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.
Here is, I. Moses saved from perishing. Come see the place where that great man lay when he was a little child; he lay in a bulrush-basket by the river's side. Had he been left to lie there, he must have perished in a little time with hunger, if he had not been sooner washed into the river or devoured by a crocodile.
Commenting on Exodus 2:5-10
And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river,.... Her name, in Josephus (g), is called Thermuthis, and by Artapanus (h), an Heathen writer, Merrhis, perhaps from Miriam, and frequently by the Jewish writers (i), Bithia, which is the name of a daughter of another Pharaoh, Ch1 4:18 from whence they seem to have taken it: she came down from the...
the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river--The occasion is thought to have been a religious solemnity which the royal family opened by bathing in the sacred stream. Peculiar sacredness was attached to those portions of the Nile which flowed near the temples.