Discovery BoxExodus 34:19-28
Context34:19 “Every firstborn of the womb 1 belongs to me, even every firstborn 2 of your cattle that is a male, 3 whether ox or sheep. 34:20 Now the firstling 4 of a donkey you may redeem with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, then break its neck. 5 You must redeem all the firstborn of your sons.
“No one will appear before me empty-handed. 6
34:21 “On six days 7 you may labor, but on the seventh day you must rest; 8 even at the time of plowing and of harvest 9 you are to rest. 10
34:22 “You must observe 11 the Feast of Weeks – the firstfruits of the harvest of wheat – and the Feast of Ingathering at the end 12 of the year. 34:23 At three times 13 in the year all your men 14 must appear before the Lord God, 15 the God of Israel. 34:24 For I will drive out 16 the nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one will covet 17 your land when you go up 18 to appear before the Lord your God three times 19 in the year.
34:25 “You must not offer the blood of my sacrifice with yeast; the sacrifice from the feast of Passover must not remain until the following morning. 20
34:26 “The first of the firstfruits of your soil you must bring to the house of the Lord your God.
You must not cook a young goat in its mother’s milk.” 21
34:27 The Lord said to Moses, “Write down 22 these words, for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” 34:28 So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; 23 he did not eat bread, and he did not drink water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. 24
[34:19] 1 tn Heb “everything that opens the womb.”
[34:19] 2 tn Here too: everything that “opens [the womb].”
[34:19] 3 tn The verb basically means “that drops a male.” The verb is feminine, referring to the cattle.
[34:20] 4 tn Heb “and the one that opens [the womb of] the donkey.”
[34:20] 5 sn See G. Brin, “The Firstling of Unclean Animals,” JQR 68 (1971): 1-15.
[34:20] 6 tn The form is the adverb “empty.”
[34:21] 7 tn This is an adverbial accusative of time.
[34:21] 8 tn Or “cease” (i.e., from the labors).
[34:21] 9 sn See M. Dahood, “Vocative lamed in Exodus 2,4 and Merismus in 34,21,” Bib 62 (1981): 413-15.
[34:21] 10 tn The imperfect tense expresses injunction or instruction.
[34:22] 10 tn The imperfect tense means “you will do”; it is followed by the preposition with a suffix to express the ethical dative to stress the subject.
[34:22] 11 tn The expression is “the turn of the year,” which is parallel to “the going out of the year,” and means the end of the agricultural season.
[34:23] 13 tn “Three times” is an adverbial accusative.
[34:23] 14 tn Heb “all your males.”
[34:23] 15 tn Here the divine name reads in Hebrew הָאָדֹן יְהוָה (ha’adon yÿhvah), which if rendered according to the traditional scheme of “
[34:24] 16 tn The verb is a Hiphil imperfect of יָרַשׁ (yarash), which means “to possess.” In the causative stem it can mean “dispossess” or “drive out.”
[34:24] 17 sn The verb “covet” means more than desire; it means that some action will be taken to try to acquire the land that is being coveted. It is one thing to envy someone for their land; it is another to be consumed by the desire that stops at nothing to get it (it, not something like it).
[34:24] 18 tn The construction uses the infinitive construct with a preposition and a suffixed subject to form the temporal clause.
[34:24] 19 tn The expression “three times” is an adverbial accusative of time.
[34:25] 19 sn See M. Haran, “The Passover Sacrifice,” Studies in the Religion of Ancient Israel (VTSup), 86-116.
[34:26] 22 sn See the note on this same command in 23:19.
[34:27] 25 tn Once again the preposition with the suffix follows the imperative, adding some emphasis to the subject of the verb.
[34:28] 28 tn These too are adverbial in relation to the main clause, telling how long Moses was with Yahweh on the mountain.
[34:28] 29 tn Heb “the ten words,” though “commandments” is traditional.
