Exodus 10:24

10:24 Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and said, “Go, serve the Lord – only your flocks and herds will be detained. Even your families ¹  may go with you.”

Exodus 23:23

23:23 For my angel will go before you and bring you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, and I will destroy them completely. ² 

Exodus 32:34

32:34 So now go, lead the people to the place I have spoken to you about. See, ³  my angel will go before you. But on the day that I punish, I will indeed punish them for their sin.” ⁴ 

Exodus 10:26

10:26 Our livestock must ⁵  also go with us! Not a hoof is to be left behind! For we must take ⁶  these animals ⁷  to serve the Lord our God. Until we arrive there, we do not know what we must use to serve the Lord.” ⁸ 

Exodus 34:9

34:9 and said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, let my Lord ⁹  go among us, for we ¹⁰  are a stiff-necked people; pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

¹ tn Or “dependents.” The term is often translated “your little ones,” but as mentioned before (10:10), this expression in these passages takes in women and children and other dependents. Pharaoh will now let all the people go, but he intends to detain the cattle to secure their return.

² tn Heb “will cut them off” (so KJV, ASV).

³ tn Heb “behold, look.” Moses should take this fact into consideration.

⁴ sn The Law said that God would not clear the guilty. But here the punishment is postponed to some future date when he would revisit this matter. Others have taken the line to mean that whenever a reckoning was considered necessary, then this sin would be included (see B. Jacob, Exodus, 957). The repetition of the verb traditionally rendered “visit” in both clauses puts emphasis on the certainty – so “indeed.”

⁴ tn This is the obligatory imperfect nuance. They were obliged to take the animals if they were going to sacrifice, but more than that, since they were not coming back, they had to take everything.

⁵ tn The same modal nuance applies to this verb.

⁶ tn Heb “from it,” referring collectively to the livestock.

⁷ sn Moses gives an angry but firm reply to Pharaoh’s attempt to control Israel; he makes it clear that he has no intention of leaving any pledge with Pharaoh. When they leave, they will take everything that belongs to them.

⁵ tn The Hebrew term translated “Lord” two times here is אֲדֹנָי (’adonay).

⁶ tn Heb “it is.” Hebrew uses the third person masculine singular pronoun here in agreement with the noun “people.”