Exodus 2 Summary and Study Guide

How does a man raised in Pharaoh’s own household end up watering sheep for a stranger in a desert nobody in Egypt cared about? This Exodus 2 summary and study guide follows the chapter that answers it, and shows what God was doing while Moses ran.

Setting the Stage

Four hundred years before this chapter, God told Abraham that his descendants would live as foreigners in a land that was not theirs, that they would be badly treated there, and that afterwards He would bring them out with great wealth (Genesis 15:13-14). Abraham’s family went down to Egypt as one household and grew into a nation.

Then a king came to power who owed Joseph nothing. He put the Israelites under forced labour, and when that failed to slow them down he ordered every Hebrew baby boy thrown into the Nile. That order is still standing when Exodus 2 opens, and the promise made to Abraham is still unkept. For the chapter before this one, see Lessons From Exodus 1.

Exodus 2 Summary

A man and a woman of the tribe of Levi have a son while Pharaoh’s order to drown Hebrew boys is in force. The mother hides him for three months, and when she can hide him no longer she waterproofs a small reed basket, puts him inside, and sets it among the reeds at the edge of the Nile. His sister waits nearby to see what happens to him.

Pharaoh’s daughter comes down to the river, finds the basket, opens it, and pities the crying baby, recognising him at once as a Hebrew child.

The sister steps forward and offers to fetch a Hebrew nurse, and the woman she brings back is the baby’s own mother, who is paid wages to raise her own son. When the boy is older his mother hands him over, Pharaoh’s daughter adopts him, and she names him Moses because she drew him out of the water.

Years later Moses goes out to his own people and sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. He checks that nobody is watching, kills the Egyptian, and buries the body in the sand. The next day he tries to break up a fight between two Hebrews, and the man in the wrong throws the killing back in his face. Pharaoh hears of it and moves to kill him, so Moses runs to Midian and sits down by a well.

There he defends the seven daughters of Reuel from shepherds who drive them off, is taken into Reuel’s house, marries Zipporah, and names their son Gershom because he has been a stranger in a strange land. Back in Egypt the king dies, Israel groans under the slavery and cries out, and God hears, remembers His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and looks on them.

One Word Summary

• Drawn: the name he is given, and the act the chapter turns on.
• Fugitive: Moses spends more of this chapter running than rescuing.
• Remembered: the last thing that moves is God’s covenant, not Moses.

In One Sentence

Moses is born under a death order, saved from the Nile by his mother’s plan and Pharaoh’s daughter’s pity, raised in the palace, and driven out to Midian after he kills an Egyptian, while God hears Israel’s cry and moves to keep the promise He made to Abraham.

Theme of Exodus 2

Exodus 2 is about God keeping a promise through people who have no idea they are part of it. Running alongside that is a second idea the chapter will not let go of: the man God chooses to rescue Israel has to be rescued himself first, and then stripped of everything that made him look qualified.

Moses is saved as an infant, ruined as a prince, and left in a desert. The chapter then closes not on him but on God, who hears, remembers and looks.

Exodus 2 Outline

• Exodus 2:1-4: A Levite couple hide their newborn son, then set him in a basket among the reeds of the Nile while his sister watches.
• Exodus 2:5-10: Pharaoh’s daughter finds the baby, hires his own mother to nurse him, adopts him, and gives him the name Moses.
• Exodus 2:11-12: Moses sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and kills him.
• Exodus 2:13-15: Two Hebrews throw the killing back at Moses, and he flees from Pharaoh to Midian.
• Exodus 2:16-20: At a well Moses drives off shepherds and waters the flock of Reuel’s seven daughters.
• Exodus 2:21-22: Moses settles with Reuel, marries Zipporah, and names their son Gershom.
• Exodus 2:23-25: The king of Egypt dies, Israel cries out under the slavery, and God hears, remembers, and looks.

Observations from Exodus 2

The Order Was to Put Him in the River, and She Did (Exodus 1:22; 2:3)

Pharaoh had commanded that every Hebrew son be cast into the river. Moses’ mother put her son in the river. She waterproofed a basket first and laid it where the reeds would hold it, and whether she intended the irony or not, the boy went into the water and lived. God’s promise to Abraham moved forward inside the very order that threatened it.

Pharaoh’s Daughter Paid the Mother to Keep Her Own Son (Exodus 2:7-9)

Miriam offered to find a Hebrew nurse, and the nurse she brought back was the woman who had given birth to him. The mother who had to let her son go got him back with wages attached. The household that ordered his death paid for his upbringing.

