Seeds of Promise Series by Shenica Graham

Bithiah: Daughter of Pharaoh & Foster Mother of Moses

Women of The Bible

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Memory Verse: ⁶ 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! Exodus 2:6 AMP

Devotional Reading: Exodus 2:1-10 AMP

¹ Now [Amram] a man of the house of Levi [the priestly tribe] went and took as his wife [Jochebed] a daughter of Levi. ² And the woman became pregnant and bore a son; and when she saw that he was [exceedingly] beautiful, she hid him three months. ³ 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]. ⁴ And his sister [Miriam] stood some distance away to learn what would be done to him. ⁵ 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. ⁶ 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! ⁷ 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? ⁸ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the girl went and called the child’s mother. ⁹ 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. ¹⁰ 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.

When Bithiah, the daughter of Pharoaoh, went to the river to bathe, she noticed the small ark that Jochebed had built. She told one of her maid servants to bring the ark from among the reeds at the edge of the bank and bring it to her. Bithiah herself opened the ark, and for the first time, the child cried. Bithiah had sympathy on the child, and must have wanted to have a baby – which she could now do with losing her shaply frame or having any other pregnancy complications.

Moses’ sister Miriam was the eldest of his siblings and she wisely spoke to Pharaoh’s daughter that she might have the child nursed by a Hebrew woman since the child was Hebrew; and also because nursing was not likely one of the child’s healthy benefits of birth that Bithiah was also looking forward to. Bithiah told Miriam to go and get a Hebrew nurse; and she brought Jochebed, her mother and the child’s mother.

It was Bithiah who gave the male child the name, Moses. Until then, the Bible does not name him by name. Bithiah hired Jochebed to nurse Moses and when he was grown (weaned), Jochebed brought the child Moses to Bithiah. Moses was raised as a prince in the house of Pharaoh, as the son of Bithiah, daughter of Pharaoh. Of course, in those days, it was common for a princess who had never been pregnant, and obviously then had not borne a child, to be a “mother,” because the children of her handmaidens could be taken as her own children. Since Bithiah presented Moses as an Eqyptian, he was accepted as such.