The Daughter of Pharaoh Called to Receive a New Name Through Adoption
The scroll of Genesis concludes with the death of the last patriarch, Ya’akov, and then by relates that Yoseph saw Ephrayim’s children to the third generation (Gen 50:23). But it does not tell anything about his brothers except that they were few in number when they descended to Egypt: only seventy souls including their father Ya’akov. Their fate however is revealed to the reader in the scroll of Exodus, which begins with listing their names again as in Chapter 46 of Genesis. Then, it is said that the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly to be become very strong in the land of Egypt despite the small number (Exo 1:1-7). The first to die in Egypt was the youngest son of Ya’akov, Yoseph; he lived only 110 years. According to the tradition, the last son of Ya’akov to die in Egypt was Levi at the age of 137. And some time after Levi’s death the enslavement began. For the sake of Ya’akov, his sons did not see the slavery.
Despite their small number, the Israelites did not change their Hebrew names, hence the name of this scroll: Shemot, “Names”, but “Exodus” in English. If we use the Hebrew titles of the five books of the Torah and arrange them in a sentence, we read as follows: “In the beginning (Bereishit), the Eternal called (Vaikra) their names (Shemot) and the words (Devarim) in the wilderness (Bamidmar)”. In the following, we would like to posit a new reading of the Scroll of Shemot, specifically in reference to one person whom the Eternal called to receive a new name through adoption. Although the traditional commentators have already treated the subject of slavery in Egypt exhaustively, yet there is some room left for our comments. We will try to show that the subject is far from being exhausted and hope to provide a new understanding and answers to the questions we will raise below. For the purpose of this study and considering the unique standing of the subject we will focus more particularly on Exodus 2 and 1 Chronicles 4. It all began with the first chapter of Exodus to which we now turn.
And after the death of Levi, the children of Israel were fruitful and increased very much in Egypt and became very strong in order to confirm what the Eternal promised to their father that his family would become numerous and develop into a great nation. But then a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Yoseph. The traditional commentators differ on the meaning of this statement: “Who did not know Yoseph” (Exo 1:8). According to some, the way the Torah introduces the new king indicates that he did not belong to the dynasty that had ruled Egypt until that moment. Others hold that he was the same king but he acted as if he did not know Yoseph, i.e., he disregarded all good works Yoseph had done for Egypt. At any rate, the want of trustworthy accounts of the history of Egyptian rulers precludes the possibility of bringing this question to a decision. But according to the plain meaning of the verse, the new king who rose in Egypt ignored Yoseph’s contribution for the country, and this is how we will view this verse.
The new Pharaoh imposed harsh labor on the Israelites, because he feared that they might leave Egypt and join the enemies. He therefore decreed that all Egyptians had the authority to force the Israelites to serve them, as the verse says 13, “And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor”. By hard labor Pharaoh hoped to break down the strength of the Israelites and slow their increase. Thus, he compelled them to build Egyptian cities. However, seeing that Pharaoh’s degree of slavery did not limit the Israelites’ proliferation, the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites. This is the time when Aharon and Miriam from the tribe of Levi were born; she was named Miriam on account of the “bitterness” (morah) of the exile.
Over time, seeing that even though the Israelites were subjected to harsh labor and slavery, they kept on increase, Pharaoh ordered the midwives of the Hebrews to throw all male babies in the Nile. And when that failed too, he commanded all his people, saying, “Throw every son who is born into the river, and keep alive every daughter” (Exo 1:22). Pharaoh’s decree of annihilation of the Israelites consisted of two parts: to throw every newborn male into the Nile, and to make live every female. But we find an issue in Pharaoh’s decree, namely, if Pharaoh wanted to decimate the Israelites, he should have had the baby girls killed, and let the boys live and keep them for compulsory labor. While killing the boys would eliminate any future uprising and revolt, why did he let the girls live? The female population contributes for the natural growth of a nation, since a woman can remarry and give birth. But because Pharaoh wanted to assimilate the daughters of Israel into the Egyptian religion and culture, not merely allow them to live, he commanded to “make them live”.
But a man of the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi to beget children despite the decree. The woman conceived and bore a son, whom she hid three months (Exo 2:1-2). This son was Mosheh and his mother was Yocheved. Now, the Egyptians were coming to search the houses for newly born babies after nine months, when a woman was expected to give birth. We are told in the Torah that Yocheved was hiding Mosheh for three months. This means that Mosheh was born after the sixth month, and she had to hide him for three more months, since the Egyptians would not come to search for a baby before the ninth month was over. Yocheved gave birth to Mosheh prematurely, in the beginning of her seventh month. And when the nine months of pregnancy were up, and the Egyptians were expected to come, and she saw that she could no longer hide him from the Egyptians, she thought of saving him by some device. She made a wicker basket, caulked it with bitumen and pitch. She laid her baby in it and placed it among the reeds at the bank of the Nile. She might have intended to recover the baby from there as soon as she had been examined not been found pregnant anymore and the house searched by the Egyptians. The mother also stationed her daughter, Miriam, at a distance to watch out for the baby. The reason why we find this important to emphasize will be made clear further on.
