Exodus 12:42

12:42 It was a night of vigil for the Lord to bring them out from the land of Egypt, ¹  and so ²  on this night all Israel is to keep the vigil ³  to the Lord for generations to come.

Exodus 13:21

13:21 Now the Lord was going before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them in the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, ⁴  so that they could ⁵  travel day or night. ⁶ 

Exodus 11:4

11:4 Moses said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘About midnight ⁷  I will go throughout Egypt, ⁸ 

Exodus 12:8

12:8 They will eat the meat the same night; ⁹  they will eat it roasted over the fire with bread made without yeast ¹⁰  and with bitter herbs.

Exodus 13:22

13:22 He did not remove the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night from before the people. ¹¹ 

Exodus 14:20

14:20 It came between the Egyptian camp and the Israelite camp; it was a dark cloud ¹²  and it lit up the night so that one camp did not come near the other ¹³  the whole night. ¹⁴ 

Exodus 24:18

24:18 Moses went into the cloud when he went up ¹⁵  the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights. ¹⁶ 

Exodus 40:38

40:38 For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, but fire would be ¹⁷  on it at night, in plain view ¹⁸  of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys.

Exodus 10:13

10:13 So Moses extended his staff over the land of Egypt, and then the Lord ¹⁹  brought ²⁰  an east wind on the land all that day and all night. ²¹  The morning came, ²²  and the east wind had brought up ²³  the locusts!

Exodus 12:12

12:12 I will pass through ²⁴  the land of Egypt in the same ²⁵  night, and I will attack ²⁶  all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both of humans and of animals, ²⁷  and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment. ²⁸  I am the Lord.

Exodus 12:29-31

The Deliverance from Egypt

12:29 ²⁹ It happened ³⁰  at midnight – the Lord attacked all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the prison, and all the firstborn of the cattle. 12:30 Pharaoh got up ³¹  in the night, ³²  along with all his servants and all Egypt, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no house ³³  in which there was not someone dead. 12:31 Pharaoh ³⁴  summoned Moses and Aaron in the night and said, “Get up, get out ³⁵  from among my people, both you and the Israelites! Go, serve the Lord as you have requested! ³⁶ 

Exodus 14:21

14:21 Moses stretched out his hand toward the sea, and the Lord drove the sea apart ³⁷  by a strong east wind all that night, and he made the sea into dry land, and the water was divided.

Exodus 34:28

34:28 So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; ³⁸  he did not eat bread, and he did not drink water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. ³⁹ 

[12:42]  ¹ tn There is some ambiguity in לֵיל שִׁמֻּרִים הוּא לַיהוָה (lel shimmurim hu’ la’adonay [layhveh]). It is likely that this first clause means that Yahweh was on watch for Israel to bring them out, as the next clause says. He was protecting his people (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 102). Then, the night of vigil will be transferred to Israel, who now must keep it “to” him.

[12:42]  ² tn “and so” has been supplied.

[12:42]  ³ tn Heb “this night is for Yahweh a vigil for all Israelites for their generations.”

[13:21]  ⁴ sn God chose to guide the people with a pillar of cloud in the day and one of fire at night, or, as a pillar of cloud and fire, since they represented his presence. God had already appeared to Moses in the fire of the bush, and so here again is revelation with fire. Whatever the exact nature of these things, they formed direct, visible revelations from God, who was guiding the people in a clear and unambiguous way. Both clouds and fire would again and again represent the presence of God in his power and majesty, guiding and protecting his people, by judging their enemies.

[13:21]  ⁵ tn The infinitive construct here indicates the result of these manifestations – “so that they went” or “could go.”

[13:21]  ⁶ tn These are adverbial accusatives of time.

[11:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “about the middle of the night.”

[11:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “I will go out in the midst of Egypt.”

[12:8]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “this night.”

[12:8]  ¹¹ sn Bread made without yeast could be baked quickly, not requiring time for the use of a leavening ingredient to make the dough rise. In Deut 16:3 the unleavened cakes are called “the bread of affliction,” which alludes to the alarm and haste of the Israelites. In later Judaism and in the writings of Paul, leaven came to be a symbol of evil or corruption, and so “unleavened bread” – bread made without yeast – was interpreted to be a picture of purity or freedom from corruption or defilement (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 90-91).

[13:22]  ¹³ sn See T. W. Mann, “The Pillar of Cloud in the Reed Sea Narrative,” JBL 90 (1971): 15-30.

[14:20]  ¹⁶ tn The two nouns “cloud” and “darkness” form a nominal hendiadys: “and it was the cloud and the darkness” means “and it was the dark cloud.” Perhaps this is what the Egyptians saw, preventing them from observing Moses and the Israelites.

[14:20]  ¹⁷ tn Heb “this to this”; for the use of the pronouns in this reciprocal sense of “the one to the other,” see GKC 448 §139.e, n. 3.

[14:20]  ¹⁸ tc The LXX reads very differently at the end of this verse: “and there was darkness and blackness and the night passed.” B. S. Childs (Exodus [OTL], 218) summarizes three proposals: (1) One takes the MT as it stands and explains it along the lines of the Targum and Jewish exegesis, that there was one cloud that was dark to one group and light to the other. (2) Another tries to reconstruct a verb from the noun “darkness” or make some use of the Greek verb. (3) A third seeks a different meaning for the verb “lit,” “gave light” by comparative philology, but no consensus has been reached. Given that there is no easy solution apart from reconstructing the text, and given that the MT can be interpreted as it is, the present translation follows the MT.

