what will the Pharaoh say?"
"Let me deal with the Pharaoh. This is my boy now. And I shall name him Moses." Moses , the Egyptian name meaning "drawn out of the water."
Miriam approaches, driven by the fear that she will never again see her brother. "If it pleases you, Highness, I can find a wet nurse for the boy," she says. For the enslaved to even speak to a member of the royalty is