# 5 Lady-In-Waiting:
Jochebed
Jochebed
1 Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 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. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. 5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said. 7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” 8 “Yes, go,” she answered. And the girl went and got the baby’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 10 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.”
Her Character:
She loved her family. She had great faith in God. She had courage
and acted heroically in the mist of great oppression. She trusted God over man.
What she waited for:
Israel's deliverance from Egypt and to see God's chosen people become a Nation.
Three hundred years after the death of the patriarch Joseph, a baby boy was born in Egypt, to a woman named Jochebed. Her heart was a tangle of joy and fear. Slave though she was, she was yet a Levite, a woman who belonged to the God of Abraham and Sarah, of Isaac and Rebekah, of Jacob, Rachael and Leah. She knew the stories. She believed the promises. God was faithful. Hadn't his people already grown as numerous as the sand of the sea, just as he said they would?
In fact, the Israelites were so numerous the that the pharaohs feared they might one day welcome an invading army and betray the nation from within. Over time, the Egyptians had tightened their grip, finally enslaving the Israelites, until Pharaoh's paranoia produced an even greater evil_ a command to murder each Hebrew male child emerging from the womb. But the Hebrew midwives feared God more than the king and refused to follow his orders, excusing themselves by claiming that Hebrew women were stronger than Egyptian women, giving birth before the midwives even arrived.
So Pharaoh commanded his soldiers to search out and smother every newborn male in the waters of the Nile. Jochebed could hear the screams of the mothers echoing regularly across the Hebrew camp as their children were torn from them. Her arms tightened around her own child. This one, she vowed, would never be fodder for the Egyptian river god. She and her husband, Amram, would pray. They would plan, and they would trust God to help them.
For three months, as long as she dared, she hid the infant, managing to keep Miriam and three-year-old Aaron quiet about their new baby brother. Finally, she acted on an idea that had been growing in her mind. Pharaoh had commanded her to consign her son to the Nile River. all right then. Her own hands would put him into the water.
Remembering how God had spared the child Isaac on the mountain of sacrifice, she bent down and laid her son in a basket of papyrus, waterproofed with tar and pitch. Then, with a whispered prayer and a last caress, she wiped her eyes, begging God to preserve her baby from the crocodiles that swarmed the river.
She could not bear to watch as the child drifted away from her. Instead, young Miriam kept vigil, following at a distance to see what would become of him.
Soon Pharaoh's daughter arrived at the riverbank with some of her attendants. Spotting the basket among the reeds, she sent her slave girl to fetch it. As soon as she beheld the baby she fell in love with him. The river had brought her a child whom she would cherish as her own. She could not save all the innocent children, but she could spare one mother's son.
Was she surprised when a young slave girl, Miriam, approached, asking whether she could go after a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby for her? Did she suspect the truth when Jochebed gathered the baby in her arms, this time as his nursemaid?
Whatever was in her mind, Pharaoh's daughter named the child Moses, saying, " I drew him out of the water." For the next forty years, she educated him, a prince in the courts of Pharaoh himself.
God kept Moses safe in the midst of extraordinary evil and danger- first in crocodile-infested waters and then when he was growing up right under Pharaoh's nose. And he used the Egyptians to protect and educate him in ways that must have made Moses even more effective in his eventual role as his people's deliverer.
Year after year, Jochebed would surely have reflected on the marvelous faithfulness of God. Her ingenuity, courage, and faith should inspire even the most weak-kneed among us.
Psalm 33:11,18
The plans of the the LORD stand firm forever,
the purposes of his heart through all generation...
The eyes of the LORD are on those who fear him,
on those whose hope is in his unfailing love.
TO PONDER IN YOUR HEART: Are you waiting and trusting God for his purpose of your life? What about his purpose in your children's lives?
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