Exodus 4:12-14

4:12 So now go, and I will be with your mouth ¹  and will teach you ²  what you must say.” ³ 

4:13 But Moses said, ⁴  “O ⁵  my Lord, please send anyone else whom you wish to send!” ⁶ 

4:14 Then the Lord became angry with ⁷  Moses, and he said, “What about ⁸  your brother Aaron the Levite? ⁹  I know that he can speak very well. ¹⁰  Moreover, he is coming ¹¹  to meet you, and when he sees you he will be glad in his heart. ¹² 

Jeremiah 1:7

1:7 The Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ But go ¹³  to whomever I send you and say whatever I tell you.

Jonah 3:1-2

The People of Nineveh Respond to Jonah’s Warning

3:1 The Lord said to Jonah ¹⁴  a second time, 3:2 “Go immediately ¹⁵  to Nineveh, that large city, ¹⁶  and proclaim to ¹⁷  it the message that I tell you.”

[4:12]  ¹ sn The promise of divine presence always indicates intervention (for blessing or cursing). Here it means that God would be working through the organs of speech to help Moses speak. See Deut 18:18; Jer 1:9.

[4:12]  ² sn The verb is וְהוֹרֵיתִיךָ (vÿhoretikha), the Hiphil perfect with a vav (ו) consecutive. The form carries the instructional meaning because it follows the imperative “go.” In fact, there is a sequence at work here: “go…and/that I may teach you.” It is from יָרָה (yara), the same root behind תּוֹרָה (torah, “law”). This always referred to teaching either wisdom or revelation. Here Yahweh promises to teach Moses what to say.

[4:12]  ³ tn The form is the imperfect tense. While it could be taken as a future (“what you will say”), an obligatory imperfect captures the significance better (“what you must say” or “what you are to say”). Not even the content of the message will be left up to Moses.

[4:13]  ⁴ tn Heb “And he said”; the referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[4:13]  ⁵ tn The word בִּי (bi) is a particle of entreaty; it seeks permission to speak and is always followed by “Lord” or “my Lord.”

[4:13]  ⁶ tn The text has simply שְׁלַח־נָא בְּיַד־תִּשְׁלָח (shÿlakh-na’ bÿyad tishlakh, “send by the hand you will send”). This is not Moses’ resignation to doing God’s will – it is his final attempt to avoid the call. It carries the force of asking God to send someone else. This is an example of an independent relative clause governed by the genitive: “by the hand of – whomever you will send” (see GKC 488-89 §155.n).

[4:14]  ⁷ tn Heb “and the anger of Yahweh burned against.”

[4:14]  ⁸ tn Heb “Is not” or perhaps “Is [there] not.”

[4:14]  ⁹ sn S. R. Driver (Exodus, 29) suggests that the term “Levite” may refer to a profession rather than ancestry here, because both Moses and Aaron were from the tribe of Levi and there would be little point in noting that ancestry for Aaron. In thinking through the difficult problem of the identity of Levites, he cites McNeile as saying “the Levite” referred to one who had had official training as a priest (cf. Judg 17:7, where a member of the tribe of Judah was a Levite). If it was the duty of the priest to give “torah” – to teach – then some training in the power of language would have been in order.

[4:14]  ¹⁰ tn The construction uses the Piel infinitive absolute and the Piel imperfect to express the idea that he spoke very well: דַבֵּר יְדַבֵּר (dabber yÿdabber).

[4:14]  ¹¹ tn The particle הִנֵּה (hinneh) with the participle points to the imminent future; it means “he is about to come” or “here he is coming.”

[4:14]  ¹² sn It is unlikely that this simply means that as a brother he will be pleased to see Moses, for the narrative has no time for that kind of comment. It is interested in more significant things. The implication is that Aaron will rejoice because of the revelation of God to Moses and the plan to deliver Israel from bondage (see B. Jacob, Exodus, 93).

[1:7]  ¹³ tn Or “For you must go and say.” The Hebrew particle כִּי (ki) is likely adversative here after a negative statement (cf. BDB 474 s.v. כִּי 3.e). The Lord is probably not giving a rationale for the denial of Jeremiah’s objection but redirecting his focus, i.e., “do not say…but go…and say.”

[3:1]  ¹⁴ tn Heb “The word of the Lord [was] to Jonah.” See the note on 1:1.

[3:2]  ¹⁵ sn The commands of 1:2 are repeated here. See the note there on the combination of “arise” and “go.”

[3:2]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “Nineveh, the great city.”

[3:2]  ¹⁷ tn The verb קָרָא (qara’, “proclaim”) is repeated from 1:2 but with a significant variation. The phrase in 1:2 was the adversative קְרָא עָל (qÿra’ ’al, “proclaim against”), which often designates an announcement of threatened judgment (1 Kgs 13:4, 32; Jer 49:29; Lam 1:15). However, here the phrase is the more positive קְרָא אֶל (qÿra’ ’el, “proclaim to”) which often designates an oracle of deliverance or a call to repentance, with an accompanying offer of deliverance that is either explicit or implied (Deut 20:10; Isa 40:2; Zech 1:4; HALOT 1129 s.v. קרא 8; BDB 895 s.v. קָרָא 3.a). This shift from the adversative preposition עַל (“against”) to the more positive preposition אֶל (“to”) might signal a shift in God’s intentions or perhaps it simply makes his original intention more clear. While God threatened to judge Nineveh, he was very willing to relent and forgive when the people repented from their sins (3:8-10). Jonah later complains that he knew that God was likely to relent from the threatened judgment all along (4:2).