Shared Word Translation
Exodus 2
Now a man from the family of Levi went and took a daughter of Levi. The woman conceived and bore a son. She saw that he was good, and hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and coated it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the riverbank. His sister stood at a distance to know what would happen to him. Pharaoh's daughter came down to bathe at the river, while her maidens walked alongside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maidservant to fetch it. She opened it and saw the child. Behold, the child was crying. She had compassion on him and said, "This is one of the Hebrews' children." Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?" Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Go." So, the young woman went and called the child's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will pay you your wages." So, the woman took the child and nursed him. When 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."
In those days, when Moses had grown, he went out to his people and saw their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, one of his kin. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day, he went out and saw two Hebrew men fighting. He said to the one in the wrong, "Why do you strike your fellow?" The man replied, "Who made you a prince and judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?" Moses feared and thought, "Surely the thing is known."
When Pharaoh heard about this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, where he sat by a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and helped them and watered their flock. When they came to Reuel their father, he said, "How is it that you have come back so soon today?"
They replied, "An Egyptian man delivered us from the hand of the shepherds, and he even drew water for us and watered the flock." He said to his daughters, "Where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread." Moses agreed to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. She bore a son, and he named him Gershom, saying, "I have been a foreigner in a foreign land."
It came to pass, in the course of those many days, that the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned because of their labor, and they cried out, and their cry for help rose up to God from their hard labor. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel, and God knew.