[24:18]  ¹⁹ tn The verb is a preterite with vav (ו) consecutive; here, the second clause, is subordinated to the first preterite, because it seems that the entering into the cloud is the dominant point in this section of the chapter.

[24:18]  ²⁰ sn B. Jacob (Exodus, 750) offers this description of some of the mystery involved in Moses’ ascending into the cloud: Moses ascended into the presence of God, but remained on earth. He did not rise to heaven – the ground remained firmly under his feet. But he clearly was brought into God’s presence; he was like a heavenly servant before God’s throne, like the angels, and he consumed neither bread nor water. The purpose of his being there was to become familiar with all God’s demands and purposes. He would receive the tablets of stone and all the instructions for the tabernacle that was to be built (beginning in chap. 25). He would not descend until the sin of the golden calf.

[40:38]  ²² tn Here is another imperfect tense of the customary nuance.

[40:38]  ²³ tn Heb “to the eyes of all”; KJV, ASV, NASB “in the sight of all”; NRSV “before the eyes of all.”

[10:13]  ²⁵ tn The clause begins וַיהוָה (va’adonay [vayhvah], “Now Yahweh….”). In contrast to a normal sequence, this beginning focuses attention on Yahweh as the subject of the verb.

[10:13]  ²⁶ tn The verb נָהַג (nahag) means “drive, conduct.” It is elsewhere used for driving sheep, leading armies, or leading in processions.

[10:13]  ²⁷ tn Heb “and all the night.”

[10:13]  ²⁸ tn The text does not here use ordinary circumstantial clause constructions; rather, Heb “the morning was, and the east wind carried the locusts.” It clearly means “when it was morning,” but the style chosen gives a more abrupt beginning to the plague, as if the reader is in the experience – and at morning, the locusts are there!

[10:13]  ²⁹ tn The verb here is a past perfect, indicting that the locusts had arrived before the day came.

[12:12]  ²⁸ tn The verb וְעָבַרְתִּי (vÿ’avarti) is a Qal perfect with vav (ו) consecutive, announcing the future action of God in bringing judgment on the land. The word means “pass over, across, through.” This verb provides a contextual motive for the name “Passover.”

[12:12]  ²⁹ tn Heb “this night.”

[12:12]  ³⁰ tn The verb נָכָה (nakhah) means “to strike, smite, attack”; it does not always mean “to kill,” but that is obviously its outcome in this context. This is also its use in 2:12, describing how Moses killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand.

[12:12]  ³¹ tn Heb “from man and to beast.”

[12:12]  ³² tn The phrase אֶעֱשֶׂה שְׁפָטִים (’e’eseh shÿfatim) is “I will do judgments.” The statement clearly includes what had begun in Exod 6:1. But the statement that God would judge the gods of Egypt is appropriately introduced here (see also Num 33:4) because with the judgment on Pharaoh and the deliverance from bondage, Yahweh would truly show himself to be the one true God. Thus, “I am Yahweh” is fitting here (see B. Jacob, Exodus, 312).

[12:29]  ³¹ sn The next section records the deliverance of Israel from Egypt, and so becomes the turning point of the book. Verses 28 and 29 could be included in the exposition of the previous section as the culmination of that part. The message might highlight God’s requirement for deliverance from bondage through the application of the blood of the sacrifice, God’s instruction for the memorial of deliverance through the purging of corruption, and the compliance of those who believed the message. But these verses also form the beginning of this next section (and so could be used transitionally). This unit includes the judgment on Egypt (29-30), the exodus from Egypt (31-39) and the historical summation and report (40-42).

[12:29]  ³² tn The verse begins with the temporal indicator וַיְהִי (vayÿhi), often translated “and it came to pass.” Here it could be left untranslated: “In the middle of the night Yahweh attacked.” The word order of the next and main clause furthers the emphasis by means of the vav disjunctive on the divine name preceding the verb. The combination of these initial and disjunctive elements helps to convey the suddenness of the attack, while its thoroughness is stressed by the repetition of “firstborn” in the rest of the verse, the merism (“from the firstborn of Pharaoh…to the firstborn of the captive”), and the mention of cattle.

[12:30]  ³⁴ tn Heb “arose,” the verb קוּם (qum) in this context certainly must describe a less ceremonial act. The entire country woke up in terror because of the deaths.

[12:30]  ³⁵ tn The noun is an adverbial accusative of time – “in the night” or “at night.”

[12:30]  ³⁶ sn Or so it seemed. One need not push this description to complete literalness. The reference would be limited to houses that actually had firstborn people or animals. In a society in which households might include more than one generation of humans and animals, however, the presence of a firstborn human or animal would be the rule rather than the exception.

[12:31]  ³⁷ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Pharaoh) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[12:31]  ³⁸ tn The urgency in Pharaoh’s words is caught by the abrupt use of the imperatives – “get up, go” (קוּמוּ צְּאוּ, qumu tsÿ’u), and “go, serve” (וּלְכוּ עִבְדוּ, ulÿkhu ’ivdu) and “take” and “leave/go” (וָלֵכוּ…קְחוּ, qÿkhu...valekhu).

[12:31]  ³⁹ tn Heb “as you have said.” The same phrase also occurs in the following verse.

[14:21]  ⁴⁰ tn Or “drove the sea back” (NIV, NCV, NRSV, TEV). The verb is simply the Hiphil of הָלַךְ (halakh, “to walk, go”). The context requires that it be interpreted along the lines of “go back, go apart.”

[34:28]  ⁴³ tn These too are adverbial in relation to the main clause, telling how long Moses was with Yahweh on the mountain.

[34:28]  ⁴⁴ tn Heb “the ten words,” though “commandments” is traditional.