Woman of the Week: Yokebed

{...the woman who gave up her everything...}

You may know her as the heartbroken woman from The Prince of Egypt, who saves her own baby by floating him in a basket down the perilous Nile River. Or you may recall a vague description of her heart wrenching account in the Old Testament book of Exodus. 

Even though her brief story is short and to the point, she carries a legend of heroism that no mother has ever matched. She brought us Moses, a man who stands as the first and the greatest prophet in Jewish history. 

Something draws me to Yokebed. Her story is 10 verses long, and it doesn't even bother to mention her name {although later in a genealogy, they take a moment to include it next to her husband's, Exodus 6:20}. She, a Hebrew woman whose people were slaves to the Egyptians, lived in a historic day of injustice and bondage. Around the time that Yokebed became pregnant with her third child, the son we later know as Moses, the Pharaoh of Egypt ordered that every Hebrew newborn boy was to be thrown mercilessly into the Red Sea.

Just think about that for a moment. And if you are a mother, try to wrap your brain around the idea of someone snatching your newborn baby boy and drowning him in the sea. I cannot. 

Yet Yokebed faced this very prospect. 

And by the time that her little bundle was three months old, she knew that there was no longer any way of hiding him. Or if there was, that it would be unfair for him to go on living. So she took a chance. In a basket he went, to float down an unforgiving river into the arms of another woman, a woman who just might take pity on a helpless infant not her own. 

Yokebed chose to give up her everything in the hopes of letting her son live. She gave up her desire to nurture him. She pushed away her dreams of raising him and teaching him. She did this that he might have a life of freedom and hope. 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

There are days that I wrestle with the struggles of motherhood, and wonder why I'm not living a carefree life- traveling and working and learning- like many single girls my age. During conversations with friends who have visited Israel, I become angry at myself for never just going, before I got married. In my flesh, I sometimes wonder what my insignificant life is worth as I sit and do nothing but nurture my baby. After all, sitting at home and doing just that is not exactly changing the world, is it? 

But then we read the story of Yokebed. She was a small, and not particularly interesting woman. However, by giving up her hopes and dreams for the sake of her child, she altered the direction of history... 

...forever.

Now you tell me that well-behaved women seldom make history.

I simply refuse to agree. 

ever sincerely yours,

{Mrs. JEB}