Pharaoh's Daughter

Biblical Account

In Exodus 1, Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, commands that every male child born to the Hebrews be cast into the Nile. Moses' mother, Jochebed, hides the child for three months, then places him in an ark of bulrushes and sets it among the reeds at the river's edge (Exodus 2:1-4).

Pharaoh's daughter comes down to the river to bathe and discovers the ark. Seeing the baby crying, she has compassion on him and says, "This is one of the Hebrews' children" (Exodus 2:5-6). Although she knows the child is a Hebrew, she spares his life in defiance of her father's decree.

The child's sister (understood to be Miriam), who has been watching from a distance, offers to fetch a Hebrew woman to nurse him. Pharaoh's daughter agrees and entrusts the child, for wages, to his own mother (Exodus 2:7-9). When the child has grown, she takes him as her son and names him "Moses," saying, "Because I drew him out of the water" (Exodus 2:10). Scripture records nothing further about her.

Significance Within Scripture

Pharaoh's daughter is portrayed as one of several women who defied Pharaoh's command. In Exodus 1-2, the Hebrew midwives, Jochebed, Miriam, and Pharaoh's daughter appear in turn, and through their actions the man who would lead Israel to deliverance survives. For this reason the passage is often read as a demonstration of God's providence.

The New Testament refers to this event twice. In his sermon, Stephen says, "Pharaoh's daughter took him up, and nourished him for her own son" (Acts 7:21). The Epistle to the Hebrews records that Moses, when he was grown, "refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter" and chose to suffer affliction with the people of God (Hebrews 11:24). This verse presupposes the royal status that Pharaoh's daughter had conferred on Moses.

Interpretation and Points of Discussion

• Name: Exodus does not give her name. Jewish tradition sometimes identifies her with "Bithiah the daughter of Pharaoh" mentioned in 1 Chronicles 4:18, but the biblical text does not directly connect the two. Josephus is reported to have called her "Thermuthis." Some have proposed identifying her with a specific Egyptian princess, but such proposals are bound up with questions of chronology, and there is no consensus.
• Other "daughters of Pharaoh": The daughter of Pharaoh whom Solomon took as his wife (1 Kings 3:1) is a different person from a different era.
• The name Moses: The text explains the name by connecting it with the Hebrew verb meaning "to draw out." Some scholars suggest that the name may be of Egyptian origin.
• Character and faith: The notion that she came to believe in the God of Israel belongs to later tradition and homiletical imagination. The biblical text records only that she had compassion on the child.

In the Korean Church

In Sunday school, lessons on the birth of Moses frequently feature the scene of Pharaoh's daughter discovering the ark of bulrushes. In sermons she is often presented, alongside Jochebed's faith and Miriam's wisdom, as an example of God's providence in raising up and using people in times of crisis. Some sermons also draw attention to the fact that she was a Gentile who was used to preserve life.