Exodus 2: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

A man of the tribe of Levi marries a daughter of Levi, and she gives birth to a son whom she hides for three months and then places in a basket among the reeds at the river. Pharaoh's daughter finds him, the child's sister arranges for his own mother to nurse him, and he becomes the daughter's son and is named Moses. Grown up, Moses kills an Egyptian who was beating a Hebrew; when Pharaoh hears of it and seeks to kill him, Moses flees to Midian, marries Zipporah, and has a son named Gershom. The king of Egypt dies, the Israelites cry out under their slavery, and God hears them, remembers his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and takes notice of them.

Claim by Claim

1. 2:1
   • A man of the house of Levi went.
   • He took a daughter of Levi as his wife.
2. 2:2
   • The woman conceived and gave birth to a son.
   • She saw that he was a good child.
   • She hid him for three months.
3. 2:3
   • She could no longer hide him.
   • She took for him a basket made of papyrus.
   • She coated the basket with bitumen and with pitch.
   • She put the child in the basket.
   • She set the basket among the reeds at the edge of the Nile.
4. 2:4
   • His sister stationed herself at a distance.
   • She did so in order to know what would be done to him.
5. 2:5
   • Pharaoh's daughter came down to bathe at the Nile.
   • Her young women were walking alongside the river.
   • She saw the basket among the reeds.
   • She sent her maidservant to take the basket.
   • The maidservant took it.
6. 2:6
   • She opened the basket.
   • She saw the child.
   • The boy was crying.
   • She had compassion on him.
   • She said that this was one of the Hebrews' children.
7. 2:7
   • His sister spoke to Pharaoh's daughter.
   • She asked whether she should go and call a nursing woman from among the Hebrew women for her.
   • She asked this so that the woman could nurse the child for Pharaoh's daughter.
8. 2:8
   • Pharaoh's daughter told her to go.
   • The girl went.
   • The girl called the child's mother.
9. 2:9
   • Pharaoh's daughter told her to take this child.
   • Pharaoh's daughter told her to nurse him for her.
   • Pharaoh's daughter said she would give her her wages.
   • The woman took the child.
   • The woman nursed him.
10. 2:10
    • The child grew.
    • She brought him to Pharaoh's daughter.
    • He became her son.
    • She called his name Moses.
    • She said that she drew him out of the water.
11. 2:11
    • This happened in those days.
    • Moses had grown up.
    • Moses went out to his brothers.
    • Moses looked on their burdens.
    • Moses saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, one of his brothers.
12. 2:12
    • He turned this way and that.
    • He saw that there was no man present.
    • He struck the Egyptian dead.
    • He hid him in the sand.
13. 2:13
    • He went out on the second day.
    • Two Hebrew men were fighting each other.
    • He said to the one in the wrong, asking why he was striking his fellow.
14. 2:14
    • The man asked who had made him a ruler and a judge over them.
    • The man asked whether he intended to kill him as he had killed the Egyptian.
    • Moses was afraid.
    • Moses said that the thing was surely known.
15. 2:15
    • Pharaoh heard this thing.
    • Pharaoh sought to kill Moses.
    • Moses fled from before Pharaoh.
    • Moses settled in the land of Midian.
    • Moses sat down by the well.
16. 2:16
    • The priest of Midian had seven daughters.
    • They came and drew water.
    • They filled the troughs.
    • They did this to water their father's flock.
17. 2:17
    • The shepherds came.
    • The shepherds drove the daughters away.
    • Moses stood up.
    • Moses rescued the daughters.
    • Moses watered their flock.
18. 2:18
    • They came to Reuel their father.
    • He asked why they had come back so quickly that day.
19. 2:19
    • They said an Egyptian man delivered them from the hand of the shepherds.
    • They said he also drew water for them.
    • They said he watered the flock.
20. 2:20
    • He spoke to his daughters.
    • He asked where the man was.
    • He asked why they had left the man.
    • He told them to call him so that he could eat bread.
21. 2:21
    • Moses agreed to dwell with the man.
    • The man gave Zipporah his daughter to Moses.
22. 2:22
    • She gave birth to a son.
    • He called his name Gershom.
    • He said he had been a sojourner in a foreign land.
23. 2:23
    • This happened during those many days.
    • The king of Egypt died.
    • The Israelites groaned because of the labor.
    • The Israelites cried out.
    • Their cry for help went up to God because of the labor.
24. 2:24
    • God heard their groaning.
    • God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
25. 2:25
    • God saw the Israelites.
    • God knew; the verse does not state what or whom God knew.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

2:1

Levi was one of Jacob's twelve sons, and "the house of Levi" means the tribe descended from him, one of the family groups of Israelites living in Egypt. Marriage within one's own tribe was normal at this period.

