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Text -- Exodus 2:1-21 (NET)
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The Birth of the Deliverer
2:1 A man from the household of Levi married a woman who was a descendant of Levi .
2:2 The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son . When she saw that he was a healthy child, she hid him for three months .
2:3 But when she was no longer able to hide him, she took a papyrus basket for him and sealed it with bitumen and pitch . She put the child in it and set it among the reeds along the edge of the Nile .
2:4 His sister stationed herself at a distance to find out what would happen to him.
2:5 Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself by the Nile , while her attendants were walking alongside the river , and she saw the basket among the reeds . She sent one of her attendants , took it,
2:6 opened it, and saw the child – a boy , crying !– and she felt compassion for him and said , “This is one of the Hebrews ’ children .”
2:7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter , “Shall I go and get a nursing woman for you from the Hebrews , so that she may nurse the child for you?”
2:8 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Yes, do so .” So the young girl went and got the child’s mother .
2:9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages .” So the woman took the child and nursed him.
2:10 When the child grew older she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter , and he became her son . She named him Moses , saying , “Because I drew him from the water .”
The Presumption of the Deliverer
2:11 In those days , when Moses had grown up , he went out to his people and observed their hard labor , and he saw an Egyptian man attacking a Hebrew man , one of his own people .
2:12 He looked this way and that and saw that no one was there, and then he attacked the Egyptian and concealed the body in the sand .
2:13 When he went out the next day , there were two Hebrew men fighting . So he said to the one who was in the wrong , “Why are you attacking your fellow Hebrew?”
2:14 The man replied , “Who made you a ruler and a judge over us? Are you planning to kill me like you killed that Egyptian ?” Then Moses was afraid , thinking , “Surely what I did has become known .”
2:15 When Pharaoh heard about this event , he sought to kill Moses . So Moses fled from Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian , and he settled by a certain well .
2:16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters , and they came and began to draw water and fill the troughs in order to water their father’s flock .
2:17 When some shepherds came and drove them away , Moses came up and defended them and then watered their flock .
2:18 So when they came home to their father Reuel , he asked , “Why have you come home so early today ?”
2:19 They said , “An Egyptian man rescued us from the shepherds , and he actually drew water for us and watered the flock !”
2:20 He said to his daughters , “So where is he? Why in the world did you leave the man ? Call him, so that he may eat a meal with us.”
2:21 Moses agreed to stay with the man , and he gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage.
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Names, People and Places, Dictionary Themes and Topics
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expand allCommentary -- Verse Notes / Footnotes
NET Notes -> Exo 2:1; Exo 2:1; Exo 2:1; Exo 2:1; Exo 2:1; Exo 2:2; Exo 2:2; Exo 2:2; Exo 2:2; Exo 2:3; Exo 2:3; Exo 2:4; Exo 2:4; Exo 2:4; Exo 2:5; Exo 2:5; Exo 2:5; Exo 2:5; Exo 2:5; Exo 2:6; Exo 2:6; Exo 2:6; Exo 2:6; Exo 2:6; Exo 2:7; Exo 2:7; Exo 2:7; Exo 2:7; Exo 2:8; Exo 2:8; Exo 2:8; Exo 2:8; Exo 2:9; Exo 2:9; Exo 2:10; Exo 2:10; Exo 2:10; Exo 2:11; Exo 2:11; Exo 2:11; Exo 2:11; Exo 2:11; Exo 2:11; Exo 2:11; Exo 2:11; Exo 2:12; Exo 2:12; Exo 2:12; Exo 2:12; Exo 2:13; Exo 2:13; Exo 2:13; Exo 2:13; Exo 2:13; Exo 2:13; Exo 2:14; Exo 2:14; Exo 2:14; Exo 2:14; Exo 2:14; Exo 2:14; Exo 2:15; Exo 2:15; Exo 2:15; Exo 2:15; Exo 2:15; Exo 2:15; Exo 2:16; Exo 2:16; Exo 2:16; Exo 2:17; Exo 2:17; Exo 2:17; Exo 2:17; Exo 2:18; Exo 2:18; Exo 2:18; Exo 2:18; Exo 2:19; Exo 2:19; Exo 2:19; Exo 2:20; Exo 2:20; Exo 2:20; Exo 2:20; Exo 2:20; Exo 2:21; Exo 2:21
NET Notes: Exo 2:1 The first part of this section is the account of hiding the infant (vv. 1-4). The marriage, the birth, the hiding of the child, and the positioning of...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:2 Or “fine” (טוֹב, tov). The construction is parallel to phrases in the creation narrative (“and God saw that ...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:3 The circumstances of the saving of the child Moses have prompted several attempts by scholars to compare the material to the Sargon myth. See R. F. Jo...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:4 The verb is a Niphal imperfect; it should be classified here as a historic future, future from the perspective of a point in a past time narrative.
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NET Notes: Exo 2:5 The verb is preterite, third person feminine singular, with a pronominal suffix, from לָקַח (laqakh, “to take̶...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:6 The verb could be given a more colloquial translation such as “she felt sorry for him.” But the verb is stronger than that; it means ̶...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:7 No respectable Egyptian woman of this period would have undertaken the task of nursing a foreigner’s baby, and so the suggestion by Miriam was p...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:8 During this period of Egyptian history the royal palaces were in the northern or Delta area of Egypt, rather than up the Nile as in later periods. The...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:9 The possessive pronoun on the noun “wage” expresses the indirect object: “I will pay wages to you.”
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NET Notes: Exo 2:10 The naming provides the climax and summary of the story. The name of “Moses” (מֹשֶׁה, mosheh) is expla...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:11 Heb “brothers.” This kinship term is used as a means of indicating the nature of Moses’ personal concern over the incident, since th...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:13 Heb “your neighbor.” The word רֵעֶךָ (re’ekha) appears again in 33:11 to describe the ease with ...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:14 The term הַדָּבָר (haddavar, “the word [thing, matter, incident]”) functions here like a p...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:15 The word has the definite article, “the well.” Gesenius lists this use of the article as that which denotes a thing that is yet unknown to...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:16 This also has the ingressive sense, “began to fill,” but for stylistic reasons is translated simply “fill” here.
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NET Notes: Exo 2:18 Two observations should be made at this point. First, it seems that the oppression at the well was a regular part of their routine because their fathe...
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NET Notes: Exo 2:19 The construction is emphatic with the use of the perfect tense and its infinitive absolute: דָלָה דָּ&...
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