The Man He Helped Asked Who Made Him Judge (Exodus 2:14)

Moses stepped between two Hebrews, and the one in the wrong answered him, “Who made thee a prince and a judge over us?” He was right about the appointment and wrong about the man. God had not yet made Moses either of those things, and forty years later He would. The refusal drove Moses out of Egypt, which is where he needed to go.

God Does Four Things and Moses Is In None of Them (Exodus 2:24-25)

The chapter ends with four actions and God is the one doing all of them. He heard, He remembered, He looked, and He had respect unto them. Moses is far away in Midian keeping another man’s sheep and knows nothing about it. The rescue that fills the rest of the book starts here, and it starts on God’s side of the story.

Difficult Words and Names in Exodus 2

• Goodly child (2:2): the King James wording for a beautiful or healthy child. Acts 7:20 says Moses was “exceeding fair”.
• Ark of bulrushes (2:3): a basket woven from papyrus reeds. “Ark” here does not mean a ship. The Hebrew word used for it appears in only one other place in the Old Testament, for Noah’s ark.
• Slime and pitch (2:3): bitumen and tar, smeared on the basket to keep the water out.
• Flags (2:3, 2:5): the tall reeds growing along the riverbank.
• To wit (2:4): to find out. Miriam stood at a distance to learn what would happen to her brother.
• Smiting and smitest (2:11, 2:13): beating or striking someone.
• Strove together (2:13): were fighting each other.
• Moses (2:10): an Egyptian name, explained in the verse by a Hebrew word for pulling someone from the water.
• Reuel (2:18): the priest of Midian, called Jethro from Exodus 3:1 onward.
• Zipporah (2:21): Reuel’s daughter, given to Moses as his wife.
• Gershom (2:22): built on the Hebrew word for a stranger, and Moses says plainly why he chose it.
• Midian (2:15): the region east of the arm of the Red Sea now called the Gulf of Aqaba. Midian was one of Abraham’s sons by Keturah (Genesis 25:1-2).
• Had respect unto them (2:25): took notice of them, with the sense that God was about to act.

Difficult Verses Explained

“He slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand” (Exodus 2:12)

Exodus reports what Moses did and passes no verdict on it, so a confident answer either way goes further than the chapter does. Two details do lean: he looked both ways before he struck, and he buried the body afterwards.

Stephen adds that Moses expected his people to understand that God would deliver them by his hand, and that they did not understand it (Acts 7:23-25). Hebrews 11:24-27 praises his choice to stand with Israel and says nothing in praise of his method.

“I have been a stranger in a strange land” (Exodus 2:22)

Moses names his son after his own situation rather than after any promise. He is a Hebrew raised as an Egyptian, now living among Midianites, and he belongs nowhere. His own words land close to what God had already said to Abraham, that his descendants would be strangers in a land that was not theirs (Genesis 15:13).

“God remembered his covenant” (Exodus 2:24)

Remembering here carries no suggestion that God had forgotten. In the Old Testament this word marks the point where God moves to act on something He has promised, as when “God remembered Noah” and the flood waters began to go down (Genesis 8:1). The verse marks the clock running out on the four hundred years of Genesis 15:13-14.

Common Misunderstandings

• That Moses learned he was a Hebrew as an adult. Scripture never records that discovery. His own mother nursed him through his earliest years (2:7-9), and by verse 11 he already speaks of the Hebrews as his own people.
• That the basket floated away down the river. His mother laid it among the reeds at the bank and his sister stood watching (2:3-4). It stayed where she put it until Pharaoh’s daughter came down to the water.
• That Moses was heir to Egypt’s throne. Exodus says he became the son of Pharaoh’s daughter (2:10), and Acts 7:22 says he was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians. The claim that he was next in line for the crown, and that he led Egypt’s armies, comes from the Jewish historian Josephus rather than from the Bible.
• That Pharaoh’s daughter knew she was hiring Moses’ mother. Nothing in the chapter says she knew. Miriam offers a Hebrew nurse, the princess agrees (2:7-9), and the two women are never identified to each other in the account.

Christ Connection

Hebrews reads this chapter as a choice rather than an accident. Moses, grown, “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt” (Hebrews 11:24-26).

