47:23 Joseph said to the people, “Since I have bought you and your land today for Pharaoh, here is seed for you. Cultivate 1 the land.
34:21 “On six days 2 you may labor, but on the seventh day you must rest; 3 even at the time of plowing and of harvest 4 you are to rest. 5
21:1 If a homicide victim 8 should be found lying in a field in the land the Lord your God is giving you, 9 and no one knows who killed 10 him,
30:24 The oxen and donkeys used in plowing 11
will eat seasoned feed winnowed with a shovel and pitchfork. 12
1 tn The perfect verbal form with the vav consecutive is equivalent to a command here.
2 tn This is an adverbial accusative of time.
3 tn Or “cease” (i.e., from the labors).
4 sn See M. Dahood, “Vocative lamed in Exodus 2,4 and Merismus in 34,21,” Bib 62 (1981): 413-15.
5 tn The imperfect tense expresses injunction or instruction.
6 tn The combination “a wadi with flowing water” is necessary because a wadi (נַחַל, nakhal) was ordinarily a dry stream or riverbed. For this ritual, however, a perennial stream must be chosen so that there would be fresh, rushing water.
7 sn The unworked heifer, fresh stream, and uncultivated valley speak of ritual purity – of freedom from human contamination.
8 tn Heb “slain [one].” The term חָלָל (khalal) suggests something other than a natural death (cf. Num 19:16; 23:24; Jer 51:52; Ezek 26:15; 30:24; 31:17-18).
9 tn The Hebrew text includes “to possess it,” but this has not been included in the translation for stylistic reasons.
10 tn Heb “struck,” but in context a fatal blow is meant; cf. NLT “who committed the murder.”
11 tn Heb “the oxen and the donkeys that work the ground.”
12 sn Crops will be so abundant that even the work animals will eat well.