One can only imagine the pain of the Jewish parents whose newborn sons were taken from them following delivery to be killed, in fulfillment of Pharaoh’s decree. (Shemot 1:16) The Torah tells us of one case in which a mother, Yocheved, attempted to conceal her baby, Moshe, from Pharaoh’s officers. Nevertheless, after three months, it became impossible to hide him any longer; Yocheved put her son in a wicker basket, and placed it in the Nile River. (Shemot 2:2-3)
Although there is every reason to believe that Yocheved did not want her son harmed, it would seem that this action positioned him for as certain a death as handing him over to Pharaoh’s officers. What fate did Yocheved expect her son to encounter when she placed him in the river? We may suggest four answers.
1: Death
Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra (commentary to 2:3) explained that Yocheved expected that her son would likely die in the raging river; however, she wanted to at least avoid seeing - or knowing definitively - that her son was killed. This is similar to the Torah’s account of Hagar casting Yishmael under a bush after their water supply was depleted, saying, “Let me not see the death of the child.” (Bereishit 21:15-16)
This explanation, and the analogy to Hagar, are troubling. As Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch comments (ad loc.), Hagar seems to have been more concerned with her personal emotions than with her son’s well-being!
2: Miriam
We may suggest that Yocheved did not abandon Moshe at all; she knew Miriam would look out for him. As Shemot 2:4 informs us, “His sister [Miriam] stood from afar to know what would be with him.” (Shemot 2:4)
Further, the Talmud tells us that Miriam had already prophesied that Moshe would live to become the saviour of the Jewish people. She watched the basket in order to see the manner in which this prophecy would be fulfilled. (Sotah 13a) Perhaps Yocheved put Moshe in the river with the understanding that Moshe would indeed be monitored, and that Miriam had foretold his survival.
3: Fooling the Astrologers
In a third approach, a midrash (Shemot Rabbah 1:21) explains that Yocheved believed that placing her son into the river would be the means through which he would be saved: Pharaoh’s decree against the newborn boys had been a response to an astrological prediction that a boy was destined to be born who would redeem his people. (ibid. 1:18) Those same astrologers had predicted that this redeemer would be harmed via water. (ibid.) Yocheved reasoned that once this projected saviour was placed into the river, the Egyptian astrologers would become aware of this and would believe that the threat had been eliminated. Pharaoh would immediately rescind the decree, allowing Yocheved to recover Moshe without fear of discovery.
4: Adoption
Rabbi Ovadia Seforno (commentary to Shemot 2:3-4) references our third explanation, and then adds that Miriam was confident that a nearby Egyptian who discovered the basket would adopt the baby. She was not concerned that the Egyptians would suspect Moshe of being a Jew; he alleges that it was not out of the ordinary to find abandoned children who were products of illicit relationships in Egypt. Seforno supports this assertion from the prophet Yechezkel’s description of Egypt as the ultimate centre of depravity, to which many Jews in his time were attracted: “Then she increased her adulteries, remembering the days of her youth, when she was promiscuous in the land of Egypt.” (Yechezkel 23:19, ArtScroll tr.) Perhaps this was not only Miriam’s thought, but also Yocheved’s plan.
According to the last three explanations, Yocheved was not sealing Moshe’s fate when she placed him into the river. To the contrary, she was confident that this painful action of parting with her son would enable him to survive and fulfill his mission.