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Originally there were only about seventy Jews who settled in Egypt with Jacob, but within a couple of generations they grew in size and number, The pharaoh was afraid there would soon be more Jews than Egyptians and would end up taking over the country.  He ordered that the Jews be assigned to work teams and put to hard labor.  As if that weren't bad enough, the Pharaoh then decreed that, although girl babies could be kept, whenever a boy baby was born to one of the Jews, he was to be killed!

A father and mother who were descendants of Levi (who was one of the original Jewish settlers in Egypt) had a baby boy.  His mother hid him for three months, but it was becoming harder and harder to keep the Egyptians from finding out about her infant son. She devised a plan, and put her little baby in a wicker basket and set him afloat on the river Nile.  She sent her daughter Miriam to the river's edge to keep an eye on the basket and make sure her infant son came to no harm.  The Pharaoh's daughter was taking a bath in the Nile and saw the basket in the reeds.  She found the baby inside.  He was crying.

The Pharaoh's daughter figured out that the baby boy was Jewish, but she decided to keep him as her own and raise him as her son.  Miriam heard the Pharaoh's daughter talking, and came out of hiding to suggest that she could find a nurse for the baby.  The Pharaoh's daughter thanked Miriam and sent her to find a Hebrew nurse - and Miriam brought back her mother!

The Pharoah's daughter named the baby boy Moses, because she found him in the water.