Exodus 4:26

4:26 So the Lord ¹  let him alone. (At that time ²  she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” referring to ³  the circumcision.)

Exodus 22:2

22:2 “If a thief is caught ⁴  breaking in ⁵  and is struck so that he dies, there will be no blood guilt for him. ⁶ 

Exodus 4:25

4:25 But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off the foreskin of her son and touched it to Moses’ feet, ⁷  and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood ⁸  to me.”

Exodus 22:3

22:3 If the sun has risen on him, then there is blood guilt for him. A thief ⁹  must surely make full restitution; if he has nothing, then he will be sold for his theft.

[4:26]  ¹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:26]  ² tn Or “Therefore.” The particle אָז (’az) here is not introducing the next item in a series of events. It points back to the past (“at that time,” see Gen 4:26) or to a logical connection (“therefore, consequently”).

[4:26]  ³ tn The Hebrew simply has לַמּוּלֹת (lammulot, “to the circumcision[s]”). The phrase explains that the saying was in reference to the act of circumcision. Some scholars speculate that there was a ritual prior to marriage from which this event and its meaning derived. But it appears rather that if there was some ancient ritual, it would have had to come from this event. The difficulty is that the son is circumcised, not Moses, making the comparative mythological view untenable. Moses had apparently not circumcised Eliezer. Since Moses was taking his family with him, God had to make sure the sign of the covenant was kept. It may be that here Moses sent them all back to Jethro (18:2) because of the difficulties that lay ahead.

[22:2]  ⁴ tn Heb “found” (so KJV, ASV, NRSV).

[22:2]  ⁵ tn The word בַּמַּחְתֶּרֶת (bammakhteret) means “digging through” the walls of a house (usually made of mud bricks). The verb is used only a few times and has the meaning of dig in (as into houses) or row hard (as in Jonah 1:13).

[22:2]  ⁶ tn The text has “there is not to him bloods.” When the word “blood” is put in the plural, it refers to bloodshed, or the price of blood that is shed, i.e., blood guiltiness.

[4:25]  ⁷ tn Heb “to his feet.” The referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity. The LXX has “and she fell at his feet” and then “the blood of the circumcision of my son stood.” But it is clear that she caused the foreskin to touch Moses’ feet, as if the one were a substitution for the other, taking the place of the other (see U. Cassuto, Exodus, 60).

[4:25]  ⁸ sn U. Cassuto explains that she was saying, “I have delivered you from death, and your return to life makes you my bridegroom a second time, this time my blood bridegroom, a bridegroom acquired through blood” (Exodus, 60-61).

[22:3]  ¹⁰ tn The words “a thief” have been added for clarification. S. R. Driver (Exodus, 224) thinks that these lines are out of order, since some of them deal with killing the thief and then others with the thief making restitution, but rearranging the clauses is not a necessary way to bring clarity to the paragraph. The idea here would be that any thief caught alive would pay restitution.