Discovery BoxExodus 1:18 
Context1:18 Then the king of Egypt summoned 1 the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this and let the boys live?” 2
Exodus 12:35
Context12:35 Now the Israelites had done 3 as Moses told them – they had requested from the Egyptians 4 silver and gold items and clothing.
Exodus 18:9
Context18:9 Jethro rejoiced 5 because of all the good that the Lord had done for Israel, whom he had delivered from the hand of Egypt.
1 tn The verb קָרָא (qara’) followed by the lamed (ל) preposition has here the nuance of “summon.” The same construction is used later when Pharaoh summons Moses.
2 tn The second verb in Pharaoh’s speech is a preterite with a vav (ו) consecutive. It may indicate a simple sequence: “Why have you done…and (so that you) let live?” It could also indicate that this is a second question, “Why have you done …[why] have you let live?”
3 tn The verbs “had done” and then “had asked” were accomplished prior to the present narrative (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 99). The verse begins with disjunctive word order to introduce the reminder of earlier background information.
4 tn Heb “from Egypt.” Here the Hebrew text uses the name of the country to represent the inhabitants (a figure known as metonymy).
5 tn The word חָדָה (khada) is rare, occurring only in Job 3:6 and Ps 21:6, although it is common in Aramaic. The LXX translated it “he shuddered.” U. Cassuto suggests that that rendering was based on the midrashic interpretation in b. Sanhedrin 94b, “he felt cuts in his body” – a wordplay on the verb (Exodus, 215-16).
