5:8 (But there is one who made the constellations Pleiades and Orion;
he can turn the darkness into morning
and daylight 1 into night.
He summons the water of the seas
and pours it out on the earth’s surface.
The Lord is his name!
8:9 In that day,” says the sovereign Lord, “I will make the sun set at noon,
and make the earth dark in the middle of the day. 2
10:22 So Moses extended his hand toward heaven, and there was absolute darkness 3 throughout the land of Egypt for three days. 4
5:30 At that time 8 they will growl over their prey, 9
it will sound like sea waves crashing against rocks. 10
One will look out over the land and see the darkness of disaster,
clouds will turn the light into darkness. 11
13:16 Show the Lord your God the respect that is due him. 12
Do it before he brings the darkness of disaster. 13
Do it before you stumble 14 into distress
like a traveler on the mountains at twilight. 15
Do it before he turns the light of deliverance you hope for
into the darkness and gloom of exile. 16
1 tn Heb “darkens the day into night.”
2 tn Heb “in a day of light.”
3 tn The construction is a variation of the superlative genitive: a substantive in the construct state is connected to a noun with the same meaning (see GKC 431 §133.i).
4 sn S. R. Driver says, “The darkness was no doubt occasioned really by a sand-storm, produced by the hot electrical wind…which blows in intermittently…” (Exodus, 82, 83). This is another application of the antisupernatural approach to these texts. The text, however, is probably describing something that was not a seasonal wind, or Pharaoh would not have been intimidated. If it coincided with that season, then what is described here is so different and so powerful that the Egyptians would have known the difference easily. Pharaoh here would have had to have been impressed that this was something very abnormal, and that his god was powerless. Besides, there was light in all the dwellings of the Israelites.
5 tn The two nouns “cloud” and “darkness” form a nominal hendiadys: “and it was the cloud and the darkness” means “and it was the dark cloud.” Perhaps this is what the Egyptians saw, preventing them from observing Moses and the Israelites.
6 tn Heb “this to this”; for the use of the pronouns in this reciprocal sense of “the one to the other,” see GKC 448 §139.e, n. 3.
7 tc The LXX reads very differently at the end of this verse: “and there was darkness and blackness and the night passed.” B. S. Childs (Exodus [OTL], 218) summarizes three proposals: (1) One takes the MT as it stands and explains it along the lines of the Targum and Jewish exegesis, that there was one cloud that was dark to one group and light to the other. (2) Another tries to reconstruct a verb from the noun “darkness” or make some use of the Greek verb. (3) A third seeks a different meaning for the verb “lit,” “gave light” by comparative philology, but no consensus has been reached. Given that there is no easy solution apart from reconstructing the text, and given that the MT can be interpreted as it is, the present translation follows the MT.
8 tn Or “in that day” (KJV).
9 tn Heb “over it”; the referent (the prey) has been specified in the translation for clarity.
10 tn Heb “like the growling of the sea.”
11 tn Heb “and one will gaze toward the land, and look, darkness of distress, and light will grow dark by its [the land’s?] clouds.”
12 tn Heb “Give glory/respect to the
13 tn The words “of disaster” are not in the text. They are supplied in the translation to explain the significance of the metaphor to readers who may not be acquainted with the metaphorical use of light and darkness for salvation and joy and distress and sorrow respectively.
14 tn Heb “your feet stumble.”
15 tn Heb “you stumble on the mountains at twilight.” The added words are again supplied in the translation to help explain the metaphor to the uninitiated reader.
16 tn Heb “and while you hope for light he will turn it into deep darkness and make [it] into gloom.” The meaning of the metaphor is again explained through the addition of the “of” phrases for readers who are unacquainted with the metaphorical use of these terms.