In Exodus 2:1-10 we find the account of Moses’ birth and God’s providence in the circumstances that resulted in him being raised in the house of Pharaoh’s daughter. Moses was born to a Levite man and woman. His mother hid him for three months so the Egyptians would not kill him. When she could no longer hide him, she took a basket made from papyrus and coated it with tar to prevent it from leaking. Then she put Moses in the basket and laid it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. Moses’ sister watched from a distance to see what would happen to her infant brother.
At that time, Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the river to bathe, accompanied by her servants. As they were walking along the riverbank, she noticed the basket floating among the reads, and she had one of her servant
girls bring it to her. When she opened the basket, she saw the baby crying, and she felt sorry for him. She realized that it must be one of the Hebrew babies who had been hidden by his mother.
When Moses’ sister saw this, she approached Pharaoh’s daughter and asked if she could go and get a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby for her.
Pharaoh’s daughter said yes and told her to go and do so. Moses’ sister went home and got their mother for the task, and Pharaoh’s daughter even offered to pay her for nursing the child.
Moses’ mother then took him back home with her. When he was a little older, she brought him back to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son, living in the household of Pharaoh. It was Pharaoh’s daughter who gave Moses his name, which means “I drew him out of the water” (Exodus 2:10).
In the Book of Acts, we find another account of Moses’ life in Egypt. This account is given by Stephen in his address to the Sanhedrin. Opposition arose from the Jews to Stephen’s preaching of Christ, and they produced witnesses who brought false charges against him. He was then seized and forced to appear before the high priest and the council to answer these charges and to explain the message that he had been spreading.
Stephen’s address contained a brief summary of the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, and it ended with his condemnation of the Jews for being a stiff-necked and rebellious people, who though they had received the Law, they had persecuted the prophets and killed the Righteous One Himself. For this, Stephen was stoned.
The biblical account of Stephen and his address before the Sanhedrin is recorded in Acts 6:8-8:1. Within this passage, we find his account of the early life of Moses and the events that led to his fleeing from Egypt.
In Acts 7:20-29, we learn that Moses was raised by Pharaoh’s daughter as her own son, and that he was well educated in all of the wisdom and culture of the Egyptians. When Moses was forty years of age, he wanted to visit his fellow Hebrews. He went out to where they were working as
Pharaoh’s slaves, and he saw one of them being treated harshly by an Egyptian overseer. This angered Moses, and he defended his Hebrew brother by killing the Egyptian. Moses thought that his fellow Hebrews who
witnessed the event would realize that he had been sent by God to deliver them, but they did not see it at the time.
The next day Moses saw two Israelites who were fighting with each other, and he tried to make peace between them. One of the men shoved Moses and asked him who had made him a ruler and judge over them. The man then asked Moses if he wanted to kill him also, just as he had killed the Egyptian the day before. Moses now knew that the story of him killing the Egyptian had spread and that his life would be in danger when Pharaoh heard of the matter, so he fled to the land of Midian.