Meanwhile, the daughter of Pharaoh came down at the river to wash herself. She heard a baby weeping in the water and to her surprise she saw a basket caught in the reeds. The princess sent one of her handmaids to fetch it, and when she opened the basket, she saw a baby boy. And she had compassion on him and said, “This is one of the children of the Hebrews” (Exo 2:5-6). She immediately recognized him as one of the descendants of Shem on account of his different appearance and because the baby was circumcised; the descendants of Cham were of a darker complexion than the Hebrews and did not circumcise their boys.
Grammar notes: The Hebrew language allows an alternative translation. The order of the Hebrew words is: “And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe by the river”. It is possible that there were steps from the royal palace to the bank of the river and that she went down to bathe. In such a case, she had to send her handmaid to fetch the basket, as it is usually translated: “And she sent her handmaid to fetch it (the basket)”. Alternatively, the Hebrew word ammatah can be interpreted to mean “her arm” rather than “her handmaid”. Ammatah also means “forearm”, “arm length” or cubit, the length from the elbow to the fingers (see Gen 6:15 and Exo 25:10). Therefore, our passage can be also translated as, “she extended her arm to reach the basket”. We now return to the text.
Mosheh’s sister, Miriam, was nearby searching for her baby brother, for she lost it from her sight because the basket must have drifted away by the current from the place where her mother had hidden it. Searching for the baby Miriam spotted the basket at the riverbank of the royal palace; she waited to see what would befall her baby brother. And when she saw the baby in the hands of the Egyptian princess, she went out of her hiding place and cleverly suggested to find a Hebrew nurse who would take care of the child. Miriam was a seven-year-old little girl, when she spoke with the daughter of Pharaoh. Pharaoh’s daughter agreed, and Miriam brought speedily her mother to the princess. And Pharaoh’s daughter said to Yocheved, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, then I shall pay your wages”. And Yocheved took her child and nursed him until he grew. And she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and the Egyptian princess took the baby and raised him like her own son. She gave him the name Mosheh, saying, “Because I have drawn (mashah) him out of the water” (Exo 2:8-10). The name by which this baby is known throughout the Torah is the one which the daughter of Pharaoh gave him, Mosheh. Exodus 2 is the first and last episode in which the daughter of Pharaoh appears. And we do not see her in the Book of Exodus any longer, not until she appears again in 1 Chronicles, as a quite different person.
Grammar notes: The root of the word mosheh cannot be found in anywhere in the Scripture but here in Exo 2:10. Since, an Egyptian had given this name, it could therefore be an Egyptian origin. The only times this root appears in the Hebrew Scripture is in 2Sa 22:17 and Psa 18:16, thus indicating that it must be a borrowed word from Egyptian. We now return to the text.
Here, the reader may become perplexed as to why the greatest prophet of Israel was named by an Egyptian woman and had an Egyptian name. For this name remained unchanged even by the Eternal, who did not change it as He did in the cases of Avraham and Ya’akov, and He called him by no other name afterwards. The common sense would not allow us to omit this small detail in our study and not to suggest that Mosheh had spent at least three months at home, where he had certainly already been given a Hebrew name, which most unfortunately, we do not know. This Hebrew name must have been given at the baby’s circumcision on the eighth day. But here as an adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter, the prophet of all prophets received an Egyptian name by an Egyptian. Moreover, he received an Egyptian upbringing and became educated in the wisdom of Egypt, as Steven states in Act 7:22. Act 7:22 hints at the statement of Flavious Josephus (missing in the Tanach) that in the earlier part of his life, Mosheh led a very successful Egyptian wars against Ethiopia, a fact now lost in the oblivion of history. Flavious Josephus also states that Mosheh became a priest of Heliopolis, named Osarsiph. But most unfortunately, we are not given to know his true Hebrew name.
We will forward the time forty years. Mosheh was grown and he went out to his brothers, but what he saw was their burden. He saw an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave. He looked around, and when he saw no other Egyptian, he killed the taskmaster and burry him in the sand (Exo 2:11-12). But why did Mosheh do that? As a prince of Egypt, Mosheh could have ordered the Egyptian to stop beating the slave for he had that power and authority. But he decided instead to kill him. The verse also tells us that Mosheh turned around and saw that there was no one there thus indicating that he was very afraid of being seen. Why? He was an Egyptian prince! But the next day when he tried to stop two Hebrews from fighting, he understood that the matter could spread and reach the Egyptian court and Pharoah very quickly, when one of them said, “Who made you a head and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” At that time, Mosheh must have decided that he would no longer be an Egyptian and chose rather to flee Egypt and suffer in exile than to tolerate injustice to his people. Also, disappointed by the very people he had identified with, Mosheh had to flee Egypt. Mosheh was then forty years old, when he fled Egypt, according to Act 7:23.
