And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river's side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.
The daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river. Dr. Adam Clarke maintains that there was no bathing in the case, and that the princess was about to be occupied in bleaching clothes, according to the primitive manners of kings' daughters in early times, as represented in Homer, who describes Nausicaa, daughter of Alcinous, king of the Phoeacians, as employed, along with her maidens, in washing her own clothes and those of her five brothers at the seaside. But the cases are not similar; and the terms used in this narrative convey the idea of a very different scene from what Dr. Clarke supposed.
The verb х raachats (H7364)] used here denotes, to wash oneself, to bathe (Ruth 3:3; 2 Samuel 11:2; 2 Kings 5:10; 2 Kings 5:13), whereas a different word х kaabac (H3526)] is employed to signify washing clothes. Besides, the monuments represent ladies of high rank, with their female servants, bathing in the Nile (Wilkinson 3:, p.
389); and from the extraordinary reverence in which the native Egyptians held their river, it was considered an act of special devotion to plunge at certain seasons into the waters of the sacred stream. The occasion on which the daughter of Pharaoh went down to bathe is thought to have been a religious solemnity; probably the festival of the new moon, which the members of the royal family were accustomed to introduce by performing their ablutions in the river. Peculiar sacredness was attached to those portions of the Nile which flowed near the temples. The water was there fenced off as a protection from the crocodiles; and doubtless the princess had an enclosure reserved for her own use, the road to which seems to have been well known to Jochebed.
Indeed, the hut of this Levite couple seems to have been in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital; and whether Jochebed was, as Osburn conjectures, a domestic slave engaged in some outdoor work of the palace, she was in a position that afforded her good opportunities of knowing the daily movements of the royal family.
On the hypothesis that Rameses II (Sesostris) was 'the new king' (Exodus 1:8), his daughter was THUORIS, according to the hieroglyphics on the sculptures; Thermuthis, according to Josephus, who, though of mature age, was, for political reasons, married by her father to Si-Ptha, the infant heir to the throne of Lower Egypt, and thus became virtually regent over the Delta, until, on the death of her younger brother, Amenephthis, she succeeded to the sovereign authority over all Egypt. It is evident that she was sole administratrix of affairs from the first in Lower Egypt; because in her own right, and by the exercise of her royal power, she set aside the sanguinary policy of her father, in the face of her court; and having no prospect of a legitimate heir in a son of her own, adopted one of her own choice. (See 'Israel in Egypt, p. 285; 'Mon. Hist,' 2:, pp. 564-6.)
Walked along - in procession or in file.
Sent her maid, х 'ªmaataah (H519)] - immediate attendant. The term is different from that rendered 'maidens.'