Exodus 2

1Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman.

2The woman conceived and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.

3When she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. She put the child in it and set it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.

4His sister stationed herself at a distance to find out what would happen to him.

5Then Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe at the Nile, while her young women walked along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it.

6She opened it and saw the child—there was the baby, crying. She felt sorry for him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.”

7Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Should I go and call a nursing woman from among the Hebrews to nurse the child for you?”

8Pharaoh’s daughter told her, “Go.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother.

9Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him.

10When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “Because I drew him out of the water.”

11One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his own people and saw their forced labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people.

12He looked this way and that, and when he saw that no one was there, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

13The next day he went out, and there were two Hebrew men fighting. He said to the one in the wrong, “Why are you striking your fellow Hebrew?”

14The man said, “Who made you a ruler and judge over us? Are you planning to kill me the way you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “The thing is known after all.”

15When Pharaoh heard about this, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian. He sat down by a well.

16Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to draw water and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock.

17But some shepherds came and drove them away. Moses got up, came to their rescue, and watered their flock.

18When they came home to their father Reuel, he said, “Why have you come back so soon today?”

19They said, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”

20He said to his daughters, “Where is he? Why did you leave the man behind? Invite him to eat a meal.”

21Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses as his wife.

22She gave birth to a son, and he named him Gershom, for he said, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.”

23During that long period the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God.

24God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

25God saw the Israelites, and God took notice.