To See a Brother: Vision, Empathy, and Leadership in Shemot Chapter 2

Moshe’s birth story in the second chapter of Shemot introduces the nation’s redemption from Egyptian servitude. The leader is born, then chosen to begin working G-d’s magic in this world. Chapter 2 divides into three sections: verses 1–10 describe Moshe’s infancy and salvation at the hands of three heroic women; verses 11–22 recount three vignettes about his coming of age; and in the final section (23–25), the people finally cry out against their servitude and G-d hears them.

The three short stories about Moshe’s behavior tell us a great deal about his personality and why, one chapter later, G-d will choose him as the nation’s leader.

In the first story, he defends an Israelite slave from an abusive Egyptian taskmaster. Whether or not Moshe intended to kill the Egyptian, what is significant is that the Israelite victim is twice identified as his brother: “Now it came to pass in those days that Moshe grew up and went out to his brothers and looked at their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man of his brothers.” Someone has told Moshe of his origins, and this is the first moment in which he identifies with his people as his own – despite having grown up in Pharaoh’s palace. The story also establishes that Moshe is not afraid to use physical force. This instinct for justice connects him to his Levite ancestry, who fought alongside Shimon in Bereishit 34 to avenge the rape of their sister Dina. It also foreshadows the plagues he will later bring in G-d’s name upon the Egyptian people, themselves called makkot – from the same root, מ.כ.ה., used here for striking the Egyptian. 

In the second vignette, Moshe attempts to mediate between two fighting Israelites. Though they reject his intervention, the scene anticipates his future role as the people’s judge. 

The third vignette – in which Moshe defends the daughters of Yitro at the well from harassing shepherds – shows that his drive to protect the vulnerable extends well beyond the bounds of his Israelite “brothers.”

Moshe’s sensitivity to others’ suffering is expressed through the root ר.א.ה., “to see.” He sees the Israelite’s pain (2:11) and then “sees” that no one else will intervene (2:12). This is his first recorded act as an adult, marking him as someone capable of seeing beyond himself and acting on what he sees. 

But Moshe is not the first to “see” in this chapter. His mother “sees” (2:2) that he is “good” and hides him. The commentators debate exactly what she perceives: A soul marked for greatness? A healthy child born prematurely? What matters here is the verb itself. Then Pharaoh’s daughter “sees” the floating basket, and again “sees” that the infant is a Hebrew boy (2:5–6). Miriam, too, watches the scene like a hawk, poised to step in and help Pharaoh’s daughter rescue her baby brother – her own form of keen, caring sight. It is no surprise, then, that Moshe inherits this compassionate way of seeing from the very women who conspired to save him.

The chapter’s final section returns to the same root (2:25) when describing G-d’s attention to the Israelites’ groaning: “And G-d saw the Children of Israel, and G-d knew.” At first glance the verb seems redundant alongside everything in the preceding verse – “G-d heard their cry, and G-d remembered His covenant with Avraham, with Yitzchak, and with Ya’akov.” But it stands alone in its own sentence for a reason. It marks a shift in G-d’s relationship with the people. After hundreds of years of bondage, G-d sees a people who have finally recognized that enough is enough – that the time has come to leave and become something else entirely. If Moshe’s compassion is shaped by the women who saved him, G-d’s compassion stands as the divine culmination of all the human empathy that preceded it.

Rabbanit Dr. Yosefa Fogel Wruble is a Ramit at the Migdal Oz Women’s Beit Midrash, a faculty member at Matan’s Jerusalem branch, a Tanach lecturer at Herzog College and the host of Matan’s Parsha Podcast and Deracheha/Migdal Oz’s podcast, Women Talking Mitzvot.