Note: Steven could have not known how old Mosheh was when he killed the Egyptian (Act 7:23-24) and how many years he spent in Midian (Act 7:30), for Tanach says nothing about that. Unless, he had read other sources of information such as the Book of Jubilees. We now return to the text.
And indeed, Pharaoh heard of this matter and sought to kill Mosheh. But Mosheh fled from the face of Pharaoh and went to dwell in the land of Midian (Exo 2:14-15). Thus, fear of Pharaoh’s wrath drove him from Egypt into the desert. We will keep on forwarding the time even further.
And it came to be after these many days (the forty years during which Mosheh was a fugitive from Pharaoh) that the king of Egypt, who sought to kill Mosheh, died. Mosheh was at that time forty years old, and when he stood before Pharaoh to free his people from slavery, he was eighty years old. Hence, he was a fugitive from Pharaoh for forty years, and in reference to those forty years Torah speaks of “these many days”.
Meanwhile, the children of Israel continued to groan under the oppression of Egypt, and they cried out to their Elohim because of the slavery. And Elohim heard their cry and remembered His covenant with their fathers Avraham, Yitschak, and Ya’akov (Exo 2:23-24). But why did they cry out to Elohim? It was not because they wanted to leave Egypt, for Egypt was very wealthy. Or it was not because they wanted to return to Kana’an, the land of their fathers. Rather their cry was about the harsh slavery and labor. It was this that caused them to cry out. Had they continued to live a secured life like in the days of Yoseph, hardly they would have cried to Him. This subject requires a lengthy exposition, but it is all explained in our commentary in the series “The exiles of Israel”, to which we would like to turn the reader’s attention. Elohim heard their voice and called Mosheh to return to Egypt. Forty years passed until the time Mosheh would stand before Pharaoh and say, “Let my people go!”
Yet, this story in Exodus is not all about Mosheh, at least in the present author’s opinion, but also about another person who appears to be forgotten in the commentaries.
The daughter of Pharaoh as a new person
As we stated above, the daughter of Pharaoh does not appear in the Tanach, not until she appears again in 1 Chronicles, wherein those who left Egypt with Mosheh are recorded. We are forwarding the time and read thus in the Book of 1 Chronicles,
And his wife, Yehuditess, bore Yered the father of Gedor, and Ḥeḇer the father of Socho, and Yekuti’el the father of Zanovaḥ. And these were the sons of Bityah the daughter of Pharaoh, whom Mered took. (1Ch 4:18)
This verse calls aloud for an explanation. In order to make this clear to the reader, and for since Scripture found it necessary to say, “Bityah the daughter of Pharaoh”, we need to address it thoroughly, for it speaks in no uncertain terms. Now, there are two women referred to in Tanach as “daughter of Pharaoh”. The first is the woman who pulled baby Mosheh from the Nile and raised him as her son. The second is one of the wives of King Shlomoh. But our verse in Chronicles explicitly states that a certain wife of someone, called Mered, from the tribe of Yehudah gave birth to a number of children, and also states that these children were the children of Yehuditess (Hebrew, Yehudiyah). This woman is called by the name בִּתְיָה Bityah, meaning “Daughter of Yah” (from bat and Yah). The difficulty in this verse is that the chronicler suddenly refers to this woman as “the daughter of Pharaoh”. This should immediately awaken the thought that the chronicler must have referred to the Book of Exodus based on information we do not have in Exodus. Therefore, it will be clear to the reader that it is thus implied in the Chronicles that the daughter of Pharaoh, the adoptive mother of Mosheh, in Exodus is now called Yehuditess in Chronicles whose name was Bityah. Why was she called such, and what was she doing among the people of the Exodus? Was she not the princess of Egypt, Pharaoh’s daughter?! Why did she leave the royal court and Egypt, her native country, and went in the wilderness with slaves?! This will be further explained in the interpretation of the verses in Exodus.
