Exodus 20:3

20:3 “You shall have no ¹  other gods before me. ² 

Exodus 29:11

29:11 You are to kill the bull before the Lord at the entrance to the tent of meeting

Exodus 34:33

34:33 When Moses finished ³  speaking ⁴  with them, he would ⁵  put a veil on his face.

Exodus 35:20

35:20 So the whole community of the Israelites went out from the presence of Moses.

Exodus 39:36

39:36 the table, all its utensils, and the Bread of the Presence;

Exodus 40:26

40:26 And he put the gold altar in the tent of meeting in front of the curtain,

[20:3]  ¹ tn The possession is expressed here by the use of the lamed (ל) preposition and the verb “to be”: לֹא־יִהְיֶה לְךָ (lo’ yihyeh lÿkha, “there will not be to you”). The negative with the imperfect expresses the emphatic prohibition; it is best reflected with “you will not” and has the strongest expectation of obedience (see GKC 317 §107.o). As an additional way of looking at this line, U. Cassuto suggests that the verb is in the singular in order to say that they could not have even one other god, and the word “gods” is plural to include any gods (Exodus, 241).

[20:3]  ² tn The expression עַל־פָּנָי (’al-panay) has several possible interpretations. S. R. Driver suggests “in front of me,” meaning obliging me to behold them, and also giving a prominence above me (Exodus, 193-94). W. F. Albright rendered it “You shall not prefer other gods to me” (From the Stone Age to Christianity, 297, n. 29). B. Jacob (Exodus, 546) illustrates it with marriage: the wife could belong to only one man while every other man was “another man.” They continued to exist but were not available to her. The point is clear from the Law, regardless of the specific way the prepositional phrase is rendered. God demands absolute allegiance, to the exclusion of all other deities. The preposition may imply some antagonism, for false gods would be opposed to Yahweh. U. Cassuto adds that God was in effect saying that anytime Israel turned to a false god they had to know that the Lord was there – it is always in his presence, or before him (Exodus, 241).

[34:33]  ³ tn Heb “and Moses finished”; the clause is subordinated as a temporal clause to the next clause.

[34:33]  ⁴ tn The Piel infinitive construct is the object of the preposition; the whole phrase serves as the direct object of the verb “finished.”

[34:33]  ⁵ tn Throughout this section the actions of Moses and the people are frequentative. The text tells what happened regularly.