Exodus 16:21

16:21 So they gathered it each morning, ¹  each person according to what he could eat, and when the sun got hot, it would melt. ² 

Exodus 30:7

30:7 Aaron is to burn sweet incense ³  on it morning by morning; when he attends ⁴  to the lamps he is to burn incense. ⁵ 

Exodus 29:39

29:39 The first lamb you are to prepare in the morning, and the second lamb you are to prepare around sundown. ⁶ 

Exodus 36:3

36:3 and they received from Moses all the offerings the Israelites had brought to do ⁷  the work for the service of the sanctuary, and they still continued to bring him a freewill offering each morning. ⁸ 

Exodus 7:15

7:15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning when ⁹  he goes out to the water. Position yourself ¹⁰  to meet him by the edge of the Nile, ¹¹  and take ¹²  in your hand the staff ¹³  that was turned into a snake.

Exodus 9:3

9:3 then the hand of the Lord will surely bring ¹⁴  a very terrible plague ¹⁵  on your livestock in the field, on the horses, the donkeys, the camels, ¹⁶  the herds, and the flocks.

Exodus 34:2

34:2 Be prepared ¹⁷  in the morning, and go up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and station yourself ¹⁸  for me there on the top of the mountain.

Exodus 8:20

The Fourth Blow: Flies

8:20 ¹⁹ The Lord ²⁰  said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning and position yourself before Pharaoh as he goes out to the water, and tell him, ‘Thus says the Lord, “Release my people that they may serve me!

Exodus 9:13

The Seventh Blow: Hail

9:13 ²¹ The Lord said ²²  to Moses, “Get up early in the morning, stand ²³  before Pharaoh, and tell him, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews: “Release my people so that they may serve me!

Exodus 16:8

16:8 Moses said, “You will know this ²⁴  when the Lord gives you ²⁵  meat to eat in the evening and bread in the morning to satisfy you, because the Lord has heard your murmurings that you are murmuring against him. As for us, what are we? ²⁶  Your murmurings are not against us, ²⁷  but against the Lord.”

Exodus 24:4

24:4 and Moses wrote down all the words of the Lord. Early in the morning he built ²⁸  an altar at the foot ²⁹  of the mountain and arranged ³⁰  twelve standing stones ³¹  – according to the twelve tribes of Israel.

Exodus 34:4

34:4 So Moses ³²  cut out two tablets of stone like the first; ³³  early in the morning he went up ³⁴  to Mount Sinai, just as the Lord had commanded him, and he took in his hand the two tablets of stone.

[16:21]  ¹ tn Heb “morning by morning.” This is an example of the repetition of words to express the distributive sense; here the meaning is “every morning” (see GKC 388 §121.c).

[16:21]  ² tn The perfect tenses here with vav (ו) consecutives have the frequentative sense; they function in a protasis-apodosis relationship (GKC 494 §159.g).

[30:7]  ³ tn The text uses a cognate accusative (“incense”) with the verb “to burn” or “to make into incense/sweet smoke.” Then, the noun “sweet spices” is added in apposition to clarify the incense as sweet.

[30:7]  ⁴ tn The Hebrew is בְּהֵיטִיבוֹ (bÿhetivo), a Hiphil infinitive construct serving in a temporal clause. The Hebrew verb means “to make good” and so in this context “to fix” or “to dress.” This refers to cleansing and trimming the lamps.

[30:7]  ⁵ sn The point of the little golden altar of incense is normally for intercessory prayer, and then at the Day of Atonement for blood applied atonement. The instructions for making it show that God wanted his people to make a place for prayer. The instructions for its use show that God expects that the requests of his people will be pleasing to him.

[29:39]  ⁵ tn Heb “between the two evenings” or “between the two settings” (בֵּין הָעַרְבָּיִם, ben ha’arbayim). This expression has had a good deal of discussion. (1) Tg. Onq. says “between the two suns,” which the Talmud explains as the time between the sunset and the time the stars become visible. More technically, the first “evening” would be the time between sunset and the appearance of the crescent moon, and the second “evening” the next hour, or from the appearance of the crescent moon to full darkness (see Deut 16:6 – “at the going down of the sun”). (2) Saadia, Rashi, and Kimchi say the first evening is when the sun begins to decline in the west and cast its shadows, and the second evening is the beginning of night. (3) The view adopted by the Pharisees and the Talmudists (b. Pesahim 61a) is that the first evening is when the heat of the sun begins to decrease, and the second evening begins at sunset, or, roughly from 3-5 p.m. The Mishnah (m. Pesahim 5:1) indicates the lamb was killed about 2:30 p.m. – anything before noon was not valid. S. R. Driver concludes from this survey that the first view is probably the best, although the last view was the traditionally accepted one (Exodus, 89-90). Late afternoon or early evening seems to be intended, the time of twilight perhaps.

[36:3]  ⁷ tn In the Hebrew text the infinitive “to do it” comes after “sanctuary”; it makes a smoother rendering in English to move it forward, rather than reading “brought for the work.”

[36:3]  ⁸ tn Heb “in the morning, in the morning.”

[7:15]  ⁹ tn The clause begins with הִנֵּה (hinneh); here it provides the circumstances for the instruction for Moses – he is going out to the water so go meet him. A temporal clause translation captures the connection between the clauses.

[7:15]  ¹⁰ tn The instruction to Moses continues with this perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive following the imperative. The verb means “to take a stand, station oneself.” It seems that Pharaoh’s going out to the water was a regular feature of his day and that Moses could be there waiting to meet him.

