May 5, 2026 - Good Morning! It’s Tuesday, May 5.
Mother’s Day is this Sunday and so all this week we’re focusing on moms. This morning we remember a Bible character that the Bible says very little about. She’s only mentioned a few times, and during part of her story she isn’t even referred to by name. But we know her name. It was Jochebed. And she was the mother of Moses.
By the time Moses was born, the Israelites had been in Egypt for over 400 years. The memories of Joseph, who saved Egypt from famine, had faded. In Exodus 1:8 we read these unsettling words - “and there came a Pharaoh who did not know”. That Pharoah, distrusting the Jews and seeing them as a threat, made the chilling decree that all Hebrew boy babies should be killed. It was a decree that would be echoed 15 centuries later when King Herod, fearing the Christ Child, had all the male infants in Bethlehem put to death. Jochebed hid Moses for the first three months of his life, and then she came up with a remarkable plan
Every morning the daughter of Pharaoh would come to the Nile to bathe. On one such morning, Jochebed put Moses in a basket and placed it in the river. The Egyptian princess saw the baby and had her servants rescue it. Cue Miriam! The sister of Moses approached and offered that she “knew” of a Hebrew woman who could nurse the child - for a price. And so Jochebed was paid by Pharaoh to care for her own baby. But she had a price to pay too. When he was weaned he would move into the palace and would be raised, not by his mother, but as a child of the king.
Jochebed was a mother of faith. When she laid her son in that basket she didn’t know that he would grow to be a leader of his people. She trusted God, and had faith that God had a plan. She also had a characteristic common to every godly mother - she was selfless. Jochebed put the needs of her child above her own. A beautiful story. A story of love and sacrifice. A story that would be echoed 15 centuries later . . . in Bethlehem.
Meet you back here tomorrow,
David
cindertex50@yahoo.com
