That’s beautiful - 1 December 2009 |
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Hebrews 11:23 says that Moses’ parents hid him from the Egyptian slaughterers because ‘they saw that the child was beautiful.’
Strange thing to say, don’t you think? Don’t all parents think that their kids are beautiful? And in any case, why would Moses ‘beauty’ be sufficient reason to hide him?
Look closer, and we discover a couple of intriguing details.
The word translated ‘beautiful’ (asteion) is, to put it mildly, a bit tricky. To put it less mildly, no one really knows what it means. It appears only a couple of times in the Greek translation of the OT, one notable example being Judges 3:17, where ‘beautiful’ is hardly an apt description of King Eglon. So why use it about Moses?
One possibility is that it rhymes. Seriously. Here’s what the full phrase says in Greek: eidon asteion to paidion.
It means, literally, ‘They saw [that] beautiful [was] the child.’
Try reading it out loud a few times, accenting the bold bits. There, good huh? Poetry. That’s beautiful.
Another possible explanation is found in the underlying Hebrew phrase in Exodus 2:2, where Moses’ mother says (literal translation again), ‘She saw that he was good.’
Now where have we heard something like that before? Yup, Genesis 1, where God says exactly the same thing over and over again about the newly-created, perfect world.
So, maybe Moses’ parents saw something (who knows what) that told them that their little baby would grow up to lead God’s people into a New World, a land of freedom, away from the sin-cursed land of Egyptian tyranny.
That would be a good reason to keep him hidden, don’t you think?
Posted by Steve Jeffery · Topics: Bible, Minister's Blog