Exodus 2:6

6 When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the little boy was crying. So she had compassion on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrew children.”

Exodus 2:6 Meaning and Commentary

Exodus 2:6

And when she had opened it
The ark, for it was shut or covered over, though doubtless there were some apertures for respiration:

she saw the child [in it], and, behold, the babe wept;
and which was a circumstance, it is highly probable, greatly affected the king's daughter, and moved her compassion to it; though an Arabic writer says {p}, she heard the crying of the child in the ark, and therefore sent for it:

and she had compassion on him, and said, this is one of the Hebrews'
children;
which she might conclude from its being thus exposed, knowing her father's edict, and partly from the form and beauty of it, Hebrew children not being swarthy and tawny as Egyptian ones: the Jewish writers ^F17 say, she knew it by its being circumcised, the Egyptians not yet using circumcision.

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FOOTNOTES:

F16 Patricides apud Hottinger. p 401.
F17 T. Bab. Sotah, fol. 12. 2. Aben Ezra in loc.

Exodus 2:6 In-Context

4 And his sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

5 Soon the daughter of Pharaoh went down to bathe in the Nile, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. And when she saw the basket among the reeds, she sent her maidservant to retrieve it.

6 When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the little boy was crying. So she had compassion on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrew children.”

7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and call one of the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?”

8 “Go ahead,” Pharaoh’s daughter told her. And the girl went and called the boy’s mother.