The Jewish People were enslaved by the Egyptians in a gradual process of harsher and harsher decrees.  When their enslavement became unbearable, many became depressed and gave up hope.  It did not occur to them that it was just the very severity of their suffering which would eventually bring about their release from bondage to Pharaoh.

In this, the first of Israel's exiles, the Almighty revealed His purposeful direction of human affairs down to the last detail, even more so than at any other period in our history.  To understand what happened, let us draw a parallel from our own times.  Imagine that the modern State of Israel decided shortly after World War Two to search for a major nazi criminal known to be still alive and at large. 

Huge sums of money are expended on a hunt that spans three continents.  The Israeli secret service leaves no stone unturned; every piece of evidence is examined and re-examined, but to no avail.  The culprit seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth, yet there is reliable evidence that he is still alive.  The investigators continue to question their contacts and informers, but with no success.  

Years go by; the Secret Service has labeled the case a lost cause, and closed the file.  Then, suddenly, the culprit is found!  And where? It is incredible, but true.  He is serving as a body guard in the office of the prime minister of the State of Israel, no less and no more!

Such a tale would be brushed off as far-fetched fantasy by any modern fiction editor; yet a similar scenario did in actual fact take place in ancient Egypt, 3300 years ago.  It started when at Pharaoh's court, astrologers informed him that a child would soon be born to the Hebrews who was destined to liberate them from the bonds of Egyptian slavery. 

Pharaoh was greatly alarmed.  He harbored no doubts as to the validity of the report. Immediate, drastic action was required to avert a national disaster.  

Emergency meetings were held at court; how could they avoid the disaster of losing a vast labor force that cost the country practically nothing?  An entire nation, numbering millions of souls, had been subjugated; should they suddenly depart, even without avenging themselves on their host country, the result would be devastating for the Egyptian economy.  Pharaoh asked the astrologers for further information, anything that would help him formulate a plan to save Egypt.

"We foresee that he will be struck down by water," they reported. 

That same day Pharaoh issued a decree that all baby boys born to the Hebrews be cast into the waters of the Nile and drowned.  He was confident that through this heartless act of mass murder he would save his throne and his crown from the potential redeemer of the Hebrews.  

Some time later, the astrologers reported that according to their findings, on this very day the child destined to lead the Hebrews to freedom had been born.  On that same day, Pharaoh added to his original decree an order that even baby boys born to Egyptian mothers be drowned in the Nile.  All over the country, Pharaoh's officers wrested newborn babies from their mothers and hurried to carry out the new orders.  The cries of the devastated mothers rose up from all over Egypt.  The country was in an uproar.

Despite the nation-wide massacre of infant boys, Pharaoh's plan did not meet with success.  The future liberator of Israel survived.  Where did he grow up?  Who raised him?  Who cared for him?  What father held him on his knees and delighted in his first babyish syllables of this child who was destined to speak directly with G-d?

The verse tells us that "... and she took the child and she brought him to the daughter of Pharaoh, and he was as a son to her..." (Exodus 2:10)

Pharaoh himself, first anti-Semite in Jewish history, raised the greatest and most important Jew who ever lived, and he did so right there, in his own royal palace!  What is more, it was the very decree which Pharaoh issued in order to avoid liberating the Jewish people that brought about these unique circumstances.  Had Yocheved, Moses' mother, not been compelled to place him in a basket of rushes in the Nile's waters, Pharaoh's daughter would never have discovered him and adopted him as her own son.

We see that had Pharaoh chosen to ignore the warnings of his astrologers, Moses would have grown up in his own family circle, rather than in the palace.

This is but a short episode in the life of Moses, but its lessons extend to all time and every place on the face of the globe.  "No act on the part of man, regardless how well planned, plotted, or connived, can alter even so much as a hairsbreadth what has been decreed in Heaven.  What is more, those very acts which a person performs in order to achieve his own ends will be manipulated from Above in order to bring about the fulfillment of what Heaven has declared should happen to him."