Exodus 2:19

Summary

The daughters of the priest of Midian answer their father, explaining that an Egyptian man rescued them from the shepherds and drew water for them, watering their flock. The verse reports their direct speech in response to being asked why they returned early.

Key words

• to.Mar.na ("they said", H0559) — qal narrative form, feminine plural, marking the daughters as the speaking subjects in the ongoing story chain.
• hi.tzi.La.nu ("he rescued us", H5337) — hiphil (causative) perfect, indicating a completed decisive act of deliverance performed by the man, with the pronominal suffix "us" attached directly to the verb.
• ro.'Im ("shepherds", H7462B) — qal participle, masculine plural, meaning "the ones doing [shepherding]" — describing an ongoing role rather than a fixed noun class.
• da.Loh da.Lah ("carefully drawing, he drew", H1802 + H1802) — the infinitive absolute da.Loh paired with the finite perfect da.Lah intensifies the action of drawing water, emphasizing that he did it thoroughly or repeatedly.
• i.Yashk ("he watered", H8248G) — hiphil (causative) narrative form, showing the man caused the flock to drink, continuing the narrative sequence with va.

What the text says

The verse is structured as three sequential clauses joined by narrative va ("and then"): the daughters speak, they report the rescue, and they report the watering. The first clause, va-to.Mar.na ("and they said"), sets up direct speech. Within that speech, 'ish mitz.Ri ("a man, Egyptian", H0376G + H4713) functions as the subject of hi.tzi.La.nu ("he rescued us", H5337), a hiphil perfect verb that presents the rescue as a single completed event, with the object suffix -nu ("us") built into the verb form itself rather than as a separate pronoun.

The phrase mi-yad ha-ro.'Im ("from the hand of the shepherds") uses yad (H3027H) in construct form, literally "hand of," a common way in the source language to express "from the power/control of." The following clause intensifies the drawing action through the construction da.Loh da.Lah — an infinitive absolute followed by the finite verb of the same root, a grammatical pattern that emphasizes or reinforces the verb's action, here rendered by translations as "he even drew" or "he drew abundantly," though the doubling itself signals emphasis rather than mere repetition. The final clause, va-i.Yashk et ha-Tzon ("and he watered the flock"), uses a hiphil (causative) form: the man did not merely let the flock drink but caused the flock to drink, closing the sequence of actions attributed to him.

Differences between versions

The Hebrew's intensified construction da.Loh da.Lah ("carefully drawing, he drew") has no separate infinitive-absolute equivalent in the LXX (ἤντλησεν, simple aorist "he drew") or the Vulgate (hausit, "he drew"), both of which render the action as a single verb without the emphatic doubling present in the Hebrew text.