[7:15]  ¹¹ sn The Nile, the source of fertility for the country, was deified by the Egyptians. There were religious festivals held to the god of the Nile, especially when the Nile was flooding. The Talmud suggests that Pharaoh in this passage went out to the Nile to make observations as a magician about its level. Others suggest he went out simply to bathe or to check the water level – but that would not change the view of the Nile that was prevalent in the land.

[7:15]  ¹² tn The verb תִּקַּח (tiqqakh), the Qal imperfect of לָקַח (laqakh), functions here as the imperfect of instruction, or injunction perhaps, given the word order of the clause.

[7:15]  ¹³ tn The final clause begins with the noun and vav disjunctive, which singles this instruction out for special attention – “now the staff…you are to take.”

[9:3]  ¹¹ tn The form used here is הוֹיָה (hoyah), the Qal active participle, feminine singular, from the verb “to be.” This is the only place in the OT that this form occurs. Ogden shows that this form is appropriate with the particle הִנֵּה (hinneh) to stress impending divine action, and that it conforms to the pattern in these narratives where five times the participle is used in the threat to Pharaoh (7:17; 8:2; 9:3, 14; 10:4). See G. S. Ogden, “Notes on the Use of הויה in Exodus IX. 3,” VT 17 (1967): 483-84.

[9:3]  ¹² tn The word דֶּבֶר (dever) is usually translated “pestilence” when it applies to diseases for humans. It is used only here and in Ps 78:50 for animals.

[9:3]  ¹³ sn The older view that camels were not domesticated at this time (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 70; W. F. Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, 96; et. al.) has been corrected by more recently uncovered information (see K. A. Kitchen, NBD³ 160-61).

[34:2]  ¹³ tn The form is a Niphal participle that means “be prepared, be ready.” This probably means that Moses was to do in preparation what the congregation had to do back in Exod 19:11-15.

[34:2]  ¹⁴ sn The same word is used in Exod 33:21. It is as if Moses was to be at his post when Yahweh wanted to communicate to him.

[8:20]  ¹⁵ sn The announcement of the fourth plague parallels that of the first plague. Now there will be flies, likely dogflies. Egypt has always suffered from flies, more so in the summer than in the winter. But the flies the plague describes involve something greater than any normal season for flies. The main point that can be stressed in this plague comes by tracing the development of the plagues in their sequence. Now, with the flies, it becomes clear that God can inflict suffering on some people and preserve others – a preview of the coming judgment that will punish Egypt but set Israel free. God is fully able to keep the dog-fly in the land of the Egyptians and save his people from these judgments.

[8:20]  ¹⁶ tn Heb “And Yahweh said.”

[9:13]  ¹⁷ sn With the seventh plague there is more explanation of what God is doing to Pharaoh. This plague begins with an extended lesson (vv. 13-21). Rain was almost unknown in Egypt, and hail and lightning were harmless. The Egyptians were fascinated by all these, though, and looked on them as portentous. Herodotus describes how they studied such things and wrote them down (1.2.c.38). If ordinary rainstorms were ominous, what must fire and hail have been? The Egyptians had denominated fire Hephaistos, considering it to be a mighty deity (cf. Diodorus, 1.1.c.1). Porphry says that at the opening of the temple of Serapis the Egyptians worshiped with water and fire. If these connections were clearly understood, then these elements in the plague were thought to be deities that came down on their own people with death and destruction.

[9:13]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “and Yahweh said.”

[9:13]  ¹⁹ tn Or “take your stand.”

[16:8]  ¹⁹ tn “You will know this” has been added to make the line smooth. Because of the abruptness of the lines in the verse, and the repetition with v. 7, B. S. Childs (Exodus [OTL], 273) thinks that v. 8 is merely a repetition by scribal error – even though the versions render it as the MT has it. But B. Jacob (Exodus, 447) suggests that the contrast with vv. 6 and 7 is important for another reason – there Moses and Aaron speak, and it is smooth and effective, but here only Moses speaks, and it is labored and clumsy. “We should realize that Moses had properly claimed to be no public speaker.”

[16:8]  ²⁰ tn Here again is an infinitive construct with the preposition forming a temporal clause.

[16:8]  ²¹ tn The words “as for us” attempt to convey the force of the Hebrew word order, which puts emphasis on the pronoun: “and we – what?” The implied answer to the question is that Moses and Aaron are nothing, merely the messengers.

[16:8]  ²² tn The word order is “not against us [are] your murmurings.”

[24:4]  ²¹ tn The two preterites quite likely form a verbal hendiadys (the verb “to get up early” is frequently in such constructions). Literally it says, “and he got up early [in the morning] and he built”; this means “early [in the morning] he built.” The first verb becomes the adverb.

[24:4]  ²² tn “under.”

[24:4]  ²³ tn The verb “arranged” is not in the Hebrew text but has been supplied to clarify exactly what Moses did with the twelve stones.

[24:4]  ²⁴ tn The thing numbered is found in the singular when the number is plural – “twelve standing-stone.” See GKC 433 §134.f. The “standing-stone” could be a small piece about a foot high, or a huge column higher than men. They served to commemorate treaties (Gen 32), or visions (Gen 28) or boundaries, or graves. Here it will function with the altar as a place of worship.

[34:4]  ²³ tn Heb “he”; the referent has been specified here and the name “Moses,” which occurs later in this verse, has been replaced with the pronoun (“he”), both for stylistic reasons.

[34:4]  ²⁴ sn Deuteronomy says that Moses was also to make an ark of acacia wood before the tablets, apparently to put the tablets in until the sanctuary was built. But this ark may not have been the ark built later; or, it might be the wood box, but Bezalel still had to do all the golden work with it.

[34:4]  ²⁵ tn The line reads “and Moses got up early in the morning and went up.” These verbs likely form a verbal hendiadys, the first one with its prepositional phrase serving in an adverbial sense.