But there was at least one woman in the house of bondage who feared the Lord more than she feared Pharaoh. Her name was Jochebed, which means, whose glory is Jehovah. If ever a name had attached with it the characteristic of the person bearing it, it was Jochebed, the wife of Amram, and daughter of Levi. That the glory of this woman in White Raiment was Jehovah, is evident from the fact the hard circumstances in which she was placed by the command of Pharaoh could not make her lose faith in God. Others might obey the unwarranted and heartless, as well as wicked decree, she would not, for she believed it was better to obey God rather than man, and to this belief her faith was anchored, and held steady amid the awful wail of bereaved motherhood as it ascended into the ear of God from the fields of Goshen. Jochebed was already the mother of Miriam and Aaron, and, since Aaron was three years older than Moses, the decree that all Hebrew male children should be cast into the Nile could not have been in force at Aaron’s birth, or at least had not reached its dangerous climax. As a member of the house of Levi, Jochebed shows the daring and energetic boldness for which her tribe had become distinguished, and indicated the qualities needful for the future priesthood. That the child was so fair, she recognized in it as a good omen. Josephus traces this intuition of faith, which harmonized with the maternal feeling of complacency and desire to preserve his life, to a special revelation. The means of preservation chosen by Jochebed is especially attributed to her genius and courage. It was all the more daring, since in the use of it she seemed to have, from the outset, the daughter of Pharaoh in mind. Prompted by an heroic faith, this poor Hebrew slave woman, in the house of a cruel and heartless bondage, dared to disobey the royal decree, trusting in God to carry her through the perilous enterprise of saving the life of her well-favored child. The chrism of hot tears which fell on the babe’s forehead, set him apart to the tremendous task of leading up to nationhood a race of degraded slaves whose hands were horny with unpaid toil, whose faces had grown scowling and knotted under the overseer’s lash. [Illustration: THE ISRAELITES IN BONDAGE.] Jochebed held the boy hard against her heart when she found she could no longer hide him, and said, more to herself and God than to any human helper, “My baby shall not die.” The resolution once formed in the mother’s heart, the next task was to carry it into effect. Then came the gathering of the papyrus leaves, the getting of the bitumen, the building of the little ark, and the finding of the best place for it among the flags of the Nile.