Exodus 24:10

24:10 and they saw ¹  the God of Israel. Under his feet ²  there was something like a pavement ³  made of sapphire, clear like the sky itself. ⁴ 

Exodus 13:19

13:19 Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph ⁵  had made the Israelites solemnly swear, ⁶  “God will surely attend ⁷  to you, and you will carry ⁸  my bones up from this place with you.”

Exodus 12:41

12:41 At the end of the 430 years, on the very day, all the regiments ⁹  of the Lord went out of the land of Egypt.

Exodus 12:46

12:46 It must be eaten in one house; you must not bring any of the meat outside the house, and you must not break a bone of it.

Exodus 12:51

12:51 And on this very day the Lord brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt by their regiments.

Exodus 12:17

12:17 So you will keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because on this very ¹⁰  day I brought your regiments ¹¹  out from the land of Egypt, and so you must keep this day perpetually as a lasting ordinance. ¹² 

[24:10]  ¹ sn S. R. Driver (Exodus, 254) wishes to safeguard the traditional idea that God could not be seen by reading “they saw the place where the God of Israel stood” so as not to say they saw God. But according to U. Cassuto there is not a great deal of difference between “and they saw the God” and “the Lord God appeared” (Exodus, 314). He thinks that the word “God” is used instead of “Yahweh” to say that a divine phenomenon was seen. It is in the LXX that they add “the place where he stood.” In v. 11b the LXX has “and they appeared in the place of God.” See James Barr, “Theophany and Anthropomorphism in the Old Testament,” VTSup 7 (1959): 31-33. There is no detailed description here of what they saw (cf. Isa 6; Ezek 1). What is described amounts to what a person could see when prostrate.

[24:10]  ² sn S. R. Driver suggests that they saw the divine Glory, not directly, but as they looked up from below, through what appeared to be a transparent blue sapphire pavement (Exodus, 254).

[24:10]  ³ tn Or “tiles.”

[24:10]  ⁴ tn Heb “and like the body of heaven for clearness.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven” or “sky” depending on the context; here, where sapphire is mentioned (a blue stone) “sky” seems more appropriate, since the transparent blueness of the sapphire would appear like the blueness of the cloudless sky.

[13:19]  ⁵ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Joseph) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[13:19]  ⁶ tn Heb “solemnly swear, saying” (so NASB). The construction uses the Hiphil infinitive absolute with the Hiphil perfect to stress that Joseph had made them take a solemn oath to carry his bones out of Egypt. “Saying” introduces the content of what Joseph said.

[13:19]  ⁷ sn This verb appears also in 3:16 and 4:31. The repetition here is a reminder that God was doing what he had said he would do and what Joseph had expected.

[13:19]  ⁸ tn The form is a Hiphil perfect with the vav (ו) consecutive; it follows in the sequence of the imperfect tense before it, and so is equal to an imperfect of injunction (because of the solemn oath). Israel took Joseph’s bones with them as a sign of piety toward the past and as a symbol of their previous bond with Canaan (B. Jacob, Exodus, 380).

[12:41]  ⁹ sn This military term is used elsewhere in Exodus (e.g., 6:26; 7:4; 12:17, 50), but here the Israelites are called “the regiments of the Lord.”

[12:17]  ¹³ tn Heb “on the bone of this day.” The expression means “the substance of the day,” the day itself, the very day (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 95).

[12:17]  ¹⁴ tn The word is “armies” or “divisions” (see Exod 6:26 and the note there; cf. also 7:4). The narrative will continue to portray Israel as a mighty army, marching forth in its divisions.

[12:17]  ¹⁵ tn See Exod 12:14.