"When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water” (Exodus 2:10).
The book of Exodus begins with the enslavement of the Israelites by a new Pharaoh, probably one of a new dynasty of Pharaohs, who did not regard the covenantal relationship that Joseph’s Pharaoh had established with God’s priestly nation. The Hebrew people were fulfilling God’s command to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28), and their large numbers in the land of Goshen threatened the Egyptian cultural stability. Thus, Pharaoh ordered the slaughter of all male Hebrew infants.
Moses’ parents, however, quietly disobeyed the tyrant’s command in order to save their son. They placed him in an ark (the same word used for Noah’s ark) and hid him along the river from Pharaoh’s killers. God saw to it that Moses was found by Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him as her son. In this way, Moses was reared in the Egyptian court as an adopted member of the royal household.
When he was about forty years old, Moses saw an Egyptian taskmaster mercilessly beating a Hebrew slave. Moses intervened to save the oppressed man and slew the Egyptian. To Moses’ surprise other Hebrews reacted against him and asked, “Who made you a ruler over us?” As a member of the royal household, Moses might have had a right to do what he had done but realizing that Pharaoh would be angry, he fled in fear.
Arriving in the land of Midian, he came upon some young women who were being abused by a gang of thugs. He fought off their oppressors, allowing them to water their flocks.
We can see in these incidents two early pictures of Moses’ ministry as a mediator. He would be used by God to destroy the Egyptian oppressors. Drawn from water, he would give water to God’s people on many occasions. He would defend the Bride of God against her enemies and would often be rejected by his own people. In these ways, Moses revealed to the people of the old covenant the nature of the Messianic work that Jesus would accomplish for His people some 1,500 years later.
Reflecting on your redemption at the start of a new week and month, realize that the process of redemption (begun with the promise in Genesis 3:15) took a great step forward with the work of Moses. As you study Exodus in coming days, compare the mediatorial work of Moses with that of Jesus.
