Exodus 2:22

Summary

The verse narrates that a woman bore a son, and the child was named Gershom (H1647G), with the naming explained through the father's declaration of having been a ger ("sojourner", H1616) in a foreign land. The name itself echoes the sound of the word for "sojourner."

Key words

• Te.led ("she bore", H3205) — qal narrative verb, third-person feminine, continuing the story sequence with the vav-consecutive.
• ge.re.Shom ("Gershom", H1647G) — proper name; wordplay embedded in the text since it phonetically echoes ger ("sojourner", H1616) used two words later.
• ger ("a sojourner", H1616) — masculine singular noun, the term explaining the motivation behind the name.
• ha.Yi.ti ("I have become / I was", H1961) — qal perfect, first-person singular, marking a completed state in the speaker's past.
• na.khe.ri.Yah ("foreign", H5237) — feminine singular adjective modifying 'Eretz ("land", H0776G), agreeing in gender with the feminine noun it describes.

What the text says

The Hebrew sentence is built from two chained narrative clauses using the vav-consecutive construction: va-Teled ("and she bore") followed by va-yikra' ("and he called"). This structure presents the birth and the naming as sequential actions within the ongoing narrative, typical of Biblical Hebrew storytelling. The subject of "she bore" is grammatically feminine (the mother), while the subject of "he called" is masculine (the father), though the Hebrew text does not name either explicitly in this verse — both are indicated only through verb conjugation.

The explanatory clause introduced by ki ("for", H3588A) connects the name Gershom to the spoken reason behind it: ger hayiti be'eretz nokhriyah ("a sojourner I have become in a foreign land"). The word order places ger ("sojourner") immediately after ki amar ("for he said"), foregrounding the term that phonetically resembles the name Gershom. The perfect verb hayiti ("I have become") indicates a state reached and completed, not an ongoing process, framing the sojourner status as an established fact at the time of speaking.

Differences between versions

The LXX explicitly names the mother's action as ἔτεκεν ("she bore") and specifies ὁ Μωυσῆς ("Moses") as the one who named the child, using ἐπωνόμασεν ("he named"), where the Hebrew leaves the subject of yikra ("he called") unnamed and implicit. The LXX also renders ger as πάροικος ("resident alien") rather than a term with phonetic resemblance to the name, losing the wordplay visible in the Hebrew. The Vulgate similarly supplies no explicit subject for "vocavit" ("he called") but does not insert "Moses" as the LXX does. The Vulgate's "Advena fui" ("I was a stranger") uses a past tense construction similar to the Hebrew perfect hayiti, while the LXX's εἰμι ("I am") reflects a present-tense framing absent from the Hebrew perfect aspect.