1 A man from the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi.
2 The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. Seeing that he was a beautiful child, she kept him hidden for three months.
3 When she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him, sealed it with tar and pitch, laid the child in it and set it among the reeds at the edge of the Nile.
4 His sister took her stand some way off, to learn what would happen to him.
5 Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking beside the Nile. She caught sight of the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to fetch it.
6 She opened it and saw the child: there was a little boy, weeping. She took pity on him and said, "This is one of the Hebrew children."
7 His sister then asked Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and summon a nurse for you from among the Hebrew women, to nurse the child for you?"
8 "Go," Pharaoh's daughter told her. So the girl went and summoned the child's mother.
9 Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages." So the woman took the child and nursed him.
10 When the child was older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She gave him the name Moses, saying, "For out of the water I drew him."
11 In those days, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his brothers and watched them at their heavy labor. He saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his own brothers.
12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he struck the Egyptian dead and hid him in the sand.
13 The following day he went out, and two Hebrew men were fighting. He said to the one at fault, "Why do you strike your fellow?"
14 The man replied, "Who appointed you ruler and judge over us? Are you planning to kill me the way you killed the Egyptian?" Moses was afraid and thought, "So the matter has become known."
15 When Pharaoh heard about it, he tried to have Moses killed. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, and he sat down beside a well.
16 The priest of Midian had seven daughters. They came to draw water and fill the troughs, to water their father's flock.
17 Some shepherds came and chased them off, but Moses rose up and came to their aid and watered their flock.
18 When they came home to Reuel their father, he asked, "Why have you come back so early today?"
19 "An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds," they said. "He even drew water for us and watered the flock."
20 "Then where is he?" he asked his daughters. "Why did you leave the man behind? Invite him to have something to eat."
21 Moses agreed to live with the man, and he gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses.
22 She gave birth to a son, and he called him Gershom, for he said, "I have become a stranger in a foreign land."
23 Over that long period the king of Egypt died. The children of Israel groaned under their bondage and cried out, and their plea for help on account of the bondage rose up to God.
24 God heard their groaning, and God called to mind his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.
25 God looked upon the children of Israel, and God took notice.