2:16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and began to draw 1 water 2 and fill 3 the troughs in order to water their father’s flock.
6:25 Now Eleazar son of Aaron married one of the daughters of Putiel and she bore him Phinehas.
These are the heads of the fathers’ households 9 of Levi according to their clans.
1 tn The preterites describing their actions must be taken in an ingressive sense, since they did not actually complete the job. Shepherds drove them away, and Moses watered the flocks.
2 tn The object “water” is not in the Hebrew text, but is implied.
3 tn This also has the ingressive sense, “began to fill,” but for stylistic reasons is translated simply “fill” here.
4 tn Heb “And he said.”
5 tn The conjunction vav (ו) joins Reuel’s question to what the daughters said as logically following with the idea, “If he has done all that you say, why is he not here for me to meet?” (see GKC 485 §154.b).
6 tn This uses the demonstrative pronoun as an enclitic, for emphasis (R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 24, §118). The question reads more literally, “Why [is] this [that] you left him?”
7 tn The imperfect tense coming after the imperative indicates purpose.
8 tn Heb “bread,” i.e., “food.”
9 tn Heb “heads of the fathers” is taken as an abbreviation for the description of “households” in v. 14.
10 tn Heb “we have a pilgrim feast (חַג, khag) to Yahweh.”
11 sn The slave would not have the right or the means to acquire a wife. Thus, the idea of the master’s “giving” him a wife is clear – the master would have to pay the bride price and make the provision. In this case, the wife and the children are actually the possession of the master unless the slave were to pay the bride price – but he is a slave because he got into debt. The law assumes that the master was better able to provide for this woman than the freed slave and that it was most important to keep the children with the mother.