What do we know about Pharaoh’s daughter? Not much! We do not know her Egyptian name, for the Torah did not see fit to inform us about the pagan name of someone who was destined to convert and become one of the chosen people. But what we know about her Egyptian name is from the tradition which tells us that Pharaoh’s daughter was called Thermouthis or Merris, but now בִּתְיָה Bityah, and her Egyptian name was thus changed never to be mentioned again. The name “Daughter of Yah” was given to the Egyptian princess, because of her compassion and pity she showed to baby Mosheh at the waters of the Nile. But who gave her this name? According to the tradition, the name Bityah was given to her by no one else but the Eternal. This is what is recorded in the Midrash Leviticus Rabbah 1:3: Elohim said to her, “You have called Mosheh your son, although he was not your son, therefore I will call you my daughter, although you are not my daughter”. Because the one who raises an orphan is considered by Scripture as if she gave birth to him, hence He called her Bityah, so that His Name would be in her. And because she showed compassion, the Compassionate One gave her this name: “Daughter of Yah”. The name Bityah thus signifies that Pharaoh’s daughter was adopted in the family of Israel and became Yehuditess, a member of the tribe of Yehudah.
The tradition goes on to record that Bityah was not affected by the ten plagues, even though she was the firstborn of Pharaoh. The daughter of Pharaoh left the royal court and her lifestyle of an Egyptian princess and became part of the chosen people; she became a Hebrew by adoption. But she was not the only Egyptian who feared the Elohim of the Hebrews; there were others, Egyptians and slaves, who feared Him. Torah calls them “mixed multitude” of different ethnic groups (Exo 12:38). They all left Egypt together with Israel and all went to the mountain of the Eternal to enter into the Covenant and become part of the nation (Exo 20:1-17). From here we learn that there are righteous ones among the nations of the world that have a share in the world to come, if they choose to return to the Eternal, the Elohim of Avraham, Yitschak, and Ya’akov, and be adopted in the commonwealth of the nation of Israel.
How did the daughter of Pharoah get to this point of her life to leave Egypt with the Israelites?
The reader knows that Mosheh had been a Hebrew since birth, but Mosheh himself did not know this. How had Mosheh come to that point to know that he was a Hebrew? Perhaps, the Egyptian princess told him how she had found him in the river and how he was raised in the royal court of Pharaoh, or he must have presumed his Hebraic identity, because he was circumcised. He grew up in the royal court as the son of the Egyptian princess. But his Hebrew consciousness was not settled until at certain point it woke up when he observed an Egyptian taskmaster beating an Israelite. He killed the Egyptian, but the pain did not delay and came to him when the very Israelites he saved from the Egyptian betrayed him, saying, “Who has appointed you as a dignitary and judge?” The Israelite thus implied that Mosheh was in no position and authority in Israel to act as a judge “over us” (the Israelites). Mosheh fearing for his life fled Egypt. It would be forty years later, when the Eternal called him to return to Egypt and lead his people out of the bondage.
Now, since Mosheh was born 130 years after Ya’akov had come down to Egypt, the daughter of Pharaoh had never known an Egypt without Hebrews; she was born in Egypt when the Hebrews had already in the country for a long time. For her the Hebrews were part of the Egyptian populace, and for this reason saving a Hebrew baby from the waters of the Nile was the most natural thing to do. Yet even though she was an Egyptian of the royal class, she put everything behind her and left Egypt. Why did she do that?
We see that at a certain point of the lives of Mosheh and his adoptive mother a changed must have come that made them become different persons. What was it? For Mosheh it was the revelation at the burning bush. Mosheh indeed fled Egypt and relinquished his Egyptian identity, but he was still a stringer in Midian. At the burning bush, standing on the holy ground, on the mountain of the Eternal, Mosheh was called to return to his ancestry. He was reluctant to return to Egypt to take his people of the bondage, yet when he returned, he became the greatest statesman of Israel. But what changed his adoptive-mother’s life? It is the same that changed both. The Eternal said to Mosheh in Midian,
Go, return to Egypt, for all the men are dead who sought your life. (Exo 4:19)
Egypt now had a new king. The Pharoah who brought the slavery upon the Israelites and who sought to kill Mosheh was no more, and the adoptive mother of Mosheh was no longer the princess of Egypt. With the coming of the new Pharoah in power, after the death of her father, she might have demoted and fallen from grace. Alternatively, she might have been disgraced when Mosheh killed the Egyptian on account of being his adoptive mother. Either way, the Egyptian princess left the idolatry behind and joined the children of Israel to become a member of the tribe of Yehudah. Thus, from an Egyptian princess she became Bityah, the daughter of the Eternal Yah.
If our line of reasoning is correct and the above is accepted, then, we are ready to remove all questions that have been risen so far, because what the chronicler has made explicit is implicit in Exodus.
It was arranged in heaven that a basket with a baby was to drift away in the river and come into the hands of the daughter of Pharaoh.
It was arranged in heaven that Mosheh was to be raised in the Egyptian court, and the children of Israel were to suffer under the yoke of the Egyptians.
It was arranged in heaven that Mosheh was to kill and be rejected by his people so that his adoptive mother would be rejected by her people and accepted by a new people.
And it was decreed in heaven that an Egyptian princess would be adopted and called the daughter of Yah.
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