Exodus 14:20

14:20 It came between the Egyptian camp and the Israelite camp; it was a dark cloud ¹  and it lit up the night so that one camp did not come near the other ²  the whole night. ³ 

Exodus 19:9

19:9 The Lord said to Moses, “I am going to come ⁴  to you in a dense cloud, ⁵  so that the people may hear when I speak with you and so that they will always believe in you.” ⁶  And Moses told the words of the people to the Lord.

Exodus 19:16

19:16 On ⁷  the third day in the morning there was thunder and lightning and a dense ⁸  cloud on the mountain, and the sound of a very loud ⁹  horn; ¹⁰  all the people who were in the camp trembled.

[14:20]  ¹ 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]  ² 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]  ³ 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.

[19:9]  ⁴ tn The construction uses the deictic particle and the participle to express the imminent future, what God was about to do. Here is the first announcement of the theophany.

[19:9]  ⁵ tn Heb “the thickness of the cloud”; KJV, ASV, NASB, NCV, TEV, CEV, NLT “in a thick cloud.”

[19:9]  ⁶ tn Since “and also in you” begins the clause, the emphasis must be that the people would also trust Moses. See Exod 4:1-9, 31; 14:31.

[19:16]  ⁷ tn Heb “and it was on.”

[19:16]  ⁸ tn Heb “heavy” (כָּבֵד, kaved).

[19:16]  ⁹ tn Literally “strong” (חָזָק, khazaq).

[19:16]  ¹⁰ tn The word here is שֹׁפָר (shofar), the normal word for “horn.” This word is used especially to announce something important in a public event (see 1 Kgs 1:34; 2 Sam 6:15). The previous word used in the context (v. 16) was יֹבֵל (yovel, “ram’s horn”).