Exodus 18:2

Summary

The verse states that Jethro, described as father-in-law of Moses, took Zipporah, the wife of Moses, after "her being sent away" (or "her dismissals"). The sentence identifies both figures by their relation to Moses and gives a temporal clause explaining the circumstances preceding Jethro's action.

Key words

• va-yiqqach ("and he took", H3947G) — qal wayyiqtol form, the standard narrative past tense in Biblical Hebrew prose; some translations render it as pluperfect ("had taken/received") because the event described precedes the main narrative timeline of Exodus 18.
• choten ("father-in-law of", H2859A) — qal participle in construct state, linking Jethro directly to Moses through a kinship term rather than a separate clause.
• 'eshet ("wife of", H0802H) — feminine singular noun in construct state, forming the phrase "wife of Moses" as a fixed identifying label for Zipporah.
• achar ("after", H0310A) — construct form functioning as a preposition, introducing the temporal clause that follows.
• shilluchei ("dismissal(s) of", H7964) — masculine plural noun in construct with the 3rd person feminine singular suffix -ha ("her"), literally "her sendings-away" or "her dismissals."

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on a chain of construct phrases that compress information: rather than saying "Jethro, who was the father-in-law of Moses," the text uses choten Mosheh as a direct construct label attached to Jethro's name. The same pattern repeats with 'eshet Mosheh for Zipporah. This construct-heavy style is typical of Hebrew narrative identification of secondary characters.

The temporal clause achar shilluchei-ha ("after her sendings-away") is grammatically unusual: it uses the plural noun shilluchim with a feminine singular suffix referring to Zipporah, but the sentence does not name an explicit subject for who did the sending. The Hebrew construction leaves the agent of the sending grammatically implicit — the suffix -ha marks Zipporah as the one sent away, but the verb that would specify "sent by whom" is absent from this clause, since shilluchim is a noun, not a finite verb. The reader must infer the agent from surrounding context in the book.

Differences between versions

The Vulgate renders the phrase as quam remiserat ("whom he had sent back"), supplying a specific 3rd person singular subject not overtly present in the Hebrew construct-noun phrase, and reducing the plural shilluchei ("her sendings-away") to a single verbal action. The LXX similarly renders it as μετὰ τὴν ἄφεσιν αὐτῆς ("after her release/dismissal"), using a singular abstract noun rather than reflecting the Hebrew plural form. Modern translations such as the BSB go further, inserting "Moses had sent back his wife" — explicitly naming Moses as the agent, an identification not grammatically stated in the Hebrew clause itself, which only marks Zipporah as the one who underwent the "sendings-away."