June 24, 2026
Wednesday, June 24
We associate Exodus with two things: spectacular miracles and a hero named Moses. But the book starts with a series of smaller miracles, and five female heroes who made Moses’ life possible. Yesterday, we saw two of them, midwives named Shiphrah and Puah, who bravely prevented an early holocaust by defying Pharaoh’s order to murder Hebrew babies. Today, we’ll meet the other three.
The first is simply called “a Levite woman” in Exodus 2 (below), but in chapter 6 we learn her name was Jochebed.
Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. 2 The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. 3 When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.
Interestingly, the word translated “basket” here is the same Hebrew word that’s used to describe Noah’s ark. It’s the only other place in the Bible that word is used. While Pharaoh is building cities and trying to wipe out the Jews, Jochebed is building an ark for her baby boy, who will rescue the Jews. This probably wasn’t the Hail Mary it appeared to be; Jochebed had an actual plan. She placed the basket in the reeds by the riverbank, where she knew the women of Pharaoh’s household came to bathe. She was betting that one of them would see this beautiful baby boy and have some compassion.
That brings us to our next hero, Pharaoh’s daughter. (Isn’t it ironic that the other four women in this story are named, but the name of this princess, born into wealth and power, is forever unknown to us?) Against all the odds, she finds Jochebed’s son in the waters of the Nile and chooses to adopt him. That must have led to some interesting conversations in the royal bedroom: “Here I am trying to wipe these people out, and my own daughter brings one of them to live with us. If it was any woman other than her...”
Our final female hero is Miriam, Jochebed’s oldest child, who—on her own initiative--follows that basket to see what will happen to her baby brother. When she sees the princess lift him from the river, she pretends she was just passing by. She approaches her majesty, humbly pointing out that there are plenty of Hebrew women right now who have milk and no babies to feed it to (“…thanks to the genocidal actions of your father,” she declines to add). She helpfully offers to procure one. And that’s how Jochebed ends up nursing her own baby, who she was ordered to kill. Not only that, she raises him from an infant to a toddler to a little boy, and tells him who he really is, who his people really are…and gets paid for it by the same government that is trying to wipe out her people!
Because of these three heroes, Moses the future deliverer of Israel grows up knowing his Jewish identity, while also receiving the benefits of an Egyptian education, nutrition, and military/political training. God’s way is always best. But if we lack the courage to stand up for righteousness, we’ll never see it.
“Lord, please grant me courage to stand up for what’s right, even when it costs me. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
Senior Pastor
First Baptist Conroe
More from Pastor Jeff at his website: jeffbergerwriting.com
