Exodus 2:18

Summary

Exodus 2:18 narrates that the daughters of the priest of Midian arrived at their father Reuel's house, and he questioned them about the unusual speed of their return that day. The verse consists of two narrative clauses joined by the vav-consecutive construction typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling.

Key words

• ta.Vo.nah ("they went/came", H0935G) — qal narrative form, feminine plural, marking the daughters as the subject of the action.
• 'a.vi. ("father", H0001G) — masculine singular construct noun, linking directly to the following pronominal suffix to form "father of them."
• Hen ("their", H9029) — feminine plural pronominal suffix attached to 'avi, producing 'avihen ("their father"), specifying Reuel's relationship to the group.
• mi.har.Ten ("did you hurry", H4116A) — piel perfect, second person feminine plural; the piel stem intensifies the root meaning, and the perfect aspect marks the action as completed.
• bo' ("to come", H0935G) — qal infinitive, functioning here as a complement to the finite verb miharten, forming a verbal pairing that expresses manner ("hurried to come").

What the text says

The verse is built from two vav-consecutive clauses, the standard Hebrew mechanism for sequential narrative ("and then... and then..."). The first clause uses tavo'nah ("they came", H0935G) with the daughters as implicit subject, followed by the prepositional phrase 'el-Re'u'el 'avihen ("to Reuel their father"), where 'avi (H0001G) in construct state with the suffix -hen (H9029) identifies Reuel's paternal role without needing a separate possessive word.

The second clause introduces direct speech through va-yomer ("and he said", H0559), followed by the interrogative madua' ("why", H4069). The core of the question combines two different verbal roots: miharten (H4116A), a piel perfect from the root meaning "to hasten," and bo' (H0935G), a qal infinitive from the root "to come." This pairing — a finite intensive verb followed by a plain infinitive — produces the sense "you hurried in coming," i.e., "you came quickly," rather than treating "hurry" and "come" as two separate actions. The temporal marker hayom ("the day/today", H3117G) with the definite article closes the question, anchoring the speed of arrival to that specific day.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text uses only tavo'nah ("they came", H0935G), without any verb meaning "return." The Vulgate renders this with revertissent ("they had returned"), and the Vulgate-based translations (RV1909, BSB, SBLIBRE) follow suit with "returned" or "volviendo," making explicit a sense of return that the Hebrew verb itself does not state. The LXX uses paregenonto ("they arrived/came"), closer to the Hebrew's neutral verb of arrival. Additionally, the name Re'u'el (H7467J) appears in the LXX as Ragouēl and in the Vulgate as Raguel, reflecting transliteration variants of the same Hebrew name.