Author Lizzy Armentrout

Exodus 2:3 And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink.

My blog today is a continuation of my devotional thoughts on women in the Bible.  Today I'm writing about Jochabed, Moses' mother.  In Exodus chapters 1-2 we read about how Pharoah ordered the midwives to kill all Hebrew, male newborns at birth.  The midwives disobey at first as I'm sure they were horrified at the very thought of killing a baby that they had just helped to deliver into this world, but Pharoah just expanded the directive to all the people of the land.  Then Jochabed gives birth to a male son.  I'm amazed that she was able to hide him for three months! Knowing how fast grapevines work and how noisy babies are, I'm convinced that God worked in the situation and caused Moses to be a quiet baby so as not to be caught.  

Jochabed shows amazing faith by making an "ark of bulrushes" and putting her 3 month old son into it and placing it on the Nile River.  Stop and think about that a moment...as a mom I can't wrap my mind around the thought of putting my infant in a ark of bulrushes (I don't even know if I'd have put him into a steel one and felt comfortable!) and into a river with predators swimming in the water!  She had to have been sobbing as she made that ark and as she pushed it out into the river.  The Bible doesn't share her emotions with us, but she is a human mother and has to have been terrified for her son.  I can just see her bowing her head over that ark and beggin God to protect him.   I have the advantage of knowing the end of the story, but she didn't.  She had no idea (or at least the Scriptures don't share that with us) how God was going to work in his life.  She just knew she couldn't let them kill her baby!  

Now to jump ahead a little...Pharoah's daughter has rescued Moses and sent Miriam, Moses' older sister, to get Jochabed to nurse the baby.   Can you imagine Jochabed's reaction to Miriam's news that the Pharoah's daughter had her baby?  The daughter of the man who had ordered the male babies to be killed?  I wonder if she thought the request sent through Miriam to nurse him was a trick.  I'm sure she was relieved to hear her son was alive and healthy but to be in the hands of "them"?  Again, the Scriptures don't share her emotions with us, I'm just trying to see this account through the eyes of a mother.  I can just see her racing to the palace to see her baby and then to hear she was going to be paid to care for him!  WOW!  I can just imagine her relief!  We read in chapter 2 verse 10 that she cared for her son until he was old enough to be weaned. Think about it a minute...she had said goodbye to him and probably thought she'd never see him again! Now she not only knows he's okay...she gets to have him in her home!  Can you see her joy?  I can!

The challenge I get from this account is the amount of faith Jochabed had.  When there wasn't any hope or any way out, she didn't just give in and let life take its course.  No!  We can see from her actions that she was trusting that God was going to do something for her son...why else would she have bothered building that ark?  May I too turn to God and trust in Him to work the impossible when life seems overwhelming!