11:34 When Jephthah came home to Mizpah, there was his daughter hurrying out 1 to meet him, dancing to the rhythm of tambourines. 2 She was his only child; except for her he had no son or daughter.
15:20 Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a hand-drum in her hand, and all the women went out after her with hand-drums and with dances. 3
15:1 4 Then Moses and the Israelites sang 5 this song to the Lord. They said, 6
“I will sing 7 to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, 8
the horse and its rider 9 he has thrown into the sea.
18:2 Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took Moses’ wife Zipporah after he had sent her back,
6:14 11 These are the heads of their fathers’ households: 12
The sons 13 of Reuben, the firstborn son of Israel, were Hanoch and Pallu, Hezron and Carmi. These were the clans 14 of Reuben.
6:21 The sons of Izhar were Korah, Nepheg, and Zikri.
149:3 Let them praise his name with dancing!
Let them sing praises to him to the accompaniment of the tambourine and harp!
150:4 Praise him with the tambourine and with dancing!
Praise him with stringed instruments and the flute!
3:4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
31:13 The Lord says, 15 “At that time young women will dance and be glad.
Young men and old men will rejoice. 16
I will turn their grief into gladness.
I will give them comfort and joy in place of their sorrow.
1 tn Heb “Look! His daughter was coming out.”
2 tn Heb “with tambourines and dancing.”
3 sn See J. N. Easton, “Dancing in the Old Testament,” ExpTim 86 (1975): 136-40.
4 sn This chapter is a song of praise sung by Moses and the people right after the deliverance from the Sea. The song itself is vv. 1b-18; it falls into three sections – praise to God (1b-3), the cause for the praise (4-13), and the conclusion (14-18). The point of the first section is that God’s saving acts inspire praise from his people; the second is that God’s powerful acts deliver his people from the forces of evil; and the third section is that God’s demonstrations of his sovereignty inspire confidence in him by his people. So the Victory Song is very much like the other declarative praise psalms – the resolve to praise, the power of God, the victory over the enemies, the incomparability of God in his redemption, and the fear of the people. See also C. Cohen, “Studies in Early Israelite Poetry I: An Unrecognized Case of Three Line Staircase Parallelism in the Song of the Sea,” JANESCU 7 (1975): 13-17; D. N. Freedman, “Strophe and Meter in Exodus 15,” A Light unto My Path, 163-203; E. Levine, “Neofiti I: A Study of Exodus 15,” Bib 54 (1973): 301-30; T. C. Butler, “‘The Song of the Sea’: Exodus 15:1-18: A Study in the Exegesis of Hebrew Poetry,” DissAb 32 (1971): 2782-A.
5 tn The verb is יָשִׁיר (yashir), a normal imperfect tense form. But after the adverb “then” this form is to be treated as a preterite (see GKC 314-15 §107.c).
6 tn Heb “and they said, saying.” This has been simplified in the translation for stylistic reasons.
7 tn The form is the singular cohortative, expressing the resolution of Moses to sing the song of praise (“I will” being stronger than “I shall”).
8 tn This causal clause gives the reason for and summary of the praise. The Hebrew expression has כִּי־גָּאֹה גָּאָה (ki ga’oh ga’ah). The basic idea of the verb is “rise up loftily” or “proudly.” But derivatives of the root carry the nuance of majesty or pride (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 132). So the idea of the perfect tense with its infinitive absolute may mean “he is highly exalted” or “he has done majestically” or “he is gloriously glorious.”
9 sn The common understanding is that Egypt did not have people riding horses at this time, and so the phrase the horse and its rider is either viewed as an anachronism or is interpreted to mean charioteers. The word “to ride” can mean on a horse or in a chariot. Some have suggested changing “rider” to “chariot” (re-vocalization) to read “the horse and its chariot.”
10 sn This verse may seem out of place, since the report has already been given that they came to the desert. It begins to provide details of the event that the previous verse summarizes. The announcement in verse 6 may have come in advance by means of a messenger or at the time of arrival, either of which would fit with the attention to formal greetings in verse 7. This would suit a meeting between two important men; the status of Moses has changed. The LXX solves the problem by taking the pronoun “I” as the particle “behold” and reads it this way: “one said to Moses, ‘Behold, your father-in-law has come….’”
11 sn This list of names shows that Moses and Aaron are in the line of Levi that came to the priesthood. It helps to identify them and authenticate them as spokesmen for God within the larger history of Israel. As N. M. Sarna observes, “Because a genealogy inherently symbolizes vigor and continuity, its presence here also injects a reassuring note into the otherwise despondent mood” (Exodus [JPSTC], 33).
12 tn The expression is literally “the house of their fathers.” This expression means that the household or family descended from a single ancestor. It usually indicates a subdivision of a tribe, that is, a clan, or the subdivision of a clan, that is, a family. Here it refers to a clan (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 46).
13 tn Or “descendants.”
14 tn Or “families,” and so throughout the genealogy.
15 tn Heb “Oracle of the
16 tc The translation follows the reading of the LXX (Greek version). The Hebrew reads “will dance and be glad, young men and old men together.” The Greek version presupposes a Qal imperfect of a rare verb (יַחְדּוּ [yakhdu] from the verb חָדָה [khadah]; see BDB 292 s.v. II חָדָה Qal) as opposed to the Hebrew text which reads a common adverb יַחְדָּו (yakhdav). The consonantal text is the same but the vocalization is different. There are no other examples of the syntax of the adverb used this way (i.e., of a compound subject added to a third subject) and the vocalization of the Hebrew text can be explained on the basis of a scribe misvocalizing the text based on his greater familiarity with the adverb.
17 tn Here δέ (de) has not been translated.
18 sn Councils in this context refers to local judicial bodies attached to the Jewish synagogue. This group would be responsible for meting out justice and discipline within the Jewish community.
19 tn BDAG 620 s.v. μαστιγόω 1.a states, “of flogging as a punishment decreed by the synagogue (Dt 25:2f; s. the Mishna Tractate Sanhedrin-Makkoth, edited w. notes by SKrauss ’33) w. acc. of pers. Mt 10:17; 23:34.”
20 sn See the note on synagogues in 4:23.
21 sn The Son of Man’s suffering and rejection by this generation is another “it is necessary” type of event in God’s plan (Luke 4:43; 24:7, 26, 44) and the fifth passion prediction in Luke’s account (9:22, 44; 12:50; 13:32-33; for the last, see 18:32-33).