Commentaria in Exodum
Chapter 2
Moses is born, exposed, taken up and adopted by Pharao’s daughter. Secondly, verse 11, he kills an Egyptian and flees into Madian, where he marries Sephora and begets of her Gersam and Eliezer.
1. After this there went a man of the house of Levi: and took a wife of his own kindred. 2. And she conceived, and bore a son: and seeing him a goodly child, hid him three months. 3. And when she could hide him no longer, she took a basket made of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and pitch: and put the little infant therein, and laid him in the sedges by the river’s brink, 4. His sister standing afar off, and considering what would be done. 5. And behold the daughter of Pharao came down to wash herself in the river: and her maids walked by the river’s side. And when she saw the basket in the sedges, she sent one of her maids for it: and when it was brought, 6. She opened it, and seeing in it an infant crying, having compassion on it, she said: This is one of the children of the Hebrews. 7. And the child’s sister said to her: Shall I go, and call to thee a Hebrew woman to nurse the infant? 8. She answered: Go. The maid went, and called the child’s mother. 9. And Pharao’s daughter said to her: Take this child, and nurse it for me: I will give thee thy wages. The woman took and nursed the child: and when he was grown up, she delivered him to Pharao’s daughter. 10. And she adopted him for a son, and called his name Moses, saying: Because I took him out of the water. 11. In those days, after Moses was grown up, he went out to his brethren: and saw their affliction, and an Egyptian striking one of the Hebrews, his brethren. 12. And when he had looked about this way and that way, and saw no one there, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. 13. And going out the next day, he saw two Hebrews quarrelling: and he said to him that did the wrong: Why strikest thou thy neighbour? 14. But he answered: Who hath appointed thee prince and judge over us? Wilt thou kill me, as thou didst yesterday kill the Egyptian? Moses feared, and said: How is this thing become known? 15. And Pharao heard of this word, and sought to kill Moses: but he fled from his sight, and abode in the land of Madian, and sat down by a well. 16. Now the priest of Madian had seven daughters, who came to draw water: and when they had filled the troughs, desired to water their father’s flocks. 17. The shepherds came and drove them away: and Moses arose, and defending the maidens, watered their sheep. 18. And when they were returned to Raguel their father, he said to them: Why are you come sooner than usual? 19. They answered: A man of Egypt delivered us from the hand of the shepherds: moreover he also drew water with us, and gave the sheep to drink. 20. But he said: Where is he? why have you let the man go? call him that he may eat bread. 21. So Moses swore that he would dwell with him. And he took Sephora his daughter to wife. 22. And she bore him a son, whom he called Gersam, saying: I have been a stranger in a foreign country. And she bore another, whom he called Eliezer, saying: For the God of my father, my helper, hath delivered me from the hand of Pharao. 23. Now after a long time the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel groaning, cried out because of the works: and their cry went up unto God from the works. 24. And he heard their groaning, and remembered the covenant which he made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 25. And the Lord looked upon the children of Israel, and he knew them.
1. AFTER THIS THERE WENT A MAN OF THE HOUSE OF LEVI.—A Levite, a man of the posterity of Levi: this was Amram, son of Caath, grandson of Levi, great-grandson of Jacob, father of Moses. Alexander Polyhistor in Eusebius, book 9 On the Preparation for the Gospel, last chapter, relates that Amram was born 14 years before the death of Joseph, that is 57 years after Jacob’s entrance into Egypt, and consequently in the 77th year of his age begot Moses, and died 20 years before the going out of the Hebrews from Egypt; for he lived 137 years, as is plain from chap. 6. Eusebius however in the Chronicle says that Moses was born in the year
AND TOOK A WIFE OF HIS OWN KINDRED.—The Hebrew is, he took a daughter of Levi. This was Jochabed, mother of Moses, who likewise in Numbers 26:59 is called daughter of Levi. Whence Abulensis thinks that Jochabed was truly and properly a daughter of Levi, and paternal aunt of Amram her husband: so that Levi, in his 110th year, begot Jochabed in Egypt; and she, when 68 years old, bore Moses, who in the 80th year of his life led out the people. For by the law of nature the marriage of an aunt with a nephew is not absolutely forbidden, but only by positive law, which had not yet been made, but afterwards, Levit. 18. So then Moses was through his mother a grandson, through his father a great-grandson of Levi. But it is truer that Jochabed was not a daughter but a granddaughter of Levi; nor an aunt but a cousin of Amram: for our Interpreter expressly teaches this, chap. 6, verse 20, where he calls her the cousin (patruelis) of Amram; and the Septuagint in the same place, who call her the daughter of Amram’s paternal uncle; and the Chaldee, who calls her the daughter of Amram’s paternal aunt. What is here and Num. 26 called daughter of Levi, understand as a Levite woman, or one sprung from the stock of Levi, as our Interpreter renders: for so the daughters of Juda, who are sprung from Juda, are called. So Vatablus, Pererius and others. Moses adds this, both that it may be clear that Moses and Aaron were Levites on the mother’s side as on the father’s, and to signify that the Hebrews had already begun to marry women of their own tribe, and so God gently began even then the distinction of the tribes.
Let Calvin’s slander therefore cease, that Moses was born of an incestuous marriage.
2. AND SHE CONCEIVED, AND BORE A SON—Moses. Josephus adds that Amram, the father of Moses, was anxious about Moses, already conceived and soon to be born, on account of Pharao’s edict of infanticide, and when he earnestly prayed God for the child, God stood by him and said: “Know that both your public safety and your private glory are dear to me: for this boy, for fear of whose birth the Egyptians condemned your offspring to death, shall be born to you, who will free his nation from Egyptian servitude. Soon the woman’s delivery gave credit to the oracle, in which, contrary to the custom of women in childbirth, she was delivered so easily that she escaped the watchers.” The words of St. Stephen, Acts 7:25, favour this oracle.
Moses was born in the year of the world 2374; from the flood in the year not 714, as Pererius’s codex has, but 717; from the birth of Abraham 425 (Porphyry therefore erred, who imagines that Moses lived in the time of Semiramis, who succeeded Ninus, in whose 43rd year Abraham was born), after Jacob’s entrance into Egypt in the year 133. This is plain: for the flood happened in the year of the world 1656, and lasted one year; thence from the flood in the year 292 Abraham was born; Abraham however in the 75th year of his age received the promise from God, from which to the exodus of the Hebrews out of Egypt, and the giving of the law on Sinai, 430 years passed, which are so divided that 215 passed from the promise made to Abraham to the descent of Jacob into Egypt; again, another 215 from the descent of Jacob into Egypt to the exodus of the Hebrews out of Egypt; and Moses was born 80 years before the exodus.
Secondly, Moses was born 516 years before the reign of David, 560 years before the building of Solomon’s temple: for from the going out of the Hebrews out of Egypt to the building of the temple 480 years passed, as is plain 3 Kings 6:1. Add to these the 80 years of the life of Moses to the going out, you will have 560 years.
Thirdly, Moses was born 985 years before the Babylonian captivity; 1576 years before Christ; 802 years before the beginning of the Olympiads, or Olympic games; 825 years before the founding of Rome.
See the chronological table which I set out at the beginning of Genesis.
Fourthly, Moses was born not 900, as Lactantius will have it, book 4, chap. 5, but 430 years before the Trojan war, and therefore long preceded Homer, who was at least a hundred years later than the Trojan war: hence consequently Moses preceded the seven wise men of Greece still longer; for these were long later than Homer, and lived about the time of Cyrus; whom Socrates, Plato, Aristotle followed long after, about the time of Alexander the Great.