We have no sure way of knowing Jochebed’s thoughts, but since her faith is commended in Hebrews chapter 11 we can assume they weren’t solely for her son. She would have had a love for her people, the Israelites. She saw their suffering under the harsh Egyptian taskmasters. Her voice would have mingled with the cry that rose up to God, as we read later, “the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them” (Exodus 3:9).

Did she even harbour a hope that Moses would grow up to become the one who would intercede on behalf of the Israelites.

Was she like Mordecai, who saw his cousin Esther placed in a position of power and privilege, and could say to her, “Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14).

Did Jochebed’s mind swirl with plans and ideas of how God might use her son in accomplishing his plan of deliverance? Is that what the New Testament commentary on her husband and her means when it says, “they saw he was a beautiful and divinely favoured child” (Hebrews 11:23 AMP)?

If so, at first it seemed things were going to plan. 

^“Now it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens” (Exodus 2:11).

He wanted to help them. He hadn’t been hardened by his years growing up within a culture that was so against God’s people.

Is this what Jochebed had hoped for all along? Moses taking an interest in their plight, standing up to the Egyptians and trying to protect his own people.

But things go horribly wrong. A murder. An accusation. And Moses flees for his life, knowing that Pharaoh has discovered that he has killed an Egyptian.

Moses is now far away from the people of God. Gone away in disgrace. Any thought of him accomplishing a great work for God seems to have gone up in smoke.

Are Jochebed’s hopes dashed? Her plan, which she had nurtured in her heart, appears to have fallen to pieces.

Yet, although Jochebed’s plan might fail, God’s plan will stand firm.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways”, says the Lord (Isaiah 55:8).

God was going to do a work in Moses while he was away from Egypt. He would take him from the palaces of Egypt out to a wilderness to look after sheep. It was here that Moses would encounter God in a way that he hadn’t encountered him while in Egypt.

After forty years in the wilderness, God appears to Moses in a burning bush.

Moses must come face to face with God.

He hears the voice from the burning bush declaring, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” He hears God declaring, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” 

And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God (Exodus 3:5-6).

Moses is confronted with the holiness of God and must acknowledge his own sin.

The forty years in the wilderness have brought Moses to a point where he readily acknowledges his unfitness for the task God calls him to do. No longer is he the proud, strong Egyptian prince standing over another Egyptian and striking him down. We now hear Moses saying, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11 NIV).

Moses has learned humility and his own unworthiness. It is from this posture of humility that God will use Moses mightily to show His own great power over Pharaoh and all of Egypt.

We scan across the years and see God bringing Moses from the wilderness back to Egypt to be the leader of His people. To speak for God, to show God’s mighty works, to bring those who were bound in slavery out to freedom. To lead God’s people all the way through the wilderness. To be the one who received God’s law, the one to whom God showed His glory. 

We don’t know how long Jochebed lived, and how much of Moses’ life she got to see. Did she live through those forty long years? Years of waiting and wondering. Hope flickering dimly.

Perhaps your own children are far away from where you would like them to be? Perhaps they have turned away from the faith. Perhaps your heart is heavy with despair and the situation seems hopeless.

Let us hold on to hope and continue to pray in faith.

“Why are you cast down, O my soul? And why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him” (Psalm 42:5).

We have an advantage over Jochebed, as we know the great man of God Moses became. 

What joy would have filled her soul if she could have seen into the future and watched her son (the one she had entrusted to God so many years before) as he stands before the people of Israel. They are filled with fear as God comes down to speak to them. Smoke billows up from the mountain as the Lord descends on it in fire, with thundering and lightning. The people are so afraid that they refuse to come near to hear God’s message to them. But Moses steps forward. Confident. Unafraid. He will go near to God. 

Later Moses would say, “I stood between the Lord and you at that time, to declare to you the word of the Lord; for you were afraid because of the fire, and you did not go up the mountain” (Deuteronomy 5:5).

How was Moses able to confidently stand before God unafraid?

From that first day standing at the burning bush, when he hid his face from God, something had changed in Moses. 

