Exodus 10:12

10:12 The Lord said to Moses, “Extend your hand over the land of Egypt for ¹  the locusts, that they may come up over the land of Egypt and eat everything that grows ²  in the ground, everything that the hail has left.”

Exodus 10:14

10:14 The locusts went up over all the land of Egypt and settled down in all the territory ³  of Egypt. It was very severe; ⁴  there had been no locusts like them before, nor will there be such ever again. ⁵ 

Exodus 34:4

34:4 So Moses ⁶  cut out two tablets of stone like the first; ⁷  early in the morning he went up ⁸  to Mount Sinai, just as the Lord had commanded him, and he took in his hand the two tablets of stone.

Exodus 40:29

40:29 He also put the altar for the burnt offering by the entrance to the tabernacle, the tent of meeting, and offered on it the burnt offering and the meal offering, just as the Lord had commanded Moses.

¹ tn The preposition בְּ (bet) is unexpected here. BDB 91 s.v. (the note at the end of the entry) says that in this case it can only be read as “with the locusts,” meaning that the locusts were thought to be implicit in Moses’ lifting up of his hand. However, BDB prefers to change the preposition to לְ (lamed).

² tn The noun עֵשֶּׂב (’esev) normally would indicate cultivated grains, but in this context seems to indicate plants in general.

³ tn Heb “border.”

⁴ tn This is an interpretive translation. The clause simply has כָּבֵד מְאֹד (kaved mÿ’od), the stative verb with the adverb – “it was very heavy.” The description prepares for the following statement about the uniqueness of this locust infestation.

⁵ tn Heb “after them.”

⁵ tn Heb “he”; the referent has been specified here and the name “Moses,” which occurs later in this verse, has been replaced with the pronoun (“he”), both for stylistic reasons.

⁶ sn Deuteronomy says that Moses was also to make an ark of acacia wood before the tablets, apparently to put the tablets in until the sanctuary was built. But this ark may not have been the ark built later; or, it might be the wood box, but Bezalel still had to do all the golden work with it.

⁷ tn The line reads “and Moses got up early in the morning and went up.” These verbs likely form a verbal hendiadys, the first one with its prepositional phrase serving in an adverbial sense.