The king hesitated not; he appointed Egyptian women to be nurses to the Hebrews, and instructed them to drown all the male children that were born; and he threatened with death those who withstood his decree. And that he might know what women were expecting to be delivered, he sent little Egyptian children to the baths, to observe the Hebrew women, and report on their appearance.
But God looked upon the mothers, and they were delivered in sleep under the shadow of fruit-trees, and angels attended on them, washed and dressed the babes, and smeared their little hands with butter and honey, that they might lick them, and, delighting in the flavor, abstain from crying, and thus escape discovery. Then the mothers on waking exclaimed:--“O most Merciful One, into Thy hands we commit our children!” But the emissaries of Pharaoh followed the traces of the women, and would have slain the infants, had not the earth gaped, and received the little babes into a hollow place within, where they were fed by angel hands with butter and honey.
The Egyptians brought up oxen and ploughed over the spot, in hopes of destroying thereby the vanished infants; but, when their backs were turned, the children sprouted from the soil, like little flowers, and walked home unperceived. Some say that 10,000 children were cast into the Nile. They were not deserted by the Most High. The river rejected them upon its banks, and the rocks melted into butter and honey around them and thus fed them,[459] and oil distilled to anoint them.
This persecution had continued for three years and four months, when, on the seventh day of the twelfth month, Adar, the astrologers and seers stood before the king and said, “This day a child is born who will free the people of Israel! This, and one thing more, have we learnt from the stars, _Water_ will be the cause of his death;[460] but whether he be an Egyptian or an Hebrew child, that we know not.”
“Very well,” said Pharaoh; “then in future all male children, Egyptians as well as Hebrews, shall be cast indiscriminately into the river.”
Kohath, son of Levi, had a son named Amram, whose life was so saintly, that death could not have touched him, had not the decree gone forth, that every child of Adam was to die.