What Does Exodus 2:20 Mean?
And he said to his daughters, And where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.
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 he said unto his daughters, And where is he? why is it that ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread.THE KEY
The question “Where is he?” turns a stranger’s absence into a summons to the table.
THE MEANING
A person stands just beyond the circle of welcome, and someone notices, calls him in, and gives him bread. The care here is concrete: being seen becomes an invitation, and the invitation becomes food.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the idea that a stranger can be left outside once his usefulness has passed; he is called in to eat.
THE ROOT
קִרְאֶן
qirʾen
GROWS FROM
קרא
q-r-ʾ
To call or summon; the same root also carries the sense of reading or proclaiming aloud.
This call does more than locate the man: it gathers him into presence. The same root forms words for a public convocation and for reading aloud, opening a connection between calling someone in and making them part of the gathering.
ALSO GROWS
qeriʾah: Calling or reading aloud
קְרִיאָה
The shared root holds both summoning a person and speaking words aloud; here the call makes a welcome audible.
miqra: Convocation or reading
מִקְרָא
This branch can name a gathered assembly, echoing how the call draws someone from outside into company.
THE PATTERN
A stranger is received through a concrete invitation that brings them into presence and provides food.
And I will take a morsel of bread, and prop up your hearts. After that you shall pass on, for therefore you have crossed over to your servant. And they said, So you shall make it, as you have spoken.Do not let slip the opening of your home to strangers, for by it some have sheltered messengers without knowing it.For I hungered, and you gave me food; I thirsted, and you gave me drink; I was a stranger, and you gathered me in.THE THREAD
And I will take a morsel of bread, and prop up your hearts. After that you shall pass on, for therefore you have crossed over to your servant. And they said, So you shall make it, as you have spoken.The Hebrew word for “bread” here is לֶחֶם (lechem), the same word Abraham offers the visitors in Genesis 18:5. In both verses, welcome takes the form of bread set before someone who has arrived from outside.
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