Exodus 12:32-33

12:32 Also, take your flocks and your herds, just as you have requested, and leave. But bless me also.”

12:33 The Egyptians were urging the people on, in order to send them out of the land quickly, for they were saying, “We are all dead!”

Exodus 12:39

12:39 They baked cakes of bread without yeast using the dough they had brought from Egypt, for it was made without yeast – because they were thrust out of Egypt and were not able to delay, they could not prepare food for themselves either.


tn The form is the Piel perfect with a vav (ו) consecutive (וּבֵרַכְתֶּם, uverakhtem); coming in the sequence of imperatives this perfect tense would be volitional – probably a request rather than a command.

tn The verb used here (חָזַק, khazaq) is the same verb used for Pharaoh’s heart being hardened. It conveys the idea of their being resolved or insistent in this – they were not going to change.

tn The phrase uses two construct infinitives in a hendiadys, the first infinitive becoming the modifier.

sn For the use of this word in developing the motif, see Exod 2:17, 22; 6:1; and 11:1.

tn Heb “and also.”

tn The verb is עָשׂוּ (’asu, “they made”); here, with a potential nuance, it is rendered “they could [not] prepare.”