In the great story of one of the Bible’s most well-known characters, we find the story about his sister. The text simply refers to her as “the child’s sister.”
Throughout this entire section of the story, no proper names are mentioned. The account begins by telling us about a man from the house of Levi. This man took as his wife a woman from the house of Levi. This couple began to have children. First a daughter was born, and later they had a son.
At this point in the story, God’s people were going through a critical moment. They were in Egypt and had grown so numerous that they became a threat to the Egyptians. As a result, the Egyptians enslaved God’s people and were harsh with them. Yet despite the harsh treatment, God’s people continued to multiply and grow. This led their king—whom they called Pharaoh—to order the midwives to let only the baby girls live and to kill the boys. When the midwives did not obey Pharaoh, he commanded all his people to throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the Nile River but to let the girls live.
It was right in the middle of this crisis that the man from the house of Levi and his wife had a third child. The mother did everything she could to hide the newborn child, but after three months she could no longer do so. Rather than let the Egyptians discover the newborn and throw him into the river, the mother took action. She took a basket, made it waterproof, placed her child inside, and carried it herself to the Nile River.
The child’s sister, still quite young herself, stayed at a distance to see what would happen to her little baby brother. Perhaps her mother already had a plan, had told her about it, and so had her follow the child along—we don’t know, because the text doesn’t say. But one can only imagine the immense sense of responsibility the child’s sister felt, along with her worrying about what would become of her baby brother.
Coincidentally—the Bible has many of these coincidences—Pharaoh’s daughter came down to the Nile to bathe. She saw the floating basket and, out of curiosity, sent one of her maids to bring it to her. When they opened the basket, they saw the child and heard him crying. He was crying so much that Pharaoh’s daughter felt compassion for him. She knew this was one of the Hebrew boys— the very ones her father had ordered to be thrown into the river. Meanwhile, the child’s sister watched all of this happen from a distance.
The child’s sister approached unnoticed until she was near Pharaoh’s daughter. She summoned all the courage she could and asked Pharaoh’s daughter if she would like her to go and call one of the Hebrew women to nurse the child for her. It was an incredibly bold move for this young sister. But the suggestion seemed like a good idea to Pharaoh’s daughter, so the girl went and brought back a nurse—who was none other than the child’s own mother.
Some years later, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted the child and named him Moses, saying, “Because I drew him out of the water.” In part, it was thanks to the actions of the child’s sister that he was able to survive.
The text does not tell us the names of everyone involved at this point (though it does later in the story). It also does not explicitly say that God was at work in this account. Yet it is clear that God was overseeing every step: It was God who blessed the midwives when they disobeyed Pharaoh’s order; it was God who enabled the mother to hide her son for three months; it was God who was with the sister as she followed the basket floating down the river; it was God who guided the floating basket right to Pharaoh’s daughter; it was God who was preserving the life of the child who would one day become the deliverer of God’s people.
In the midst of the crisis, in the midst of the slaughter, in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, God used the child’s sister to save the child.
Examina La Biblia 