Baby basket river bible4/25/2023 At that time the Pharaoh of Egypt gave an order that every newborn baby boy was to be thrown into the Nile River and killed, but baby girls could live. Today we will learn about the birth of Moses. SCRIPTURE READING AND DISCUSSION (15 minutes) Have them close their eyes and try to say the verse again. Have the kids find this verse in their Bibles, and read it several times out loud. "My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth." Psalm 121:2 NIV OPENING PRAYER AND PRAISE (5 minutes)įurther info? Click here MEMORY WORK (6 minutes) ![]() ![]() When finished, discuss what everyone came up with and write unique items of the board for all to see. Have them jot down as many things and people they can think of while waiting for everyone to arrive. Rameses II is one of the better-known rulers of ancient Egypt, but he’s also known to thousands of poetry fans around the world as Ozymandias, the Greek name for him, thanks to a famous poem by Percy Shelley.As the children arrive, give them a sheet of paper, and have them copy the chart from the board, or have copies already made up before class. Although the Bible does not identify ‘Pharaoh’, Exodus 1:11 tells us that ‘for Pharaoh’ there were ‘treasure cities’ (i.e., store-cities) built named Pithom and Raamses.īecause of the closeness of ‘Raamses’ to ‘Rameses’, and because Rameses II was a powerful and long-reigning pharaoh, it’s probable that he was the Pharaoh the Old Testament writers had in mind. Talking of Rameses, the most likely candidate for the ‘Pharaoh’ who oppresses the Israelites in the later story of Moses is Rameses II, who ruled Egypt from 1279 to 1213 BC. And thus he became known simply as ‘Moses’. It’s also plausible that the Egyptian god’s name would have been dropped, as Israelite monotheism and faith in the Hebrew god became stronger and other gods, such as Ra and Thoth and the rest, were abandoned. It’s quite possible that ‘Moses’ was originally known under some longer name which, as an Egyptian prince, identified him as the ‘son’ of one of the Egyptian gods, in keeping with the names of other noble Egyptians. The name Moses, by the way, is from the Egyptian for ‘son’, so Thutmose was ‘son of Thoth’ (Thoth being an Egyptian god) and Rameses was ‘son of Ra’ (Ra being another Egyptian god). Of course, in appropriating this myth, the authors of Exodus took things up a notch: Moses is a legitimate son where Sargon was illegitimate, and Moses is raised by a princess rather than a poor man. ![]() The baby was rescued by a man, a poor water-drawer named Akki, who took Sargon in and raised him as his own son. Sargon, too, was placed in a small boat fashioned from reeds and daubed with pitch to make the vessel waterproof, before being set adrift on the river (though in Sargon’s case the river was the Euphrates rather than the Nile). So there’s probably little historical foundation for the story of Moses being cast on the Nile in a small ‘ark’ of bulrushes only to be saved by Pharaoh’s daughter.Īnd oddly enough, a strikingly similar story to the account of Moses’ childhood is found among the Babylonian legends surrounding Sargon of Akkad, over a thousand years before Moses. Stories of children who are abandoned, only to be saved and grow up to become important people, are found in many different myths: Oedipus and Perseus are two examples from Greek mythology, for instance, Romulus in Roman legends, and Cyrus in Persian myth. This legend is an important part of the Old Testament and the Pentateuch. After seeing the burning bush and interpreting this to be a sign from God or Yahweh that he should lead his people out of Egypt, Moses famously parted the Red Sea (according to the Book of Exodus), allowing them to escape the Egyptian army that was pursuing them. Moses will grow up, of course, to become the leader of his people, the Israelites, who had first come to Egypt after Jacob founded their people (‘Israel’ being the new name Jacob adopted).
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