Women -- Religious aspects -- Christianity; Women in the Bible
At this point Jochebed is lost to view. She drops out of history, and
nothing more is known of her. Hers emphatically was a work of faith,
for in all probability she died while Moses was under discipline in the
land of Midian. Her people, for whom she had wrought so heroically,
were still serving “with rigor” in building for Pharaoh the “treasure
cities Pithom and Raamses.” The son from whom she had hoped so much
as the crown prince of the land was in exile in the back side of the
desert; yet her faith held steady as she said with her parting breath,
“God will deliver His people. He saved Moses from the wrath of Pharaoh
and from the reptiles of the Nile; He will yet bring him back to lead
Israel out of this cruel bondage.”
How many a mother has gone down to her grave in sorrow without
realizing the fruit of her toil, perhaps broken-hearted, as Jochebed
may have done, when she saw her son hastening into the desert to escape
the vengeance which would surely have overtaken him for smiting the
Egyptian. Doubtless she never again saw his face, and may have wondered
to what purpose was all her labor. It is difficult to conceive of a
grander purpose in motherhood than that of sending out into the world
young men spiritually, morally and physically healthy, with correct
principles and holy purposes; and it is one of the saddest spectacles
in life when these preparations are cast aside by ungrateful or wayward
acts. All human help is vain, her sorrow and her anguish are too deep
to be reached by sympathy. God alone is her refuge. She is often at
the throne of grace with strong cries and tears, and with a faith that
will not shrink. Doubtless such were the last days of the brave, the
courageous, the heroic Jochebed, as she saw the form of her beloved
Moses disappear in the desert of Midian. But God honored her faith as
no woman’s faith had ever been honored in the life and works of Moses,
the great law-giver, and leader of Israel’s hosts out of the land of
bondage.
“Faithful, O Lord, Thy mercies are,
A rock that can not move:
A thousand promises declare
Thy constancy of love.”
But though Moses had fled from the face of Pharaoh because, in his
effort to defend a Hebrew who was being smitten by an Egyptian, slew
the oppressor, he had not gone into the land of Midian so far but His
eye followed the young refugee.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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