[Illustration:  Jacob presented to pharaoh.]

THE FINDING OF MOSES.

Pharoah, becoming alarmed at the increasing power and numbers of the Israelites in Egypt, ordered that every male child who might be born to them should be cast into the river, and drowned.  But the wife of a man named Levi felt that she could not give up her babe, and for three months she hid him.  When she could hide him no longer, she prepared a basket of rushes, and coated it with pitch, so that it would float upon the river and keep out the water.  In this ark she placed her infant son, and hid the ark among the flags and bulrushes on the river-bank, and set the child’s sister to watch it.

Now it happened that the daughter of Pharaoh came with her maidens to bathe in the river; and when she saw the basket she sent one of her maids to fetch it.  And when she looked at the child he wept, and she had compassion for him, and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.”  Then the child’s sister came forward and said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I call to thee a Hebrew woman that she may nurse the child for thee?” And when the princess said, “Go!” she, the maid, went and called her own mother, to whom Pharaoh’s daughter said, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will give thee thy wages.”  And the woman took the child and nursed him.  And when he had grown, his mother took him to the princess, who adopted him as her son, and called his name Moses, which means drawn out, because she took him from the water.  Afterwards he grew to be a great man:  he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians; and we are told, “he was mighty in words and deeds.”

[Illustration:  The finding of Moses.]

THE FLIGHT FROM EGYPT.

When Moses was forty years old he had to flee from Egypt.  He went to Midian, where he dwelt for forty years; at the end of which time God appeared to him, and instructed him to return to Egypt; where he was appointed by God to lead the Israelites from bondage to the land of Canaan.  Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and delivered to him God’s command to let the people of Israel go; telling him that if he disobeyed terrible plagues would come upon his land.  Pharaoh hardened his heart against God, and refused to let the people go; so ten dreadful plagues were sent, the last of which was that the firstborn of every Egyptian should die, whether it were man or beast.  But not a single Israelite was to suffer harm.  This plague God said should come in the night; when an angel would pass through the land, destroying the Egyptians but sparing the Israelites.

Each family of the Israelites was commanded, on the evening that God had appointed, to kill a lamb, and to dip a bunch of hyssop in its blood, sprinkling this blood upon the top and side posts of the door.  All the houses thus marked God said would be spared when the destroying angel passed through the land.  In the night, while the Israelites were, according to God’s command, eating the lambs that had been slain, all ready to depart, a great cry arose among the Egyptians.  In every house, from the palace downwards, the eldest child lay dead.