Exodus 3:5

3:5 God ¹  said, “Do not approach any closer! ²  Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ³  ground.” ⁴ 

Exodus 18:23

18:23 If you do this thing, and God so commands you, ⁵  then you will be able ⁶  to endure, ⁷  and all these people ⁸  will be able to go ⁹  home ¹⁰  satisfied.” ¹¹ 

[3:5]  ¹ tn Heb “And he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[3:5]  ² sn Even though the Lord was drawing near to Moses, Moses could not casually approach him. There still was a barrier between God and human, and God had to remind Moses of this with instructions. The removal of sandals was, and still is in the East, a sign of humility and reverence in the presence of the Holy One. It was a way of excluding the dust and dirt of the world. But it also took away personal comfort and convenience and brought the person more closely in contact with the earth.

[3:5]  ³ sn The word קֹדֶשׁ (qodesh, “holy”) indicates “set apart, distinct, unique.” What made a mountain or other place holy was the fact that God chose that place to reveal himself or to reside among his people. Because God was in this place, the ground was different – it was holy.

[3:5]  ⁴ tn The causal clause includes within it a typical relative clause, which is made up of the relative pronoun, then the independent personal pronoun with the participle, and then the preposition with the resumptive pronoun. It would literally be “which you are standing on it,” but the relative pronoun and the resumptive pronoun are combined and rendered, “on which you are standing.”

[18:23]  ⁵ tn The form is a Piel perfect with vav (ו) consecutive; it carries the same nuance as the preceding imperfect in the conditional clause.

[18:23]  ⁶ tn The perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive now appears in the apodosis of the conditional sentence – “if you do this…then you will be able.”

[18:23]  ⁷ tn Heb “to stand.” B. Jacob (Exodus, 501) suggests that there might be a humorous side to this: “you could even do this standing up.”

[18:23]  ⁸ tn Literally “this people.”

[18:23]  ⁹ tn The verb is the simple imperfect, “will go,” but given the sense of the passage a potential nuance seems in order.

[18:23]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “his place.”

[18:23]  ¹¹ tn Heb “in peace.”