Exodus 18:3

Summary

The verse continues the list of family members Jethro brings to Moses, specifying that one of Zipporah's two sons was named Gershom. The text explains this name through a statement attributed to the father (Moses): he had called himself a ger ("sojourner", H1616) in a foreign land.

Key words

• shenei ("[the] two", H8147) — cardinal number in dual form and construct state, linking directly to vaneiha ("her sons") to specify the pair being referenced.
• ger ("a sojourner", H1616) — masculine singular noun, the term that forms the etymological basis for the name Gershom; it designates one who resides in a land not his own.
• hayiti ("I have become / I was", H1961) — qal perfect, first person singular of the verb "to be", expressing a completed state experienced by the speaker.
• 'amar ("he had said", H0559) — qal perfect, third person masculine singular, introducing the quoted explanation for the name; the subject ("he") is implied by the verb form alone, not named explicitly in this verse.
• nokhriyyah ("foreign", H5237) — feminine singular adjective agreeing with 'erets ("land", H0776G), reinforcing the sense of foreignness already present in ger.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built around a construct chain: shenei vaneiha ("the two of her sons") identifies the two sons before narrowing to one of them via the relative clause 'asher shem ha'echad Gershom ("who, the name of the one, [was] Gershom"). The construct noun shem ("name of") governs ha'echad ("the one"), a syntactic pattern that in Hebrew narrative typically introduces naming explanations tied to circumstances of birth or life experience.

The causal particle ki ("for", H3588A) introduces the reported speech that motivates the name: 'amar, "he had said." The quoted words — ger hayiti be'erets nokhriyyah ("a sojourner I have become in a foreign land") — place the predicate noun ger before the verb hayiti, a common Hebrew word order for a nominal predicate construction, emphasizing the status of "sojourner" rather than the act of becoming. The word ger is phonetically and semantically the root behind the name Gershom, so the explanatory clause functions as a name etymology embedded in the narrative.

The subject of 'amar is not stated as a noun in this verse; it is carried grammatically by the third-person masculine singular verb form alone, referring back to the speaker introduced in the surrounding narrative.

Differences between versions

The LXX renders the quoted explanation as λέγων ("saying") rather than reproducing a perfect-tense "he had said," and gives the sojourner's line as "Πάροικος ἐν γῇ ἀλλοτρίᾳ" without a first-person verb equivalent to hayiti, presenting it more as a label than a personal statement. The Vulgate explicitly inserts "patre" ("the father"), making the speaker's identity explicit where the Hebrew leaves it implied by verb morphology alone. The English versions BSB and SBLIBRE similarly supply "Moses" as the subject of "had said," a clarification not present as a separate word in the Hebrew text itself.