Exodus — Chapter 2

And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. Moses is born of Levitical parents on both sides—a detail Lapide reads as significant: the priestly tribe (Levi) produces the one who is simultaneously prophet, priest, and mediator. He sees this as a figure of Christ, born of priestly lineage through Mary (who was related to Elizabeth, of the house of Aaron, Lk. 1:36), yet also a royal descendant of David.

Moses was born and his mother saw that he was \"a goodly child\" (pulcrum). Lapide cites St. Stephen (Acts 7:20) who calls him \"beautiful before God\" (gratus Deo), and notes that bodily comeliness in Scripture often signifies the grace of the Holy Ghost. Moses thus prefigures Christ, who was the most beautiful of the sons of men (Ps. 44:3) and in whom all grace was fully resident.

Moses's mother hid him for three months, then placed him in a basket of bulrushes waterproofed with bitumen and pitch on the bank of the Nile. Lapide notes that the Hebrew word for the basket (tebah) is the same used for Noah's Ark (Genesis 6): both Noah and Moses are preserved in arks from the waters of destruction, and both prefigure Christ, who is the true Ark of salvation in whom the redeemed are protected from the flood of divine judgment. The pitch sealing the basket signifies the grace that seals the baptized soul against the waters of sin.

She called his name Moses: because I drew him out of the water. Lapide explains the Hebrew etymology: Moshe, from mashah (to draw out). Allegorically Moses is a type of Christ who draws us out of the waters of sin and death. He notes that Moses was nursed at the breast of his own mother by a providential irony that Pharaoh's daughter unknowingly arranged—so God uses the instruments of persecution to preserve His elect.

Moses grew up and went out to his brethren and saw their burdens; he saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, and slew the Egyptian. Lapide distinguishes Moses's act from a private act of vengeance: Moses acted as a magistrate in embryo, defending the defenseless. However, since his authority was not yet publicly established, his act was premature. The forty years in Midian that followed were God's correction of this premature self-assertion: the deliverer must wait on God's timing, not his own zeal. He cites Gregory (Past. I, 5): \"Those who rush to preach before they are called do more harm than good.\"

Moses fled to the land of Midian after slaying the Egyptian. Lapide sees this as the figure of Christ's flight into Egypt (Mt. 2:13) and of the soul's necessary retirement from the world as preparation for divine mission. The desert is the school of God: Moses must spend forty years in Midian before he is fit to lead Israel, even as the desert fathers spend years in solitude before they are given charge of souls.

After a long time the king of Egypt died: and the children of Israel groaning, cried out because of their works. Lapide notes that the change of Pharaoh brought no relief; the oppression continued under the successor. This teaches that earthly political change does not redeem—liberation must come from God, not from the succession of human rulers. The groaning of Israel is a figure of humanity under original sin, crying to God for a deliverer that no human governance can provide.

God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. Lapide insists that God's \"remembering\" is not a remedy for divine forgetfulness but a manner of speaking about the moment at which eternal decrees begin to be executed in time. The covenant, freely established with the patriarchs, is now to be fulfilled with sovereign fidelity—a demonstration that God's promises are irrevocable.