Exodus Chapter 2, Verse 3
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3: And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an
ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and
put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the
river's brink.
3: And when they could no longer hide him, his mother took for him an ark, and besmeared it with bitumen, and cast the child into it, and put it in the ooze by the river.
She placed the infant in an ark of bulrushes by the bank of the Nile, hoping that possibly it might be found by some compassionate hand, and still be delivered. The dagesh dirim. in הצּפינו serves to separate the consonant in which it stands from the syllable which follows (vid., Ewald, §92c; Ges. §20, 2b).
גּמא תּבת a little chest of rushes. The use of the word תּבה (ark) is probably intended to call to mind the ark in which Noah was saved (vid., Gen 6:14).
גּמא, papyrus, the paper reed: a kind of rush which was very common in ancient Egypt, but has almost entirely disappeared, or, as Pruner affirms (ägypt. Naturgesch. p. 55), is nowhere to be found. It had a triangular stalk about the thickness of a finger, which grew to the height of ten feet; and from this the lighter Nile boats were made, whilst the peeling of the plant was used for sails, mattresses, mats, sandals, and other articles, but chiefly for the preparation of paper (vid., Celsii Hierobot. ii. pp. 137ff.; Hengstenberg, Egypt and the Books of Moses, pp. 85, 86, transl.).
ותּחמרה, for תּחמרהּ with mappik omitted: and cemented (pitched) it with חמר bitumen, the asphalt of the Dead Sea, to fasten the papyrus stalks, and with pitch, to make it water-tight, and put it in the reeds by the bank of the Nile, at a spot, as the sequel shows, where she knew that the king's daughter was accustomed to bathe. For "the sagacity of the mother led her, no doubt, so to arrange the whole, that the issue might be just what is related in Ex 2:5-9" (Baumgarten).