2:2

The hiding follows the order given in the previous chapter: the king of Egypt had commanded that every newborn Hebrew boy be thrown into the Nile. "Fine" translates a Hebrew word meaning simply "good", readers have taken it as handsome, healthy, or thriving.

2:3

The basket is papyrus, the reed that grew in the Nile marshes and was used in Egypt for boats as well as for writing material. "Tar and pitch" are bitumen and resin, the standard waterproofing of the ancient world. "The river" throughout this chapter is the Nile; the Hebrew uses a word borrowed from Egyptian that means the Nile specifically. In the King James Version the basket is called an "ark," the same English word used for Noah's boat, because the Hebrew uses the same rare term for both, a floating box built to save a life from water.

2:4

"To wit" in 1611 English is a verb meaning to know or to find out, unrelated to the modern noun wit. The sister is not named here; Exodus 15:20 calls Moses' sister Miriam.

2:5

"Pharaoh" is not a personal name but the Egyptian royal title, literally "great house," used the way one might say "the crown." The text never names which king it means.

2:6

"Hebrew" is the term the Egyptians use for these people, and the term Israelites use of themselves when speaking to foreigners. Pharaoh's daughter identifies the baby as Hebrew presumably because he is circumcised, and knows at once that he is a child her father has ordered killed.

2:7

A "nursing woman" is a wet nurse, a woman still producing milk who feeds another's infant. Hiring one under a written contract, with wages and a fixed term of two or three years, was an ordinary arrangement in Egypt and Mesopotamia, which is why the offer sounds businesslike rather than strange.

2:9

The bitter irony of the arrangement is exact: Moses' mother is paid Egyptian wages to raise her own son, whom Egyptian law had condemned to death.

2:10

The name Moses is explained here from the Hebrew verb *mashah*, "to draw out." The name is also close to the Egyptian element *mes*, "born of" or "son of," which appears in royal names like Thutmose and Rameses. The explanation given is a play on the sound of the name, which is how names are commonly explained in these narratives, not a claim about which language it came from.

2:11

"His brethren" means his own people, not his siblings. "Looked on their burdens" means he went and watched the forced labor for himself. The verse gives no explanation of how Moses knew he was a Hebrew, but it assumes he did.

2:13

"The second day" means the next day.

2:14

"Judge" here means someone with authority to settle disputes and impose a decision, an office rather than a courtroom role. The man's question is a challenge: no one has appointed Moses to anything.

2:15

Midian was a region and a people east and south-east of Egypt, in the desert of the Sinai peninsula and north-west Arabia; Midianites were herders and traders. Wells in that country were communal property and the natural meeting place for anyone arriving from outside, which is why Moses simply sits down at one.

2:16

"Priest" here is a non-Israelite priest, serving whatever gods his people served; the word carries no connection to Israel's later priesthood. The troughs are stone or wooden basins beside the well, filled by hand from the well so that animals can drink.

2:17

Wells were shared, and access to them followed a local pecking order that outsiders and the weak lost out on. The shepherds are driving the women off so their own flocks can drink from water the women have already hauled up, which is theft of labor as much as of water.

2:18

Reuel is called Jethro elsewhere in Exodus, and "Hobab" in other passages. The text gives no explanation; ancient and modern readers have variously supposed a second name, a title, or different strands of tradition preserved side by side.

2:19

The daughters take Moses for an Egyptian, presumably from his clothing, hair and speech, he has been raised in the Egyptian court and does not look Hebrew to strangers.

2:20

"That he may eat bread" means to share a meal. Bread stands for food in general, and offering a stranger a meal was the standard obligation of hospitality in this culture, carrying real weight: to feed someone was to take responsibility for their safety.

2:21

"Gave Moses his daughter" means gave her in marriage. Marriages were arranged between the husband and the bride's father, and the father's giving of the daughter is what formalised it.

2:22

The name Gershom is explained by its sound: the Hebrew *ger* means a resident foreigner, and *sham* means "there." A *ger* was not merely a visitor but a settled outsider without land or clan rights in the place where he lived, a real legal status, and a precarious one.

2:23

A king's death mattered legally as well as politically: a charge outstanding against Moses in Egypt lapsed with the ruler who pursued it. "Cried out" translates a word often used of a formal appeal for justice against oppression, not merely of weeping.

2:24

A covenant was a binding, sworn agreement, with obligations and often a sign to mark it; the one meant here is the promise made to Abraham and repeated to Isaac and Jacob of descendants and a land. When Hebrew says God "remembered," it does not mean he had forgotten; the verb means turning attention to something and acting on it.

2:25

The Hebrew of the last clause is unusually abrupt, literally "and God knew," with no object stated. Translators supply "took notice of them" or "was concerned for them"; the King James "had respect unto them" means paid regard to them, not admired them. The sentence is left hanging, and the next chapter begins the answer.