A three-month-old boy is spotted floating down a reedy river in a basket, when a young woman—a princess—takes notice. Her heart goes out to him, and she adopts the boy and raises him in her father's royal court. If this boy's childhood sounds unusual, it's only a prelude to the remarkable life of a man appointed by God to do what no one before him had done.
A leader, legislator, and liberator, Moses has earned recognition in Judaism and Christianity as arguably the most revered personality in the Hebrew Scriptures. And why not? From the very beginning, God's hand had already touched Moses' life in the circumstances surrounding his birth.
Egypt at that time was prosperous and had attracted large numbers of Hebrew settlers. Threatened by the increasing foreign population, the Egyptian ruler, the Pharaoh, demanded that every newborn Hebrew male be cast into the Nile River. In an effort to spare her son's life, Moses' mother sent the baby down the river in a basket, hoping that someone would find him. When none other but Pharaoh's own daughter rescued Moses, perhaps this pointed to a higher power at work, one which would not let Moses die.
