The Princess at the River

Pharaoh's daughter came down to the Nile, and her maidens walked along the bank beside her. Chazal say she had come to cleanse herself of the idols of her father's house. Then she noticed a basket floating among the reeds.

The Gemara relates that her maidens understood at once what she meant to do. They said to her: Our mistress, when a king issues a decree, even if the whole world ignores it, his own children and his household keep it. And you would break your father's decree? At that moment, Chazal say, the angel Gavriel came and struck them down. Only one maid was left, since it is not fitting for a princess to stand alone.

The basket was out of reach. The Torah says she sent amasah to take it, and one opinion in the Gemara reads the word as her arm: she stretched out her hand, and it grew many cubits long until it reached the basket.

She opened it and saw the child, and, the Gemara says, she saw the Shechinah with him. The baby was crying, and she was filled with compassion. She knew he was a Hebrew child, the Gemara explains, because he was circumcised.

The Midrash adds another tradition. Pharaoh's daughter had been stricken with tzaraas, and that was why she went down to bathe. When she touched the basket she was healed, and from that moment she had compassion on the child and loved him very much.