“I drew him out of the water”
Exodus 2:10
Foreign wordSettledNarrator
She named him Moses and explained, 'I drew him out of the water.' (Exodus 2:10 BSB)
* Hebrew: Mosheh, linked to mashah, 'to draw out'; the name also carries an Egyptian element (-mose, 'born of,' as in Thutmose), fitting a Hebrew raised in Pharaoh's house.
What it sounds like today
A tidy explanation of how baby Moses got his name.
The cultural key
An Egyptian princess gives the Hebrew baby a name that works in both worlds. In Egyptian, -mose means 'born of' or 'son,' the ending in royal names like Thutmose and Ramesses. But the narrator reaches for the Hebrew pun: Mosheh sounds like mashah, 'to draw out.' The one drawn out of the Nile will grow up to draw an entire nation out of Egypt and through the waters of the sea.
Recovered meaning
The name is a quiet prophecy. The child pulled from the water becomes the man who pulls Israel out through the sea, his own rescue rehearsing the nation's.
Parallels: Exodus 14:21; Isaiah 63:11