A man ... a daughter of Levi - Amram and Jochebed. See Exodus 6:20.

There went a man - Amram, son of Kohath, son of Levi, Exodus 6:16-20. A daughter of Levi, Jochebed, sister to Kohath, and consequently both the wife and aunt of her husband Amram, Exodus 6:20; Numbers 26:59. Such marriages were at this time lawful, though they were afterwards forbidden, Leviticus 18:12. But it is possible that daughter of Levi means no more than a descendant of that family, and that probably Amram and Jochebed were only cousin germans. As a new law was to be given and a new priesthood formed, God chose a religious family out of which the lawgiver and the high priest were both to spring.

And there went a man of the house of Levi,.... This man was Amram, the son of Kohath, and grandson of Levi, as appears from Exodus 6:18.

and took to wife a daughter of Levi; one of the same house, family, or tribe; which was proper, that the tribes might be kept distinct: this was Jochebed, said to be his father's sister; see Gill on Exodus 6:20, her name in Josephus (s) is Joachebel, which seems to be no other than a corruption of Jochebed, but in the Targum in 1 Chronicles 4:18 she is called Jehuditha.

(s) Antiqu. l. 2. c. 9. sect. 4.

At the time when all the Hebrew boys were ordered to be thrown into the Nile, "there went (הלך contributes to the pictorial character of the account, and serves to bring out its importance, just as in Genesis 35:22; Deuteronomy 31:1) a man of the house of Levi - according to Exodus 6:20 and Numbers 26:59, it was Amram, of the Levitical family of Kohath - and married a daughter (i.e., a descendant) of Levi," named Jochebed, who bore him a son, viz., Moses. From Exodus 6:20 we learn that Moses was not the first child of this marriage, but his brother Aaron; and from Exodus 2:7 of this chapter, it is evident that when Moses was born, his sister Miriam was by no means a child (Numbers 26:59). Both of these had been born before the murderous edict was issued (Exodus 1:22). They are not mentioned here, because the only question in hand was the birth and deliverance of Moses, the future deliverer of Israel. "When the mother saw that the child was beautiful" (טוב as in Genesis 6:2; lxx ἀστεῖος), she began to think about his preservation. The very beauty of the child was to her "a peculiar token of divine approval, and a sign that God had some special design concerning him" (Delitzsch on Hebrews 11:23). The expression ἀστεῖος τῷ Θεῷ in Acts 7:20 points to this. She therefore hid the new-born child for three months, in the hope of saving him alive. This hope, however, neither sprang from a revelation made to her husband before the birth of her child, that he was appointed to be the saviour of Israel, as Josephus affirms (Ant. ii. 9, 3), either from his own imagination or according to the belief of his age, nor from her faith in the patriarchal promises, but primarily from the natural love of parents for their offspring. And if the hiding of the child is praised in Hebrews 11:23 as an act of faith, that faith was manifested in their not obeying the king's commandment, but fulfilling without fear of man all that was required by that parental love, which God approved, and which was rendered all the stronger by the beauty of the child, and in their confident assurance, in spite of all apparent impossibility, that their effort would be successful (vid., Delitzsch ut supra). This confidence was shown in the means adopted by the mother to save the child, when she could hide it no longer.

And there went a {a} man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi.

(a) This Levite was called Amram, who married Jochebed in Ex 6:20.

2:1 And there went a man - Amram, from the place of his abode to another place. A daughter - That is, grand - daughter of Levi.

CHAPTER 2

Ex 2:1-10. Birth and Preservation of Moses.

1. there went a man of the house of Levi, &c. Amram was the husband and Jochebed the wife (compare Ex 6:2; Nu 26:59). The marriage took place, and two children, Miriam and Aaron, were born some years before the infanticidal edict.

2:1-4 Observe the order of Providence: just at the time when Pharaoh's cruelty rose to its height by ordering the Hebrew children to be drowned, the deliverer was born. When men are contriving the ruin of the church, God is preparing for its salvation. The parents of Moses saw he was a goodly child. A lively faith can take encouragement from the least hint of the Divine favour. It is said, Heb 11:23, that the parents of Moses hid him by faith; they had the promise that Israel should be preserved, which they relied upon. Faith in God's promise quickens to the use of lawful means for obtaining mercy. Duty is ours, events are God's. Faith in God will set us above the fear of man. At three months' end, when they could not hide the infant any longer, they put him in an ark of bulrushes by the river's brink, and set his sister to watch. And if the weak affection of a mother were thus careful, what shall we think of Him, whose love, whose compassion is, as himself, boundless. Moses never had a stronger protection about him, no, not when all the Israelites were round his tent in the wilderness, than now, when he lay alone, a helpless babe upon the waves. No water, no Egyptian can hurt him. When we seem most neglected and forlorn, God is most present with us.