Remember Pharaoh's terrible decree? He ordered all newborn Hebrew boys to be killed. But Jochebed, one of the midwives, defied him. She refused to participate in this horrific act, choosing instead to save the lives of the Hebrew children. According to Legends of the Jews, her reward for this bravery, for her defiance of Pharaoh, was the safe return of her son, Moses, after she was forced to expose him.
But the story doesn't end there. It gets even more interesting, almost paradoxical. Amram and Jochebed, in their desperate act of sending their baby son adrift, inadvertently caused Pharaoh to rescind his decree. How?
The day Moses was set afloat in that little ark, Pharaoh’s astrologers came to him with what they thought was good news. They told him that the danger threatening the Egyptians – a danger supposedly linked to a boy whose fate was intertwined with water – had been averted. They believed that by throwing Moses into the Nile, they had neutralized the threat.
So, Pharaoh, feeling relieved, called off the order to drown the Hebrew boys. He thought the danger had passed! The astrologers had seen something, a vision of the future, but they couldn't quite grasp its true meaning. As Ginzberg recounts in Legends of the Jews, water was indeed part of Moses' destiny, but not in the way Pharaoh imagined. It wasn't the Nile that would claim his life.
The water the astrologers saw, the doom they spoke of, it referred to the waters of Meribah, the "waters of strife." These were the waters that, years later, would become a source of conflict and ultimately lead to Moses' death in the desert, preventing him from entering the Promised Land. Pharaoh, misled by this incomplete vision, thought he was cleverly avoiding his fate.
Ironically, to ensure that this prophesied boy wouldn't escape his watery doom, Pharaoh ordered all boys, even Egyptian children, born during a nine-month period to be cast into the river! Can you imagine the scope of that tragedy, all based on a misinterpretation?
It makes you think, doesn't it? About the unintended consequences of our actions, both good and bad. About how even those who seek to control fate can be blinded by their own limited understanding. And about how even in the darkest of times, hope can emerge from the most unexpected places.