Exodus 18:24

Summary

The verse reports that Moses heeded the voice of his father-in-law and carried out everything that he had said. It marks the narrative conclusion to Jethro's advice about delegating judicial responsibilities.

Key words

• va-yish.ma' ("and he listened", H8085G) — qal narrative form of the verb "to hear/listen," continuing the story sequence with the vav-consecutive construction.
• le-Qol ("to the voice", H6963A) — noun in construct state, meaning literally "voice of," linked to the following word to form "voice of his father-in-law."
• choten-o ("his father-in-law", H2859A + H9023) — a qal participle used substantively ("the one who is father-in-law"), in construct form, with the pronominal suffix -o ("his") attached.
• va-ya'as ("and he did", H6213A) — second qal narrative verb, paralleling va-yishma' to form the sentence's two main actions.
• asher amar ("that he had said", H0834A + H0559) — relative clause using the qal perfect of amar ("to say"), indicating a completed action prior to Moses's response.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built on two parallel narrative verbs joined by vav-consecutive: va-yishma' ("and he listened") and va-ya'as ("and he did"). Both verbs have Moses as their implicit subject, named explicitly only after the first verb (Mosheh, H4872). This structure creates a tight cause-and-effect sequence: hearing leads directly to action, a common feature of Biblical Hebrew narrative style using the vav-consecutive chain.

The phrase le-qol choten-o ("to the voice of his father-in-law") uses the construct chain qol...choten-o, literally "voice of his father-in-law," rather than a more abstract "advice" or "counsel." The word choten (H2859A) is grammatically a qal participle, meaning "the one who is father-in-law," used here as a substantive noun referring to Jethro's role rather than a personal name.

The object of Moses's action is expressed by kol asher amar ("all that he had said"), where kol (H3605) functions as a totalizing noun ("all/everything") and the relative clause asher amar uses the qal perfect of amar (H0559), marking the speaking as a completed prior event relative to Moses's subsequent action.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew specifies that Moses listened "to the voice of his father-in-law" (le-qol choten-o), a construct phrase naming the source of speech directly. The LXX renders this as "the voice of the gambros" (γαμβροῦ, "father-in-law" or "kinsman by marriage"), close to the Hebrew. The Vulgate, however, shifts the phrasing to "having heard these things" (Quibus auditis), an ablative absolute construction that does not explicitly repeat "voice" or "father-in-law," instead summarizing the prior content indirectly. The SBLIBRE Spanish version paraphrases qol as "consejo" ("counsel/advice") rather than "voice," an interpretive rendering not present as a distinct lexical item in the Hebrew text.