Exodus 20:23

20:23 You must not make gods of silver alongside me, ¹  nor make gods of gold for yourselves. ² 

Exodus 24:2

24:2 Moses alone may come ³  near the Lord, but the others ⁴  must not come near, ⁵  nor may the people go up with him.”

Exodus 30:9

30:9 You must not offer strange incense on it, nor burnt offering, nor meal offering, and you must not pour out a drink offering on it.

Exodus 33:20

33:20 But he added, “You cannot see my face, for no one can ⁶  see me and live.” ⁷ 

¹ tn The direct object of the verb must be “gods of silver.” The prepositional phrase modifies the whole verse to say that these gods would then be alongside the one true God.

² tn Heb “neither will you make for you gods of gold.”

³ tn The verb is a perfect tense with a vav (ו) consecutive; it and the preceding perfect tense follow the imperative, and so have either a force of instruction, or, as taken here, are the equivalent of an imperfect tense (of permission).

⁴ tn Heb “they.”

⁵ tn Now the imperfect tense negated is used; here the prohibition would fit (“they will not come near”), or the obligatory (“they must not”) in which the subjects are obliged to act – or not act in this case.

⁵ tn In view of the use of the verb “can, be able to” in the first clause, this imperfect tense is given a potential nuance.

⁶ tn Gesenius notes that sometimes a negative statement takes the place of a conditional clause; here it is equal to “if a man sees me he does not live” (GKC 498 §159.gg). The other passages that teach this are Gen 32:30; Deut 4:33, 5:24, 26; Judg 6:22, 13:22, and Isa 6:5.