Exodus 2:7

Study note

Setting — Miriam, Moses’s sister, addresses Pharaoh’s daughter immediately after the princess discovers the crying infant in the Nile basket. She proposes a practical solution to secure a wet nurse while keeping the child alive.

The words — The Hebrew phrase וַתּאמר (va-tomer, “and she said”) introduces the proposal, followed by אֵלֵךְ (’elekh, “I will go”) and קָרָאתִי (qarati, “I will call”). These verbs frame a conditional offer that initiates the child’s preservation.

The thread — This exchange follows Miriam’s initial surveillance from a distance in Exodus 2:4 and directly triggers Pharaoh’s daughter’s command in Exodus 2:8. The mother she calls is later identified as Jochebed in Numbers 26:59.

Why it lands — The verse requires readers to recognize how a child’s strategic intervention fulfills divine preservation without explicit miraculous intervention. It demonstrates how human agency operates within the narrative to sustain the covenant line.

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.