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a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman. 2 The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son; and when she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could no longer hide him, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and set it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 Then his sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
5 At that time Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, while her attendants walked along the river bank. Seeing the basket among the reeds, she sent her slave girl to get it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the baby, and the little boy was crying. She felt sorry for him and said, “This is one of the Hebrew babies.”
7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”
8 “Yes, go,” Pharaoh’s daughter told her. So the girl went and got the boy’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the boy and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “Because I drew him out of the water.”
11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labour. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he struck the Egyptian dead and hid the body in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
14 “Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?” the man retorted. “Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did has certainly become known.”
15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in the land of Midian. When he arrived there, he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to the well to draw water, and they filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 Then some shepherds arrived and drove them away, but Moses stood up and came to their rescue, and he watered their flock.
18 When the girls returned to their father Reuel, he asked them, “Why have you returned so soon today?”
19 They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
20 “So where is he?” he asked his daughters. “Why did you leave the man behind? Invite him here to have something to eat.”
21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 She gave birth to a son whom Moses named Gershom, for he said, “I have become a foreigner living in a foreign land.”
23 After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery, and they cried out for help. And because of their slavery, their cry for help rose up to God. 24 God heard their groaning, and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites, and He took notice.