“And the child grew.” Of course it would under the watchful care of such a nurse. One can easily see how during those years in which Jochebed was nursing her boy as the adopted son of the Egyptian princess, she made the most of her opportunity. In a tongue not understood in the palace she taught the child of Him who should redeem the race. She held him loyal to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Her instruction had been careful, thorough, and direct from her father, Levi, the son of Jacob; and she was true to her faith from her very heart’s core. So that, with the very life of his mother, the growing boy had drank in the Hebrew spirit. At first it must have been a surprise to the young heir to the Egyptian throne when his Hebrew nurse unfolded to him the secret of his descent. That while legally and formally he was the son of the Princess Thonoris, inwardly he was the son of another mother, and belonged to another race, not of the dominant, but of the servile, race; not a worldly, but a spiritual prince. Probably he had the usual struggle with self. It was no easy matter to lay aside the flattering prospect of one day sitting on the throne of Egypt, to forever renounce the glory and glitter of an earthly court, and to identify himself with the slave people whose lives were made bitter in all manner of service. Surely, Jochebed must not only have been a loving mother, but a wise spiritual teacher to thus gain the surrender of all that was dear to her child of the earthly life, that he might gain the heavenly. He must have been completely regenerated when he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, but chose to suffer affliction with the people of God. Only a personal knowledge of the Redeemer could have brought him to esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. No better compliment could have been paid Jochebed than the fact that in that corrupt, magnificent, heathen court she was able to do her work so well. Her son’s flawless choice of the Divine will made him the greatest man, the Son of God excepted, ever veiled in human flesh. That was the best possible sign and seal of her capability and faithfulness. When her child had passed beyond the years of childhood, and, as a nurse, could no longer retain him, “she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter,” and Thonoris, with almost infinite care, completed the boy’s education by instructing him in all the wisdom of Egypt; hence Moses was prepared both negatively and positively for his life work. Positively by his great-hearted mother, Jochebed; negatively by the Egyptian princess Thonoris, thereby, by her own hand, brought up the deliverer and avenger of the oppressed Israelites.