What Does Exodus 18:3 Mean?
And her two sons, of whom the name of the one was Gershom, the sojourner there; for he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And her two sons; of which the name of the one was Gershom; for he said, I have been an alien in a strange land:THE KEY
Gershom is heard as “stranger there,” so displacement is built into a name rather than left as a passing feeling.
THE MEANING
Gershom holds the condition of being an outsider in the place where you stand: the name means “stranger there,” and the verse explains it with “I have been an alien in a strange land.” You can be physically present and still experience the surrounding place as foreign. The verse gives that experience a name instead of disguising it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that being somewhere means feeling at home there.
THE ROOT
גֵּר
gēr
GROWS FROM
גור
gur
To sojourn or reside as a foreigner.
The name גֵּרְשֹׁם (Gērshōm, “stranger there”) is heard as גֵּר (gēr, “sojourner”) + שָׁם (shām, “there”), and the verse repeats גֵּר (gēr, “sojourner”) in its explanation. The word names someone living among others as an outsider, not merely a passing feeling of alienation.
ALSO GROWS
gūr: To sojourn or dwell as a foreigner.
גּוּר
The verb shows the condition in motion: the sojourner lives in a place without belonging to it as home.
megurim: Sojournings or places of sojourning.
מְגוּרִים
This branch carries the same root into the places a person inhabits, linking the outsider’s identity to the land around them.
נָכְרִיָּה
nokriyah
GROWS FROM
נכר
n-k-r
Foreignness: what is other or outside one’s own people or place.
The Hebrew marks the land itself as foreign, placing otherness on both sides: a sojourner and a land experienced as unfamiliar. “Strange” can suggest mere novelty, while this word points to what feels outside one’s own place.
ALSO GROWS
nokri: Foreign or a foreigner.
נָכְרִי
This branch describes a person as outside the familiar community, echoing the sojourner named in the verse.
nekar: Foreignness or foreign territory.
נֵכָר
This branch makes the land itself part of the estrangement: the place, too, lies outside what feels like home.
THE PATTERN
A person can inhabit a place while remaining a sojourner there.
I am a stranger, one who has sat down among you. Give me a holding of a grave among you, that I may bury my dead from before my face.Hear and respond to my prayer, LORD. Tilt your ear to my cry, and do not be deaf to my tears. For I am a sojourner with you, one who settles, like all my fathers.In trust all these died, not having brought home the promises, but seeing them from far off, and embracing them, and saying together that they were strangers and those passing through on the earth.THE THREAD
And he said to Abram, Perceive this surely. Your seed will be a sojourner in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will bend them low four hundred years.The Hebrew word translated “stranger” is גֵּר (gēr, “sojourner”), the same word Moses uses to explain Gershom’s name. Genesis names this condition before it is carried in a child’s name, making the “stranger there” a thread running through the story.
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