Exodus 2:1-3

And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. 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.

Exodus 2 opens with one of the most tender and remarkable scenes in all of Scripture. In the middle of Pharaoh’s cruelty, in a season when baby boys were being marked for death, a Levite woman gives birth to a son. The text says that when she saw him, she saw that he was a goodly child. That does not simply mean he was attractive in appearance, though no doubt there was something beautiful about him. It points to the fact that Jochabed discerned there was something of God’s hand upon this boy. She looked at that little life and understood, in a way only a mother touched by faith can understand, that this child was marked out for something.

Jochabed was a woman of vision. She did not look at Moses merely as another infant born into a dangerous hour. She saw beyond the moment. She saw beyond Pharaoh’s decree. She saw beyond the fear that was gripping the land. Somehow she recognized that this child mattered in a way she could not yet fully explain. And that kind of vision is precious. A parent needs that. The world may look at a child and see nothing unusual, nothing particularly significant, nothing worth noting. But a mother or father who walks with God ought to be asking the Lord for eyes to see more deeply than that. Every child matters. Every child has a purpose in the economy of God. Every child is known by Him and has a calling that is not accidental.

But Jochabed was not only a woman of vision. She was a woman of the Word. That is what makes her actions here so moving. When she could no longer hide Moses, she did something that, on the surface, seems almost unthinkable. She placed him in the very place associated with death. Pharaoh had commanded that Hebrew baby boys be cast into the river, and yet Jochabed places her son at the river’s edge. The natural instinct would have been to keep him as far from that river as possible. But faith does not always move according to natural instinct. Faith moves according to what God has revealed.

That little detail about the ark is too important to miss. The word used here is the same word used of Noah’s ark. It appears only in those places. Jochabed made an ark, lined it just as Noah’s was lined, and placed her son into it. I do not think that was accidental. I think she knew the story. I think she understood that in a time of judgment, God had once before preserved life through an ark. And now, in her own hour of danger, she acts in a way that shows she is laying hold of that same truth. She is not surrendering her son to the river. She is entrusting him to the God who saves through the ark.

That is a beautiful picture of faith. Jochabed could not control the future. She could not overthrow Pharaoh. She could not guarantee what would happen next. But she could act on what she knew of God. She could build the ark. She could line it with pitch. She could place the child there and trust that the God who once brought Noah safely through the waters was still able to preserve life in her day as well. That is what faith does. It takes hold of what God has said and acts on it, even when circumstances are dark and the outcome is not yet visible.

There is a word here for parents. Ask God to give you vision for your children. Ask Him to help you see beyond what is obvious, beyond what is merely outward, beyond what others say or assume. A child may seem ordinary to the watching world, but God delights to do extraordinary things through people the world overlooks. And then, like Jochabed, be a man or woman of the Word. Fill your heart with Scripture. Build your choices on what God has said. Raise your children in the atmosphere of faith, not fear. Jochabed did not have the whole story, but she had enough of God’s Word to act courageously, and that is often how the Lord works with us.

She put her son in an ark and trusted God with the river.

And from that ark would come a deliverer.