Exodus 2:2 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

A goodly child— Fair to GOD, αστειος τω Θεω, as St. Stephen calls him, Acts 7:20. And prophane authors agree with the sacred writers with respect to the peculiar beauty of this infant. The Jews have a thousand childish stories on this occasion. The famous Huet conjectures, that the fable of the birth of Adonis arose from this history. It is not to be supposed that the beauty of the child was the sole cause of his mother's tenderness to him; or that, had it been less, she would have destroyed him: his beauty, no doubt, increased her maternal affection, which might incite her the more to preserve him so long, and then to make use of a method which afforded a possibility of his preservation. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews leads us to consider it as an act of faith in the parents of Moses, who, not improbably, had some idea that this infant would be the deliverer of their nation. See Hebrews 11:23.