34:19 “Every firstborn of the womb 1 belongs to me, even every firstborn 2 of your cattle that is a male, 3 whether ox or sheep. 34:20 Now the firstling 4 of a donkey you may redeem with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, then break its neck. 5 You must redeem all the firstborn of your sons.
“No one will appear before me empty-handed. 6
34:21 “On six days 7 you may labor, but on the seventh day you must rest; 8 even at the time of plowing and of harvest 9 you are to rest. 10
34:22 “You must observe 11 the Feast of Weeks – the firstfruits of the harvest of wheat – and the Feast of Ingathering at the end 12 of the year. 34:23 At three times 13 in the year all your men 14 must appear before the Lord God, 15 the God of Israel. 34:24 For I will drive out 16 the nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one will covet 17 your land when you go up 18 to appear before the Lord your God three times 19 in the year.
34:25 “You must not offer the blood of my sacrifice with yeast; the sacrifice from the feast of Passover must not remain until the following morning. 20
34:26 “The first of the firstfruits of your soil you must bring to the house of the Lord your God.
You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.” 21
34:27 The Lord said to Moses, “Write down 22 these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 34:28 So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; 23 he did not eat bread, and he did not drink water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. 24
1 tn Heb “everything that opens the womb.”
2 tn Here too: everything that “opens [the womb].”
3 tn The verb basically means “that drops a male.” The verb is feminine, referring to the cattle.
4 tn Heb “and the one that opens [the womb of] the donkey.”
5 sn See G. Brin, “The Firstling of Unclean Animals,” JQR 68 (1971): 1-15.
6 tn The form is the adverb “empty.”
7 tn This is an adverbial accusative of time.
8 tn Or “cease” (i.e., from the labors).
9 sn See M. Dahood, “Vocative lamed in Exodus 2,4 and Merismus in 34,21,” Bib 62 (1981): 413-15.
10 tn The imperfect tense expresses injunction or instruction.
10 tn The imperfect tense means “you will do”; it is followed by the preposition with a suffix to express the ethical dative to stress the subject.
11 tn The expression is “the turn of the year,” which is parallel to “the going out of the year,” and means the end of the agricultural season.
13 tn “Three times” is an adverbial accusative.
14 tn Heb “all your males.”
15 tn Here the divine name reads in Hebrew הָאָדֹן יְהוָה (ha’adon yÿhvah), which if rendered according to the traditional scheme of “
16 tn The verb is a Hiphil imperfect of יָרַשׁ (yarash), which means “to possess.” In the causative stem it can mean “dispossess” or “drive out.”
17 sn The verb “covet” means more than desire; it means that some action will be taken to try to acquire the land that is being coveted. It is one thing to envy someone for their land; it is another to be consumed by the desire that stops at nothing to get it (it, not something like it).
18 tn The construction uses the infinitive construct with a preposition and a suffixed subject to form the temporal clause.
19 tn The expression “three times” is an adverbial accusative of time.
19 sn See M. Haran, “The Passover Sacrifice,” Studies in the Religion of Ancient Israel (VTSup), 86-116.
22 sn See the note on this same command in 23:19.
25 tn Once again the preposition with the suffix follows the imperative, adding some emphasis to the subject of the verb.
28 tn These too are adverbial in relation to the main clause, telling how long Moses was with Yahweh on the mountain.
29 tn Heb “the ten words,” though “commandments” is traditional.