The New Testament puts the name of Christ on Moses’ decision to leave Egypt’s comfort and stand with slaves, and the shape of the chapter is the shape of the gospel: the rescuer leaves a palace, is refused by the people he came for (Acts 7:23-25), and is sent away before anyone is saved.

Matthew tells a story built the same way. A king kills the baby boys, one child is preserved, and Egypt is where He is kept safe (Matthew 2:13-16). Moses was rescued by a basket and a princess’s pity; Christ was rescued by an angel’s warning and a night escape. Moses tried to deliver by his own hand and fled; Christ went to the cross and stayed.

The basket itself may carry a small echo, since the word Exodus uses for it is used elsewhere only of the ark that carried Noah through the flood, so a reader who knows Genesis sees one life carried through water again. The echo points toward Christ rather than proving anything, and the chapter’s plain gospel is simpler: God preserves the rescuer so He can rescue the people, and He moves because He keeps covenant.

When, Where, and Why

• When: During Israel’s years of slavery in Egypt, likely in the second millennium before Christ. The exact Pharaoh and the exact date are debated. Acts 7:23 and 7:30 give the chapter’s internal clock: Moses was about forty when he killed the Egyptian, and forty years passed in Midian before God called him.
• Where: Egypt and the Nile for the first half, then Midian, east of the Gulf of Aqaba, for the second. The move matters. Moses leaves the most powerful court in the world and ends up beside a desert well, and that is the address where God will find him in Exodus 3.
• Why: Exodus is the account of how God brought Israel out of Egypt in keeping with His promise to Abraham. Before the rescue begins, the writer has to show where the rescuer came from and why he is not in Egypt when the book needs him there. Ending on God rather than on Moses is how the chapter closes the gap between Pharaoh’s decree and God’s answer.

Key Verses

“And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.”

Exodus 2:10

An Egyptian princess gives a Hebrew slave child a name and a home in the house that had condemned him. Every time that name is spoken through the rest of the Bible it repeats what happened at the river.

“And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.”

Exodus 2:22

This is the only line in the chapter where Moses says how he feels, and he says it by naming a child. It reads like the lowest point of his life, and God has not spoken to him yet.

“And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.”

Exodus 2:24

The reason the exodus happens is given here, before a single plague or miracle. God acts on a covenant He made generations earlier, and Israel’s groaning is what brings that covenant back into the account.

Key Lessons from Exodus 2

• God can carry out His promise through an order designed to destroy it, as He did with the decree that sent Moses to the river (Exodus 1:22; 2:3).
• A mother hiding a baby and a girl waiting at a riverbank did more for Israel that day than the man they were saving would do for eighty years (Exodus 2:2-4).
• Good intentions carried out in our own strength and timing can make things worse, as Moses found when the killing became known (Exodus 2:12-15).
• Rejection by the people you tried to help need not be the end of God’s purpose, since God sent Moses back to the very people who refused him (Exodus 2:14; Acts 7:35).
• God hears what His people cannot say properly, and their groaning reached Him as clearly as any prayer (Exodus 2:23-24).

To go deeper into the lessons from this chapter, read our full study: Lessons From Exodus 2.

Bible Study Questions

1. Read Exodus 2:1-4 again. What exactly does Moses’ mother do, and how does each step of it relate to Pharaoh’s command in Exodus 1:22?
2. In verse 6, what does Pharaoh’s daughter say when she opens the basket, and what does her answer tell you about how much she understood?
3. Verse 11 says Moses “went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens.” What does that sentence tell you about how Moses saw himself at that point?
4. Compare Exodus 2:14 with Acts 7:23-25. What did Moses expect from the Hebrews, and what did he actually get?
5. Moses names his son Gershom in verse 22. If you had to name a season of your life the way Moses named his son, what would you call it, and would that name change anything you believe about God?
6. Verses 24 and 25 name four things God does. Which of the four is hardest for you to believe about your own situation, and why?

Frequently Asked Questions

Exodus 2, The Full Text (KJV)

Read the full chapter below for reference.

1 And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.

2 And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.

3 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.

4 And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.

5 And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.

6 And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children.

7 Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?

8 And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child’s mother.

9 And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it.

10 And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.

11 And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren.

12 And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.

13 And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?

14 And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.

15 Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well.

16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock.

17 And the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock.

18 And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, How is it that ye are come so soon to day?

19 And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock.

20 And he said unto his daughters, And where is he? why is it that ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread.

21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.

22 And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

23 And it came to pass in process of time, that the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage.

24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

25 And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them.