What Does Exodus 3:1 Mean in the King James?
Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The one named for being drawn out now leads a flock through the wilderness to the mountain of God.
THE MEANING
The sacred arrives inside ordinary responsibility: Moses tends and leads a flock, and that route brings him to God’s mountain. For you, the place that looks like the far edge can be where an ordinary path opens into encounter.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Encounter with God has to begin with a dramatic, explicitly religious moment; this verse places Moses’ approach to the mountain within his daily work with the flock.
THE ROOT
מֹשֶׁה
Moshe
GROWS FROM
משה
to draw out, especially from water
The naming scene in Exodus 2:10 connects Moses’ name with being drawn out of the water. Here, the one marked by being drawn out tends a flock toward Horeb; his name carries that remembered movement into this scene.
ALSO GROWS
māšāh: to draw out
מָשָׁה
This is the verb behind the name’s meaning, connecting Moses with the act of being drawn from the water.
meshithihu: I drew him out
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
This is the naming scene’s explicit form of the verb, making the name a compressed memory of that drawing out.
רֹעֶה
ro'eh
GROWS FROM
רעה
to pasture or tend a flock
“kept the flock” in this verse is ro'eh. The Hebrew describes active shepherding, not simply keeping something in one’s possession. The same root names both the shepherd and the pasture, so tending and moving through the landscape belong to one continuous work that carries Moses toward Horeb.
ALSO GROWS
ro'eh: shepherd, one who tends a flock
רֹעֶה
This is the form describing Moses’ work, revealing care and attention beneath the English word “kept.”
mir'eh: pasture or grazing place
מִרְעֶה
The same root names the place where the flock feeds, joining the shepherd’s care to the landscape through which he leads it.
THE PATTERN
An encounter with God meets people along ordinary routes through open or wilderness places.
And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God. And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word of the LORD came to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.THE THREAD
A Psalm of David. The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.Exodus uses רֹעֶה (ro’eh) for Moses tending the flock; Psalm 23 uses the same root in רֹעִי (ro’i, “my shepherd”) for the LORD. The shared word opens Moses’ ordinary work onto scripture’s wider language of being guided and cared for.
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