In today's First Reading we are introduced to one of the principal personalities of the Old Testament - Moses. The hand of God is clearly shown in the circumstances of his birth. To control the growth of the Israelites there was a ruling that all males were to be drowned at birth. One Levite mother of her little boy tried to hide him for three months. By then he was too big to be hidden any more so she put him in a waterproof basket and sent him floating down the river Nile. It happened just then that Pharaoh's daughter and her retinue went to wash in the river. The little boy was recognised as being an Israelite (because of his circumcision?) but Pharaoh's daughter, filled with compassion, took the child as her own. When an Israelite wet-nurse was called for, it was the child's own mother who came forward. When the boy grew up, he was given the name of Moses. At the end of the reading we see Moses a grown man, having left the royal palace, becoming angry at seeing the suffering of his people. But, because he had killed an Egyptian, he had to flee into the wilderness until God would call him. Here again, as with the story of Joseph, we see the hand of God bringing forward the man who would bring freedom to His enslaved people, just as later on Jesus will bring freedom to every human person.