Bible Strands
Exodus 2:3
But when she could no longer hide him, she got him a papyrus basket and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in the basket and set it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
Berean Standard Bible
Follow its threads on the canvas →
Study note
Setting — Moses’ mother acts in direct response to Pharaoh’s infanticide decree, transitioning from concealment to placement at the moment her hiding strategy fails.
The words — תֵּבַת (Te.vat) denotes a basket or box, while גֹּמֶא (Go.me') specifies the papyrus reed from which it is constructed.
The thread — The vessel’s tar and pitch coating parallels Noah’s ark in Genesis 6:14, while the child’s exposure to the Nile directly fulfills Pharaoh’s command in Exodus 1:22 and the historical pattern of infant abandonment noted in Acts 7:19.
Why it lands — The text demands recognition of a mother’s pragmatic survival tactics under state violence, establishing the physical means by which an infant is preserved against a royal death order.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Hebrew words
King James Version
And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.
Cross-references
- Exodus 1:22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people: “Every son born to the Hebrews you must throw into the Nile, but every daughter you may allow to live.”
- Genesis 6:14 Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; make rooms in the ark and coat it with pitch inside and out.
- Acts 7:19 He exploited our people and oppressed our fathers, forcing them to abandon their infants so they would die.
- Isaiah 18:2 which sends couriers by sea, in papyrus vessels on the waters. Go, swift messengers, to a people tall and smooth-skinned, to a people widely feared, to a powerful nation of strange speech, whose land is divided by rivers.
- Matthew 2:16 When Herod saw that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was filled with rage. Sending orders, he put to death all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, according to the time he had learned from the Magi.
- Matthew 2:13 When the Magi had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up!” he said. “Take the Child and His mother and flee to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the Child to kill Him.”
- Genesis 11:3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” So they used brick instead of stone, and tar instead of mortar.
- Genesis 14:10 Now the Valley of Siddim was full of tar pits, and as the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, some men fell into the pits, but the survivors fled to the hill country.
- Isaiah 19:6 The canals will stink; the streams of Egypt will trickle and dry up; the reeds and rushes will wither.