Exodus 10:16

10:16 ¹ Then Pharaoh quickly ²  summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “I have sinned ³  against the Lord your God and against you!

Exodus 23:25

23:25 You must serve ⁴  the Lord your God, and he ⁵  will bless your bread and your water, ⁶  and I will remove sickness from your midst.

Exodus 6:7

6:7 I will take you to myself for a people, and I will be your God. ⁷  Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from your enslavement to ⁸  the Egyptians.

Exodus 8:28

8:28 Pharaoh said, “I will release you ⁹  so that you may sacrifice ¹⁰  to the Lord your God in the desert. Only you must not go very far. ¹¹  Do ¹²  pray for me.”

Exodus 10:8

10:8 So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh, and he said to them, “Go, serve the Lord your God. Exactly who is going with you?” ¹³ 

Exodus 10:17

10:17 So now, forgive my sin this time only, and pray to the Lord your God that he would only ¹⁴  take this death ¹⁵  away from me.”

Exodus 16:12

16:12 “I have heard the murmurings of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘During the evening ¹⁶  you will eat meat, ¹⁷  and in the morning you will be satisfied ¹⁸  with bread, so that you may know ¹⁹  that I am the Lord your God.’” ²⁰ 

[10:16]  ¹ sn The third part of the passage now begins, the confrontation that resulted from the onslaught of the plague. Pharaoh goes a step further here – he confesses he has sinned and adds a request for forgiveness. But his acknowledgment does not go far enough, for this is not genuine confession. Since his heart was not yet submissive, his confession was vain.

[10:16]  ² tn The Piel preterite וַיְמַהֵר (vaymaher) could be translated “and he hastened,” but here it is joined with the following infinitive construct to form the hendiadys. “He hurried to summon” means “He summoned quickly.”

[10:16]  ³ sn The severity of the plague prompted Pharaoh to confess his sin against Yahweh and them, now in much stronger terms than before. He also wants forgiveness – but in all probability what he wants is relief from the consequences of his sin. He pretended to convey to Moses that this was it, that he was through sinning, so he asked for forgiveness “only this time.”

[23:25]  ⁴ tn The perfect tense, masculine plural, with vav (ו) consecutive is in sequence with the preceding: do not bow down to them, but serve Yahweh. It is then the equivalent of an imperfect of instruction or injunction.

[23:25]  ⁵ tn The LXX reads “and I will bless” to make the verb conform with the speaker, Yahweh.

[23:25]  ⁶ sn On this unusual clause B. Jacob says that it is the reversal of the curse in Genesis, because the “bread and water” represent the field work and ground suitability for abundant blessing of provisions (Exodus, 734).

[6:7]  ⁷ sn These covenant promises are being reiterated here because they are about to be fulfilled. They are addressed to the nation, not individuals, as the plural suffixes show. Yahweh was their God already, because they had been praying to him and he is acting on their behalf. When they enter into covenant with God at Sinai, then he will be the God of Israel in a new way (19:4-6; cf. Gen 17:7-8; 28:20-22; Lev 26:11-12; Jer 24:7; Ezek 11:17-20).

[6:7]  ⁸ tn Heb “from under the burdens of” (so KJV, NASB); NIV “from under the yoke of.”

[8:28]  ¹⁰ sn By changing from “the people” to “you” (plural) the speech of Pharaoh was becoming more personal.

[8:28]  ¹¹ tn This form, a perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive, is equivalent to the imperfect tense that precedes it. However, it must be subordinate to the preceding verb to express the purpose. He is not saying “I will release…and you will sacrifice,” but rather “I will release…that you may sacrifice” or even “to sacrifice.”

[8:28]  ¹² tn The construction is very emphatic. First, it uses a verbal hendiadys with a Hiphil imperfect and the Qal infinitive construct: לֹא־תַרְחִיקוּ לָלֶכֶת (lo’ tarkhiqu lalekhet, “you will not make far to go”), meaning “you will not go far.” But this prohibition is then emphasized with the additional infinitive absolute הַרְחֵק (harkheq) – “you will in no wise go too far.” The point is very strong to safeguard the concession.

[8:28]  ¹³ tn “Do” has been supplied here to convey that this somewhat unexpected command is tacked onto Pharaoh’s instructions as his ultimate concern, which Moses seems to understand as such, since he speaks about it immediately (v. 29).

[10:8]  ¹³ tn The question is literally “who and who are the ones going?” (מִי וָמִי הַהֹלְכִים, mi vami haholÿkhim). Pharaoh’s answer to Moses includes this rude question, which was intended to say that Pharaoh would control who went. The participle in this clause, then, refers to the future journey.

[10:17]  ¹⁶ sn Pharaoh’s double emphasis on “only” uses two different words and was meant to deceive. He was trying to give Moses the impression that he had finally come to his senses, and that he would let the people go. But he had no intention of letting them out.

[10:17]  ¹⁷ sn “Death” is a metonymy that names the effect for the cause. If the locusts are left in the land it will be death to everything that grows.

[16:12]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “during the evenings”; see Exod 12:6.

[16:12]  ²⁰ sn One of the major interpretive difficulties is the comparison between Exod 16 and Num 11. In Numbers we find that the giving of the manna was about 24 months after the Exod 16 time (assuming there was a distinct time for this chapter), that it was after the erection of the tabernacle, that Taberah (the Burning) preceded it (not in Exod 16), that the people were tired of the manna (not that there was no bread to eat) and so God would send the quail, and that there was a severe tragedy over it. In Exod 16 both the manna and the quail are given on the same day, with no mention of quail on the following days. Contemporary scholarship generally assigns the accounts to two different sources because complete reconciliation seems impossible. Even if we argue that Exodus has a thematic arrangement and “telescopes” some things to make a point, there will still be difficulties in harmonization. Two considerations must be kept in mind: 1) First, they could be separate events entirely. If this is true, then they should be treated separately as valid accounts of things that appeared or occurred during the period of the wanderings. Similar things need not be the same thing. 2) Secondly, strict chronological order is not always maintained in the Bible narratives, especially if it is a didactic section. Perhaps Exod 16 describes the initiation of the giving of manna as God’s provision of bread, and therefore placed in the prologue of the covenant, and Num 11 is an account of a mood which developed over a period of time in response to the manna. Num 11 would then be looking back from a different perspective.

[16:12]  ²¹ tn The verb means “to be sated, satisfied”; in this context it indicates that they would have sufficient bread to eat – they would be full.

[16:12]  ²² tn The form is a Qal perfect with the vav (ו) consecutive; it is in sequence with the imperfect tenses before it, and so this is equal to an imperfect nuance. But, from the meanings of the words, it is clear that this will be the outcome of their eating the food, a divinely intended outcome.

[16:12]  ²³ sn This verse supports the view taken in chap. 6 concerning the verb “to know.” Surely the Israelites by now knew that Yahweh was their God. Yes, they did. But they had not experienced what that meant; they had not received the fulfillment of the promises.