Moses had come to know God for himself.

God had said to him, ‘I know you by name, and you have also found grace in My sight’ (Exodus 33:12).

Though he knew he was a sinner, yet Moses trusted in the grace that God extended to him.  

Moses became one of the greatest men of God. His deepest desire was to know God personally. He would say to God, “Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight” (Exodus 33:13). The close relationship Moses had with the Lord is recorded for us, as we read, “So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (v.11). 

The faith of Jochebed played a huge part in Moses’ life but, ultimately, Moses belonged to God. And it was God who stepped into his life in a mighty way. When we, as mothers, fear for our children and the path they are on, let us remember the God who intervened in Moses’ life. We can trust in the goodness of this same God to speak into our own children’s lives.

Let us, like Jochebed, be women whose faith is firmly anchored in God, remembering that “with God nothing will be impossible” (Luke 1:37).

Jochebed’s time to release her son into the world came – much sooner than she would have liked. But her attitude gives us great hope, even in such a heart-wrenching situation.  

She had a plan. And when she could no longer hide her baby at home, she went into action. 

She carefully made a basket, placed her son in it, and set him in the river near where Pharaoh’s daughter often bathed (Exodus 2:3). How did she feel, knowing that any hope of his life being saved would also mean that he would grow up as an Egyptian, in the palace of Egypt? That he would be immersed in a culture that was opposed to the truth of God? 

Jochebed was a woman of faith. She believed that God could preserve her son in an ungodly environment. It was this faith in God that empowered her act. So we watch, as she builds her little basket for him so carefully and then places him among the reeds by the river’s edge. 

Jochebed was an Israelite whose faith and trust was in the one true God, the Creator of heaven and earth. She wanted her son to love and serve God too, and yet here she was apparently risking all this in order to save his life. If found by Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses would possibly grow up in an environment where multiple false gods were worshipped. Where there was no knowledge of the one true God and His ways.

Yet, her great faith in God shone out. She believed God had a plan for her son. And so, even as she tucked her son carefully into the basket, she placed her own faith in the God of heaven to protect him.

However, this wasn’t a careless abandonment. She didn’t turn her back and walk away. She carefully orchestrated events as far as she could, and was ready to offer her services to Pharaoh’s daughter as a nursemaid, ensuring that she would be the one to care for her son (vv.4-9). 

This put Jochebed in a unique position. Her son would be known as the son of Pharoah’s daughter, yet she was able to maintain a deep connection with him. Not only did she nourish him with food and surround him with love, but she began her crucial work of equipping him for the life that would be his. Jochebed would have used every opportunity to pour into his young life. What she did in those years (however few they were) was of great import. 

She made sure he had a true understanding of his identity. That he was an Israelite – not an Egyptian. That becomes clear later on:

“Now it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens” (v.11).

He knew who he was. He may have looked like an Egyptian, but he was not. He had another identity that he could choose to embrace and walk into.

Surely Moses’ mother would have told him the tales of his history. The great story of creation; of Adam and Eve, and how sin came into the world. The stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Of Joseph, too, and how their people came to be in Egypt. 

She would have taught him about God, the promise-giver. The one who had promised they would be delivered out of Egypt and brought to a land of their own. 

As Moses watched his birth family, he must have seen something that he would not find when in the palaces of Egypt. 

They had something of more value. There was something of God in their home. Something of the love of God. A strong faith in God and a hope that God would deliver them. 

Was it this godly, loving home that sparked the flame of faith in Moses’ heart?

The impact of a faith-filled mother and father who showed him what was truly greater riches?

So that we read in the New Testament that “Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin” (Hebrews 11:24). 

Jochebed and her husband could have been filled with fear at the thought of sending Moses into such an ungodly world, and continued to hide him in their house.

However, Jochebed chose the path of faith. To trust God with her child. 

Did she even have hopes of a saviour for her people? Did she harbour her own ideas of how Moses could grow up and assist her people in freedom from slavery.

Jochebed was a woman of vision and great faith. Do we dare to be, too?

“Be strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:6)