What Does Exodus 2:19 Mean?
And they said, An Egyptian snatched us from the hand of the shepherds, and also drew, and drew water for us, and watered the flock.
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 they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock.THE KEY
Deliverance pulls a life from another’s hand, then becomes water enough for life to continue.
THE MEANING
Help can arrive from outside the circle you expect, release you from a threatening grasp, and meet the practical need right in front of you. Here, release reaches beyond the moment danger passes: water reaches the flock, and life continues.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that help can only come from someone in your own group: the women name an Egyptian as the one who frees them and provides water.
THE ROOT
הִצִּילָנוּ
hitsilanu
GROWS FROM
נצל
natsal
To snatch away or pull free; by extension, to rescue or deliver. Some forms also mean to strip or take away.
“snatched us” in this verse is hitsilanu. The same root can describe rescuing people from a hand and stripping goods from their owners. Here, deliverance is an extraction from a grasp: someone is pulled free.
ALSO GROWS
hitsil: He rescued or delivered.
הִצִּיל
This form of the root appears again in Exodus 3:8, where the LORD says he will deliver Israel from Egypt’s hand.
wayenatselu: They stripped the Egyptians of their goods.
וַיְנַצְּלוּ
Exodus 12:36 uses the same root for taking things away, revealing how the root holds both rescue and removal.
דָּלֹה דָלָה
daloh dalah
GROWS FROM
דלה
dalah
To draw up or draw out, especially water from a well.
“drew, and drew water” in this verse is daloh dalah. The same verb describes drawing water from a well and drawing counsel out of a heart, so its movement is from depth to availability. Here the help becomes tangible: water is brought within reach and given to the flock.
ALSO GROWS
dalah: He drew water.
דָּלָה
This is the verb used here for bringing water up for the women.
yidlenah: He will draw it out.
יִדְלֶנָּה
Proverbs 20:5 uses this form for drawing counsel out of a person’s heart, extending the image from well water to something hidden within.
THE PATTERN
Deliverance pulls life out of the hand that confines it, restoring room for safety and continuation.
I seek the LORD, and he answers me, and snatches me out of every place of dread.And it will be for a sign and for a witness to the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt, for they will cry out to the LORD because of those who press them, and he will send them a deliverer and a great one, and he will snatch them out.And when Peter came to himself, he said, "Now I truly know that the LORD has sent his messenger, and has taken me out of the hand of Herod, and from all that the people of the Jews were waiting for."THE THREAD
And I have come down to snatch them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good and wide land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.Both verses use the root נצל (natsal, “snatch away; rescue”) for release from a hand: here from the shepherds, there from Egypt. The rescue at the well sits inside the same movement toward “a good land and a large”, release opens into space to live.
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