Exodus 2:3-4

"And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch; and she put the child therein, and laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off, to know what would be done to hint"

"And when she could no longer hide him ..." There is no use to ask "why" hiding the child soon became impossible. The lusty lungs of a three-months old boy would certainly have revealed him; and, besides that, as Fields quaintly put it, "The clothesline would have betrayed them!."[4]

"She took for him an ark of bulrushes ..." It is not stated here that Jochebed "made" this ark, but that she "took it." "This was a chest made of the stalks of the papyrus reed which grows profusely along the banks of the Nile."[5] Papyrus was widely used in the manufacture of such things as baskets, boats, mats, ropes, sails, and even paper. We may be sure that Jochebed picked out a good one in preparing to place little Moses in it. "The slime, used as a watertight coating for the ark, was bitumen, imported into Egypt ...from the vicinity of the Dead Sea."[6] This substance was also employed as mortar in building and as a preservative in the process of embalming. Rawlinson speculated that Jochebed's reason for placing the ark in the reeds was "that it might not float away out of sight."[7] However, we believe more was intended. It is quite evident that Jochebed knew where the royal daughter usually bathed herself in the river and placed the ark strategically with the design of making it likely that she would see it. Since such a site would not have been generally known, it may also be assumed that Jochebed might have been a domestic employee in Pharaoh's establishment, thus having access to information that aided her plans.

"In the flags by the river's brink ..." "River's brink" is an Egyptian idiom with the literal meaning of, "The lip of the river."[8] Some like to make a big thing out of the meaning of the Hebrew word here rendered "flags" or "reeds." The word is [~cuwph], the same term used to describe the Red Sea, or Reed Sea in Exodus 13:18. However, as Fields pointed out, "This does not prove that there were reeds growing in the Red Sea. The term [~cuwph] also refers to seaweeds; note its use in Jonah 3:5."[9]