But it was at this juncture, when every thing seemed at the worst, that the future Deliverer of Israel was born. AMRAM, a man of the house of Levi, married JOCHEBED, a woman of the same tribe, and became the father of a daughter MIRIAM, a son AARON, and a boy remarkable from his childhood for peculiar beauty (Ex. ii. 2; Acts vii. 20). For three months his mother succeeded in eluding the vigilance of Pharaoh’s inquisitors, and concealing her child. But at the close of that period, finding further concealment impossible, she constructed an ark or boat of papyrus stalks, and having protected it with pitch or bitumen, placed the child therein among the reeds of the Nile. There the mother left it, but Miriam the sister stood afar off to watch her brother’s fate. As the ark floated with the stream, the daughter of Pharaoh, attended by her maidens, came down to bathe in the waters of the sacred river, and as she walked by the bank, her eye lit upon the basket, and she sent one of her attendants to fetch it. It was brought, and when opened, _behold! the babe wept_. Struck with compassion the Egyptian princess, though she perceived it was _one of the Hebrews’ children_, determined to rear it for her own. At this moment Miriam approached, and asked permission to call a nurse for the child. Permission was given, and Jochebed once more saw her boy restored to her, with the command to rear it for its preserver. The child grew, and after a while was brought to the Princess, and she, in memory of its preservation, named it MOSES, or in its Egyptian form MO-SHE, from _Mo_, “water,” and _Ushe_, “saved” (Ex. ii. 10).