Friday, February 24, 2012

Jochebed: Woman of Resourcefulness & Great Courage


    “NOW [Amram] a man of the house of Levi [the priestly tribe] went and took as his wife [Jochebed] a daughter of Levi.   And the woman became pregnant and bore a son; and when she saw that he was [exceedingly] beautiful, she hid him three months.  And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark or basket made of bulrushes or papyrus [making it watertight by] daubing it with bitumen and pitch. Then she put the child in it and laid it among the rushes by the brink of the river [Nile].  And his sister [Miriam] stood some distance away to [a]learn what would be done to him.  Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, and her maidens walked along the bank; she saw the ark among the rushes and sent her maid to fetch it.  When she opened it, she saw the child; and behold, the baby cried. And she took pity 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 of the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?      Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the girl went and called the child's mother.      Then Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Take this child away and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed it.      And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. And she called him Moses, for she said, because I drew him out of the water.”  -Exodus 2:1-10 Amplified

  You may notice in Scripture that the mothers aren’t talked about much, let alone named, so when a mother is spoken about, we should sit up and take note.  The next few blogs, I’m going to talk about these godly mothers spoken of in the Bible, and what we can learn from them.
  Firstly, I want to talk about Jochebed, Mother of Moses.  She’s only mentioned in all of one chapter, in 10 verses, yet we can see a lot about her just from that tiny bit.
  When Jochebed saw that her newborn was beautiful, I think she just knew that if she could keep him alive—I think she saw the big picture—had things planned. 
  Jochebed was extremely courageous.  She would have to be to risk her life & the lives of her family to spare her son.  If Pharoah’s men had found out she’d been hiding her son, the consequences would have been grave—rest assured.  Imagine spending 3 entire months being on your guard at all times.  She would have had to be very careful.  She would have had to keep her secret, as much as it burned within her.  Yes, it would have been a stressful 3 months!  Yet Jochebed defied Pharoah and hid her son from his men.
  After 3 months, she showed her resourcefulness as she made a basket that was waterproof & floated.  This was such a clever plan!  Then she put Moses in the basket & had her little daughter watch from a distance.  It would definitely look less suspicious to have a little girl wading through the water.
  Jochebed had executed a great plan.  I believe she knew that Pharaoh’s daughter would see the basket, & I believe Jochebed knew that when Pharaoh’s daughter beheld the beautiful baby boy, that she would have mercy on him.
  The icing on the cake was when she ended up being Moses’s wet nurse and got to have those most important years of a child’s life to mold them.  She would have had all that time to teach Moses of Yahweh and His ways.
  As we know, it must have made a lasting impression, for even with all the splendour of Pharaoh’s palace, Moses chose to live among his own people. 

  We can learn a lot from Jochebed’s example.  She risked her life for her child.  She stood firmly in the face of fear, and she was very resourceful and clever.  “Where there’s a will, there’s a way”, or rather, “Where there’s a God, there’s a way.”  Jochebed used those years of weaning Moses to tell him of Yahweh & His promises so that he would not be polluted by the ways of the Egyptians.
  So let us be courageous and resourceful, and let us plant the Word of God in our children while they are still children, so that they will serve Him when they grow up.
   
   
   

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