Exodus 2:3

And when she could no longer hide him,.... Because of her neighbours, who might hear the crying of the child, or because of the diligent search made by Pharaoh's officers, which some think was made

And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river's brink.

She could not longer hide him, with safety to herself, because they now grew more violent in executing that bloody decree, and the child growing up was more likely to be discovered, especially seeing the Egyptians dwelt among them, . That boats were made of such materials as bulrushes in those parts, is evident from , and from the testimonies of Herod, Pliny, and others. Slime and pitch; slime within, and pitch without. She hid it in the flags, which grew near the river’ s side; partly that the vessel might not be carried away, and overturned by the violence of the winds and water, and partly that the child might be sooner discerned, and more easily taken out thence by any kind hand, which she hoped for.

Exodus 2:3 And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid [it] in the flags by the river’ s brink.Ver. 3. And she laid it in the flags.] This she did by the force of her faith; casting the child upon God, and "against hope believing in hope."

(3) An ark of bulrushes.—Literally, a chest of the papyrus plant. The words used are both of Egyptian origin. Teb, teba, or tebat, is a “box” or chest in Egyptian, and is well Hebraised by tebah, or, as it is here vocalised, têybah. The papyrus plant was in Egyptian kam, as in modern Coptic, whence probably the Hebrew gôme. It was a material frequently used by the Egyptians for boats and even larger vessels (Isaiah 18:2; Theophrast. Hist. Plant, iv. 8, §4; P1in. H. N. 13:11). Slime and pitoh.—By “slime” seems to be meant bitumen, or mineral pitch, as in Gen. ad. 3; by “pitch” (zaphath), the ordinary vegetable pitch of commerce. Mineral pitch, though not a product of Egypt, was imported into the country from Mesopotamia, and was largely used for embalming (Brugsch, History of Egypt, vol. i. p. 361). In the flags.—A rank aquatic vegetation abounds on the Lower Nile, and in all the back-waters and marshy tracts connected with it. Jochebed placed her child “in the flags,” that the ark might not float away down the river, and so be lost to her sight. The word used for “flag”—suph—seems to be a Hebraised form of tufi, a common Egyptian word, having this sense.

Verse 3. An ark of bulrushes] תבת גמא tebath gome, a small boat or basket made of the Egyptian reed called papyrus, so famous in all antiquity. This plant grows on the banks of the Nile, and in marshy grounds; the stalk rises to the height of six or seven cubits above the water, is triangular, and terminates in a crown of small filaments resembling hair, which the ancients used to compare to a thyrsus. This reed was of the greatest use to the inhabitants of Egypt, the pith contained in the stalk serving them for food, and the woody part to build vessels with; which vessels frequently appear on engraved stones and other monuments of Egyptian antiquity. For this purpose they made it up like rushes into bundles, and by tying them together gave their vessels the necessary figure and solidity. "The vessels of bulrushes or papyrus," says Dr. Shaw, "were no other than large fabrics of the same kind with that of Moses, Exodus 2:3, which from the late introduction of planks and stronger materials are now laid aside." Thus Pliny, lib. vi., cap. 16, takes notice of the naves papyraceas armamentaque Nili, "ships made of papyrus and the equipments of the Nile:" and lib. xiii., cap. 11, he observes, Ex ipsa quidem papyro navigia texunt: "Of the papyrus itself they construct sailing vessels." Herodotus and Diodorus have recorded the same fact; and among the poets, Lucan, lib. iv., ver. 136: Conseritur bibula Memphitis cymba papyro, "The Memphian or Egyptian boat is constructed from the soaking papyrus." The epithet bibula is particularly remarkable, as corresponding with great exactness to the nature of the plant, and to its Hebrew name גמא gome, which signifies to soak, to drink up. See Parkhurst sub voce. She laid it in the flags] Not willing to trust it in the stream for fear of a disaster; and probably choosing the place to which the Egyptian princess was accustomed to come for the purpose specified in the note on the following verse.

3. an ark] i.e. a chest. The Heb. is tηbβh (only used besides of the ‘ark’ of Noah, Genesis 6-9), an Egypt, word, tκbet, a ‘chest.’ papyrus (RVm.)] Heb. gτmĕ ?’ (Job 8:12; Isaiah 18:2; Isaiah 35:7 †: deriv. uncertain). A tall reed, consisting of a bare stem, 6 ft. or mon in height, with a large tuft of leaves and flowers at the top (see ill. in NHB. 434, EB. iii. 3557), extinct now in Egypt, and found only by the banks of the ‘Blue’ and ‘White’ Nile, but abundant in ancient times along the banks of the lower Nile. The pith of the stem was cut into thin strips, which were then laid together side by side to form a sheet; and two such sheets, with the strips in one at right angles to those in the other, placed one upon another, and glued together, were used by the ancients as writing material; the stems themselves, also, bound together and caulked, were used to form light boats (Isaiah 18:2, ‘vessels of gτmĕ ?’’; probably also Job 9:26 : Theophr. H.P. iv. 8, 4; Pliny H.N. vii. 57, &c.)1[98]. Here a small chest, or ‘ark,’ is made of it. [98] Cf. Wilkinson-Birch, Anc. Egyptians (1878), ii. 179–82 (with transl. of Pliny’s description, H.N. xiii. 11, 12), 205 f., 208; Erman, pp. 12, 235, 236, 447, 479 f.daubed it with bitumen (Genesis 11:3; Genesis 14:10 †) and pitch (Isaiah 34:9 †)] to make it water-tight. Bitumen, or asphalt, was brought into Egypt from the Dead Sea; it was used particularly for embalming (Diod. Sic. xix. 99). flags] or reeds: Heb. suph, usually of the water-growth (see on Exodus 13:18), which gave the ‘Red Sea’ its Heb. name, once (Jonah 2:6) of sea-weed; here, v. 5, and Isaiah 19:6, of some water-growth along the banks of the Nile, or, in Isaiah 19:6 (see RVm.), of the Nile-canals (see on Exodus 7:19). What suph was, is not certainly known. It is commonly supposed to have been some kind of reed. At the present time, the banks of the Nile in the S. half of the Delta are completely bare: but reed-growths are abundant in the Delta, in disused canals in which the level of the water does not change—for instance, in those running through the site of Goshen—and in pools and ponds (see an ill. in R. T. Kelly’s Egypt (1902), opp. to p. 154): Forskεl, also, Flora Aeg.-Arab. (1775), p. 24, attests for his time the abundance of the Arundo donax (see ill. in NHB. 436) on the banks of the Nile, apparently in general; and J. Russegger, Reisen (1841), i. 122 (both referred to by Kn.) speaks of the ‘impenetrable reeds’ on its bank, where the canal from Alexandria to Cairo joins the river. Compare the illustrations in Ebers, Egypt, i. 112, ii. 20 (if the artist may be trusted not to have idealized his picture).

The ark was made of the papyrus which was commonly used by the Egyptians for light and swift boats. The species is no longer found in the Nile below Nubia.

3. When she could not longer hide him — She had already concealed him three months. She took for him an ark of bulrushes — Papyrus.