Or HaChaim on Exodus 2:6/אור החיים על שמות ב׳:ו׳

1 ותראהו את הילד והנה נער בכה, When she saw the child it turned out to be a crying boy. Why did the Torah write ותראהו, "she saw him," instead of simply "she saw, etc.?" Presumably she assumed that the basket would contain an abandoned baby and she planned to rescue the baby. The Torah therefore refers to the princess "seeing what she expected to see, i.e. an abandoned child." Had the Torah written ותרא את הילד, the Torah would have created the impression that the princess saw something she had not expected.

2Our sages in Sotah 12 explain the pronoun הו at the end of ותרא as a reference to Batya seeing the שכינה together with the child. This is homiletics. We would have to assume that Batya had experience with the way the שכינה looked from her father and grandfather, something quite unlikely! Our sages may simply have meant that Batya saw that the baby was surrounded by a great halo; G'd arranged for this in order to impress Batya that this baby was someone special. The Zohar section 2, page 12 writes something similar concerning the words "the boy was crying," namely that the cries were on behalf of the Jewish people's suffering in exile." G'd opened her eyes in order for her to be able to "see" the great light surrounding Moses.

3Alternatively, Batya's experience with the שכינה may be explained in terms of Shemot Rabbah 1,23 according to which Batya suffered from Tzoraat, the dreaded skin disease. As soon as she touched the basket she felt that she had been healed. This was her encounter with the שכינה. The word נער may then have a double meaning. When the Syrian general Naamon was healed of his Tzoraat, the prophet described his flesh as again becoming like that of a teen-aged boy, נער, (Kings II 5,14).

4ותחמול עליו. She pitied him. Seeing that she had already set out determined to save the child, the pity mentioned here may refer to her determination to nurse the child. This is why Moses' sister immediately volunteered to call a Jewish wet nurse to nurse Moses. According to Sotah 12 all this occurred after Moses refused to accept milk from the breasts of non Jewish wet nurses.

5ותאמר מילדי העברים זה. She said: "this one is one of the Jewish babies." This was quite obvious as the Jews would abandon their children near the river on account of Pharaoh's decree. On the other hand, if all this occurred on the one day when Pharaoh had ordered the Egyptians to throw also their new-born boy babies into the Nile, how did Batya know that Moses was a Jewish baby? This may have forced our sages in Sotah to say that Moses refused to drink the milk of non Jewish wet nurses. [I do not see this as a compelling explanation. The fact that the child had no foreskin clearly marked him as Jewish unless the Jews had abandoned the practice of circumcision already at that time as is evident eighty years later at the time of the Exodus. Ed.]

6Accordingly, the Torah does tell us something that was not so obvious after all. Let us examine if the reason Batya saved the baby was because she thought it might be an abandoned Egyptian baby, or if she had made up her mind to save the baby even if it turned out to be a Jewish baby. If we were to assume the former, the words מילדי העברים זה express Batya's amazement at the fact that the child was Jewish. This would indicate that originally the thought of saving a Jewish child had not occurred to her. There would be nothing unusual about a Gentile displaying sympathy only for her own kind. Even though we observe that she held the child and hired a nursemaid for him after she found out that it was a Jewish child, this fact does not prove that she would have saved the child and have displayed pity for it if G'd had not first healed her from her affliction and provided a sign that the child was someone out of the ordinary. These incidents acquainted Batya with the wonderful ways of G'd.

7If we are to assume that Batya already set out to rescue the baby although she was aware that it would turn out to be a Jewish baby, then the words מילדי העברים must be understood as the reason why the baby refused to suckle at the breasts of the Egyptian wet nurses. It was not because the baby had become weak through lying in the reeds of the river, or for any other biological reason, but because it was a Jewish baby. This is why his sister (Miriam) immediately volunteered the services of a Jewish wet nurse stressing the words: מן העבריות, "one of the Hebrew women," in order to prove that she knew the true reason why the baby refused to be nursed. This is also why the Torah had to report in verse nine that the child's mother took the child and was able to nurse him.