What Does Exodus 2:13 Mean?
And he went out on the second day, and behold, two Hebrew men were striving together, and he said to the wicked one, Why do you strike your fellow?
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 when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?THE KEY
A shared identity does not make the blow smaller; it makes the struck person impossible to reduce to an opponent.
THE MEANING
Moses names the injured man as the striker’s fellow even as he calls the striker wicked. The question makes the bond between them visible inside the violence: the blow lands on another person and on their shared relation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that violence only comes from outsiders: here one Hebrew strikes another.
THE ROOT
תַכֶּה
takkéh
GROWS FROM
נכה
n-k-h
To strike, smite, or wound.
This verb repeats the נכה (n-k-h, strike) root used for the Egyptian striking a Hebrew in Exodus 2:11. The hand has changed, but the action has not; now the person struck is named as the striker’s fellow.
ALSO GROWS
nāḵāh: To strike, smite, or wound.
נָכָה
This verbal form shares the root of the blow Moses confronts here.
makkāh: A blow, wound, or plague.
מַכָּה
The noun makes the root’s action visible as an injury inflicted on someone.
THE PATTERN
Violence first seen as force from outside can reappear within a community, wounding both a person and the bond between them.
And it was in those days, when Moses had grown, that he went out to his brothers, and looked on their loads. And he saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew man, one of his brothers.And Cain said to Abel his brother. And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him.But if you bite and devour one another, watch that you are not used up by one another.THE THREAD
And it was in those days, when Moses had grown, that he went out to his brothers, and looked on their loads. And he saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew man, one of his brothers.The Hebrew verb for striking in both scenes comes from נכה (n-k-h, strike). First an Egyptian strikes a Hebrew; then a Hebrew strikes a Hebrew, while Moses calls the injured man his fellow.
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