In the 1998 animated film Prince of Egypt, Moses’ ark takes a wild ride down a violent torrent amidst snapping hippos and crocodiles. Whilst all very exciting the truth is that Moses’ mother carefully places him where she knew Pharaoh’s daughter and her attendants bathed. Her daughter Miriam watches over him. Thus Moses’ mother offered her child for adoption. Millions of mothers through the ages have done this. Some through cruel coercion. Others because they cannot – because of war, persecution, poverty, abandonment, disability, or other dire circumstances – give their child the care and safety they need. Millions of mothers have with great love and unseen heartbreak, for the sake of their children, given them into the care of an adoptive mother and father.

Until his thirties the great church doctor Augustine of Hippo was an apostate.

He was clever but godless and sexually incontinent and tangled himself for many years in the Persian cult of Manichaeism. Manichaeans believed in a cosmic conflict between the coequal Kingdoms of Divine Light and Satanic Darkness. Only gnosis, secret knowledge, can deliver us from the evil. That Manichaeism never challenged Augustine’s sin was no doubt its chief attraction.

The LORD’s secret weapon was Monica, Augustine’s widowed Christian mother. Monica prayed for decades for the salvation of her son, which he later immortalised:

Almost nine years passed, in which I wallowed in the mire of that deep pit, and the darkness of falsehood. . . . All which time that chaste, godly, and sober widow (such as Thou lovest) ceased not at all hours of her devotions to bewail my case unto Thee. And her prayers entered into Thy presence (Confessions 3.20).

Desperate, Monica begged her bishop to correct her wayward son. Discerning that proud Augustine was unteachable the wise pastor refused. God would bring him to his senses: “Go thy ways and God bless thee, for it is not possible that the son of these tears should perish.”

Indeed God heard the tender prayers of Monica and brought her son to repentance and salvation in his thirty-second year.

In Exodus we meet another loving mother, the unnamed mother of Moses, whose love the LORD used so powerfully to deliver the life of her son, the great leader, prophet, and lawgiver of Israel.

Appearing between dark episodes of violence and death, Moses’ mother glimmers with tender love, wisdom, and life. How many times this story must have been told and retold in Moses’ family! It could never stale.

Exodus 2:1–2 Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.

That a Hebrew couple give birth to a son is ominous for Pharaoh had commanded all such boys to be drowned in the Nile. But Moses’ mother sees that her third child was tōv (טוב) unusually fair. Perhaps this was a sign of God’s favour. Certainly it moved her to make an extraordinary effort to preserve him.

Shiphrah and Puah have already done their part to save the Hebrew boys, now Moses’ mother hides her son: tsāphan (צפן) means to cover over, to treasure. (“I have hid (tsāphan) your Word in my heart” Ps 119:11).

For three anxious months she conceals him. Pharaoh’s seekers were diligent. Every knock on the door, every footfall, must have terrified her.

This is the curse upon every mother: “In pain you shall bring forth children” (Gen 3:16). This is not just about labour pain, but the pain of bringing a child into a dangerous world.

The Christian mother, like Monica, carries additional fears for the souls of her children. Yes, becoming a Christian brings fresh anxieties. But the LORD sees your watching and treasuring of your children. He hears your prayers. He knows, for the LORD himself bears his people through the valley of the shadow of death.

The child is a Levite, the tribe from which God would draw his priests. Matthew Henry observes that “When men are projecting the church’s ruin God is preparing for its salvation.” Moses would be Israel’s greatest priest and prophet.

Exodus 2:3–4 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch.

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