Exodus 3:21

3:21 “I will grant this people favor with ¹  the Egyptians, so that when ²  you depart you will not leave empty-handed.

Exodus 4:27

4:27 The Lord said ³  to Aaron, “Go to the wilderness to meet Moses. So he went and met him at the mountain of God ⁴  and greeted him with a kiss. ⁵ 

Exodus 10:8-9

10:8 So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh, and he said to them, “Go, serve the Lord your God. Exactly who is going with you?” ⁶  10:9 Moses said, “We will go with our young and our old, with our sons and our daughters, and with our sheep and our cattle we will go, because we are to hold ⁷  a pilgrim feast for the Lord.”

Exodus 10:24

10:24 Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and said, “Go, serve the Lord – only your flocks and herds will be detained. Even your families ⁸  may go with you.”

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, ⁹  so that they could ¹⁰  travel day or night. ¹¹ 

Exodus 14:19

14:19 The angel of God, who was going before the camp of Israel, moved and went behind them, and the pillar ¹²  of cloud moved from before them and stood behind them.

Exodus 32:34

32:34 So now go, lead the people to the place I have spoken to you about. See, ¹³  my angel will go before you. But on the day that I punish, I will indeed punish them for their sin.” ¹⁴ 

[3:21]  ¹ tn Heb “in the eyes of.” This idiom usually means that someone will be treated well by the observer. It is unlikely that it means here that the Egyptians will like the Hebrews. Rather, it means that the Egyptians will give things to the Hebrews free – gratis (see 12:35-36). Not only will God do mighty works to make the king yield, but also he will work in the minds of the Egyptian people so that they will be favorably disposed to give Israel wealth.

[3:21]  ² tn The temporal indicator (here future) with the particle ki (וְהָיָה כִּי, vÿhaya ki) introduces a temporal clause.

[4:27]  ³ tn Heb “And Yahweh said.”

[4:27]  ⁴ tn S. R. Driver considers that this verse is a continuation of vv. 17 and 18 and that Aaron met Moses before Moses started back to Egypt (Exodus, 33). The first verb, then, might have the nuance of a past perfect: Yahweh had said.

[4:27]  ⁵ tn Heb “and kissed him.”

[10:8]  ⁵ tn The question is literally “who and who are the ones going?” (מִי וָמִי הַהֹלְכִים, mi vami haholÿkhim). Pharaoh’s answer to Moses includes this rude question, which was intended to say that Pharaoh would control who went. The participle in this clause, then, refers to the future journey.

[10:9]  ⁷ tn Heb “we have a pilgrim feast (חַג, khag) to Yahweh.”

[10:24]  ⁹ tn Or “dependents.” The term is often translated “your little ones,” but as mentioned before (10:10), this expression in these passages takes in women and children and other dependents. Pharaoh will now let all the people go, but he intends to detain the cattle to secure their return.

[13:21]  ¹¹ 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]  ¹² tn The infinitive construct here indicates the result of these manifestations – “so that they went” or “could go.”

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

[14:19]  ¹³ sn B. Jacob (Exodus, 400-401) makes a good case that there may have been only one pillar, one cloud; it would have been a dark cloud behind it, but in front of it, shining the way, a pillar of fire. He compares the manifestation on Sinai, when the mountain was on fire but veiled by a dark cloud (Deut 4:11; 5:22). See also Exod 13:21; Num 14:14; Deut 1:33; Neh 9:12, 19; Josh 24:7; Pss 78:14; 105:39.

[32:34]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “behold, look.” Moses should take this fact into consideration.

[32:34]  ¹⁶ sn The Law said that God would not clear the guilty. But here the punishment is postponed to some future date when he would revisit this matter. Others have taken the line to mean that whenever a reckoning was considered necessary, then this sin would be included (see B. Jacob, Exodus, 957). The repetition of the verb traditionally rendered “visit” in both clauses puts emphasis on the certainty – so “indeed.”