SEV Biblia, Chapter 2:5
¶ Y la hija del Faraón descendió a lavarse al río, y paseándose sus doncellas por la ribera del río, vio ella la arquilla en el carrizal, y envió una criada suya a que la tomase.
Clarke's Bible Commentary - Exodus 2:5
Verse 5. And the daughter of Pharaoh] Josephus calls her Thermuthis, and says that "the ark was borne along by the current, and that she sent one that could swim after it; that she was struck with the figure and uncommon beauty of the child; that she inquired for a nurse, but he having refused the breasts of several, and his sister proposing to bring a Hebrew nurse, his own mother was procured." But all this is in Josephus's manner, as well as the long circumstantial dream that he gives to Amram concerning the future greatness of Moses, which cannot be considered in any other light than that of a fable, and not even a cunningly devised one. To wash herself at the river] Whether the daughter of Pharaoh went to bathe in the river through motives of pleasure, health, or religion, or whether she bathed at all, the text does not specify. It is merely stated by the sacred writer that she went down to the river to WASH; for the word herself is not in the original. Mr. Harmer, Observat., vol. iii., p. 529, is of opinion that the time referred to above was that in which the Nile begins to rise; and as the dancing girls in Egypt are accustomed now to plunge themselves into the river at its rising, by which act they testify their gratitude for the inestimable blessing of its inundations, so it might have been formerly; and that Pharaoh's daughter was now coming down to the river on a similar account. I see no likelihood in all this. If she washed herself at all, it might have been a religious ablution, and yet extended no farther than to the hands and face; for the word Åjr rachats, to wash, is repeatedly used in the Pentateuch to signify religious ablutions of different kinds. Jonathan in his Targum says that God had smitten all Egypt with ulcers, and that the daughter of Pharaoh came to wash in the river in order to find relief; and that as soon as she touched the ark where Moses was, her ulcers were healed. This is all fable. I believe there was no bathing in the case, but simply what the text states, washing, not of her person, but of her clothes, which was an employment that even kings' daughters did not think beneath them in those primitive times. Homer, Odyss. vi., represents Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians, in company with her maidens, employed at the seaside in washing her own clothes and those of her five brothers! While thus employed they find Ulysses just driven ashore after having been shipwrecked, utterly helpless, naked, and destitute of every necessary of life. The whole scene is so perfectly like that before us that they appear to me to be almost parallels.
I shall subjoin a few lines. The princess, having piled her clothes on a carriage drawn by several mules, and driven to the place of washing, commences her work, which the poet describes thus:- tai dÆ apÆ aphnhv elmata cersin elonto, kai esforeon melan udwr.
steibon dÆ en baqroisi qowv, erida proferousai. autar epei plunan te, kaqhran te rupa panta, exeihv petasan para qinÆ alov, hci malista. laiggav poti cerson apopluneske qalassa.ODYSSEY, lib. vi., ver. 90.
"Light'ning the carriage, next they bore in hand The garments down to the unsullied wave, And thrust them heap'd into the pools; their task Despatching brisk, and with an emulous haste.
When all were purified, and neither spot Could be perceived or blemish more, they spread The raiment orderly along the beach, Where dashing tides had cleansed the pebbles most." COWPER.
When this task was finished we find the Phaeacian princess and her ladies (kourh dÆ ek qalamoio] amfipoloi allai) employed in amusing themselves upon the beach, till the garments they had washed should be dry and fit to be folded up, that they might reload their carriage and return.
In the text of Moses the Egyptian princess, accompanied by her maids, hytr[n naarotheyha, comes down to the river, not to bathe herself, for this is not intimated, but merely to wash, Åjrl lirchots; at the time in which the ark is perceived we may suppose that she and her companions had finished their task, and, like the daughter of Alcinous and her maidens, were amusing themselves walking along by the river's side, as the others did by tossing a ball, sfairh tai tÆ ar epaizon, when they as suddenly and as unexpectedly discovered Moses adrift on the flood, as Nausicaa and her companions discovered Ulysses just escaped naked from shipwreck. In both the histories, that of the poet and this of the prophet, both the strangers, the shipwrecked Greek and the almost drowned Hebrew, were rescued by the princesses, nourished and preserved alive! Were it lawful to suppose that Homer had ever seen the Hebrew story, it would be reasonable to conclude that he had made it the basis of the 6th book of the Odyssey.
Matthew Henry Commentary
Verses 5-10 - Come, see the place where that great man, Moses, lay, when he was little child; it was in a bulrush basket by the river's side. Had he been left there long, he must have perished. But Providence bring Pharaoh's daughter to the place where this poor forlorn infant lay, an inclines her heart to pity it, which she dares do, when none els durst. God's care of us in our infancy ought to be often mentioned by us to his praise. Pharaoh cruelly sought to destroy Israel, but his ow daughter had pity on a Hebrew child, and not only so, but, withou knowing it, preserved Israel's deliverer, and provided Moses with good nurse, even his own mother. That he should have a Hebrew nurse the sister of Moses brought the mother into the place of a nurse. Mose was treated as the son of Pharoah's daughter. Many who, by their birth are obscure and poor, by surprising events of Providence, are raise high in the world, to make men know that God rules.
Original Hebrew
ותרד 3381 בת 1323 פרעה 6547 לרחץ 7364 על 5921 היאר 2975 ונערתיה 5291 הלכת 1980 על 5921 יד 3027 היאר 2975 ותרא 7200 את 853 התבה 8392 בתוך 8432 הסוף 5488 ותשׁלח 7971 את 853 אמתה 519 ותקחה׃ 3947
