[257] It is related that the midwife appointed to attend the Hebrew women, terrified by a light which appeared between the eyes of Moses at his birth, and touched with an extraordinary affection for the child, did not discover him to the officers, so that his mother kept him in her house, and nursed him three months; after which it was impossible for her to conceal him any longer, the king then giving orders to make the searches more strictly.—S. (B.) [258] The commentators say that his mother made an ark of the papyrus, and pitched it, and put in some cotton; and having laid the child therein, committed it to the river, a branch of which went into Pharaoh’s garden: that the stream carried the ark thither into a fishpond, at the head of which Pharaoh was then sitting with his wife Ásiyeh the daughter of Muzáḥem; and that the king, having commanded it to be taken up and opened, and finding in it a beautiful child, took a fancy to it, and ordered it to be brought up.—Some writers mention a miraculous preservation of Moses before he was put into the ark; and tell us, that his mother having hid him from Pharaoh’s officers in an oven, his sister, in her mother’s absence, kindled a large fire in the oven to heat it, not knowing the child was there; but that he was afterwards taken out unhurt.—S. (B., A.F.) [259] Ḳur. xxvi. 17. [260] This person, says the tradition, was an Egyptian and Pharaoh’s uncle’s son.—S. [261] The Jews pretend he was actually imprisoned for the fact, and condemned to be beheaded; but that when he should have suffered his neck became as hard as ivory, and the sword rebounded on the executioner.—S. [262] According to El-Beyḍáwee, Moses knew not the way, and, coming to a place where three roads met, committed himself to the guidance of God, and took the middle road, which was the right; Providence likewise so ordering it that his pursuers took the other two roads, and missed him.—S. [263] This was Ṣafoora [also called Ṣafoorah and Ṣafooriya, or Zipporah, the elder, or as others suppose the younger, daughter of Sho´eyb, whom Moses afterwards married.—S.] [264] The commentators say, that Moses, having obtained leave of Sho´eyb or Jethro, his father-in-law, to visit his mother, departed with his family from Midian towards Egypt; but coming to the valley of Ṭuwa, wherein Mount Sinai stands, his wife fell in labour and was delivered of a son in a very dark and snowy night: he had also lost his way, and his cattle were scattered from him, when on a sudden he saw a fire by the side of a mountain, which on his nearer approach he found burning in a green bush.—S. (B.) [265] This was a mark of humility and respect: though some fancy there was some uncleanness in the shoes themselves, because they were made of the skin of an ass not dressed.—S. (B.) [266] Which was at first no bigger than the rod, but afterwards swelled to a prodigious size.—S. (B.)