In order to understand the subsequent events it is important to establish whose son Moses was. Exodus 2,1-2 states that "a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son." Since this is a question about the man who founded the Hebrew nation, it seems incredible that his parents should be treated this way, without even a name. Equally perplexing and unconvincing are the reasons proffered as to why Moses was abandoned on the bank of the Nile, three months after birth.
The Bible tries to justify this event by describing a presumed order, given by the Pharaoh, calling for the extermination of Jewish newborns. An inhuman order, which justification is completely unconvincing;[1] there are no corresponding events to be found in the customs or in the character of the Egyptians of that epoch. The biblical account gives no indication that any of the Jewish babies were killed, either by the sword or by any other means, following this presumed order. So it seems that the only "victim" would have been Moses himself. The whole affair is clearly unfounded; an infamous accusation mounted on some obscure criminal report, invented only to nobilitate the hero's origins. This is not an unusual practice in History.
Then too, the story of a baby being left in the river and of his rescue is perplexing and suspect, since similar stories abound in mythologies world-wide. However, there is nothing to indicate that the story was invented from scratch. It is possible that the true story of Moses may indeed have some correlation with this one, at least in its essential points. What may be considered reasonably certain is that Moses must have been abandoned, or in some way relinquished by his mother just after he was born, to be brought up in an Egyptian environment.
The number of possible theories offering the reasons for his abandonment is limited; the most probable theory is that his mother was so poor that she could not assure him a decent future; or perhaps he was illegitimate, and so for some reason had to be given away. In any case, the fact that he was abandoned excludes Amram and Jochebed from being his parents, as purported further on in Exodus 6,20, where one reads: "Amram married his father's sister, Jochebed, who bore him Aaron and Moses ....” This is affirmed just once again in the Pentateuch, in Numbers 26,59, which seems strange to say the least, and leads us to presume that someone had made alterations in the text in order to give Moses parents who were more befitting of his dignity than the real ones. Amram and Jochebed were actually Aaron's parents and this is probably the reason why they were indicated, finally, as Moses' parents also. Aaron in fact, is defined sometimes as his "brother.” The first to indicate him as such was Jahweh himself, in Exodus 4,14. Honestly, this was a rather late identification; Moses at that time was already over forty, and prior to that episode there had never been any sort of relationship established between the two men. The term "brother" may have been used by Jahweh solely in a figurative sense, a usage not infrequent in the Bible.
Amram was of noble rank, being a grandson of Levi, the founder of the tribe. Jochebed, apart from being his wife, was also his aunt, since she was a daughter of Levi himself. They were rich; together with their brothers and cousins they owned all the tribe's goods and property, consisting of hundreds of servants and thousands of head of cattle. When Moses was born, Aaron was already three years old. There can be no possible motive for which Jochebed would have had to abandon her second male child, neither is it imaginable that a woman of her rank could offer to be nurse to a Jewish foundling in an Egyptian home. We must, therefore, exclude most explicitly the idea that Jochebed could be that unnamed woman, in the second chapter of Exodus, who is indicated as Moses' mother.
Therefore, it is almost certain that the true version regarding Moses’ parents is the first one reported in the Bible. It is not impossible that his father was a Jew of noble rank, perhaps even Amram; but his mother must have been a member of the servant class which condemned the woman's children to the same level, regardless of whatever rank their father may have been. We may presume that the woman, being intelligent and ambitious, was not resigned to this fate and that she had worked out a plan to ensure a better future for her “disinherited” child.
Everything was calculated: the exact point at which to leave the little one; his elder sister hidden nearby; the rich and powerful girl who, by chance, turned up just at that moment, fell in love with the baby and wanted him for herself; the child's mother entered her service as nurse to her own son. There is no reason to consider that, at least as far as this part of the narrative is concerned, things happened differently than what the Bible has recorded (Exodus 2,1-10).
[1] According to Exodus, the motive for this inhuman order seems to have been the jealousy of Israel's greatness and prosperity. If, however, Jews were really slaves, why should the Egyptians be jealous of them? On the contrary, if they were not slaves, what did prevent the Egyptians from enslaving them? Killing new-born children in order to limit the numbers of an enslaved population is complete nonsense, of which no example exists in History. Even the manner in which it was carried out, according to narrative, is quite absurd. If the Pharaoh really wanted to get rid of Jewish new-born children, he would have given appropriate orders to his army, as did Herod centuries later. On the contrary, according to Exodus' account, he asked two humble Jewish midwives (Ex.1,15-19) to kill the children at birth. The two women agreed to obey the order, but, with feeble excuses, managed both never to do it and never be punished. It seems then that the only measure taken by the Pharaoh to suppress the new-born children was to order Jews themselves to do it. The whole thing is clearly unfounded.