The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile, while her maidens walked along the Nile. She spied the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to fetch it. When she opened it, she saw that it was a child, a boy crying. She took pity on it and said, ‘This must be a Hebrew child.’ (Exodus 2:5-6)

In this portrait Moses is discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter, who debates with her maidservants whether to save the child. Miriam, the child’s sister, can be seen approaching to check on the welfare of her brother and to intervene on his behalf. How providential that the royal princess, daughter of the evil despot, adopted Moses and raised him in the palace of the king! Consider Rembrandt’s masterful use of chiaroscuro to capture the balance between divine providence and human agency described in the biblical account.

Moses was born during a reign of terror. Pharaoh decreed that every male Hebrew baby must be cast into the Nile.  Moses was hidden for three months in his mother’s home. When she could no longer conceal the child, she prepared an ark for him and set it afloat upon the Nile. Through a remarkable twist of fate, Pharaoh’s own daughter found the ark and was drawn to the child, whom she adopted and raised in her father’s palace.

In this masterful example of biblical narrative, the story moves subtly from the fortuitous to the providential. The text does not supply any apparent explanation as to why Pharaoh’s daughter would leave the opulence of the royal palace and go down to bathe in the Nile. Nor is there any explanation as to what might have possessed her to rescue the child and raise him as her own. The commentators rush in to fill in the blanks.

Philo of Alexandria offers background information, which helps the reader understand the story in context:

The king of the country had but one cherished daughter, who we are told, had been married for a considerable time but had never conceived a child, though she naturally desired one, particularly of the male sex, to succeed to the magnificent inheritance of her father’s kingdom, which threatened to go to strangers if his daughter gave him no grandson. Depressed and loud in lamentation she always was, but on this particular day she broke down under the weight of cares; and, though her custom was to remain at home and never even cross the threshold, she set off with her maids to the river, where the child was exposed. (De Vita Moses I, 13-15)

By describing Pharaoh’s daughter as barren and forlorn, Philo has explained both why she left the palace, going down to the Nile in a state of utter despair, and how she allowed herself to daringly adopt and raise a Hebrew child.

This twist of fate is so outlandish and unexpected that the Rabbis introduce a series of miracles, which served to inspire Pharaoh’s daughter. In these midrashim, she was miraculously cured of leprosy by touching the ark in which  Moses lay. Moreover, her handmaidens, who objected to the rescue, were struck down dead by the archangel Gabriel.  These midrashic embellishments are intended to render her dauntless act intelligible by crediting not only her courage, but also by accentuating the divine providence, which operated on behalf of Moses at that critical juncture.

There is another midrashic orientation, which attempts to elevate Pharaoh’s daughter’s ethical behavior in saving the Hebrew child to a religious plane, in order to make her association with Moses more acceptable.

And Pharaoh’s daughter went down to bathe on the Nile. To purge herself of the idolatry of her father’s house. (Exodus Rabbah 1:23)

In this midrashic text the rabbis have portrayed Pharaoh’s daughter as having renounced her father’s idolatrous ways even before she fatefully encounters baby Moses. This not only explains how she defied her father’s decree with such temerity, but also neutralizes the traditional reader’s discomfort with Moses being raised by a surrogate mother who was pagan.

In addition, the midrash credits Pharaoh’s daughter not just with humanitarian tendencies but with religious ones. She nobly assumes a position along side Moses’s mother Jocheved, his sister Miriam, the midwives Shifrah and Puah, and Moses’s wife Zipporah – all women in the Exodus narrative who save others from the clutches of death. By moving Pharaoh’s daughter’s deed from the ethical to the religious level, the Rabbis have highlighted a phenomenon, which we will re-encounter in the development of her adopted son Moses. His ethical coming of age will be set in motion through his profound humanitarianism, as he comes to the aid of the victimized Hebrew smitten by the Egyptian (Exodus 2:11). This will be Moses’ first decided stride toward moral justice, which in turn will transport him to the religious sphere, where he will leave his indelible imprint upon the history of the nation. Perhaps Moses derived this leadership quality from his stepmother and the other women of the Exodus who served as his inspirational role models.

1. Philo of Alexandria lived from 20 BCE to 50 CE and composed numerous philosophical works in Greek. Among his many books he devoted much attention to the Bible, explicating both narrative and law. His work De Vita Mosis is a biography of Moses based on Greek rhetorical standards and contains a description of Moses as lawgiver, priest and prophet. The Loeb Classical Library edition of De Vita Moses was translated and edited by F.H. Colson (Harvard, 1929). See. De Vita Mosis I: 60-62, pp. 307-308.