Exodus 34:23-24

34:23 At three times ¹  in the year all your men ²  must appear before the Lord God, ³  the God of Israel. 34:24 For I will drive out ⁴  the nations before you and enlarge your borders; no one will covet ⁵  your land when you go up ⁶  to appear before the Lord your God three times ⁷  in the year.

[34:23]  ¹ tn “Three times” is an adverbial accusative.

[34:23]  ² tn Heb “all your males.”

[34:23]  ³ tn Here the divine name reads in Hebrew הָאָדֹן יְהוָה (ha’adon yÿhvah), which if rendered according to the traditional scheme of “Lord” for “Yahweh” would result in “Lord Lord.” A number of English versions therefore render this phrase “Lord God,” and that convention has been followed here.

[34:24]  ⁴ 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]  ⁵ 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]  ⁶ tn The construction uses the infinitive construct with a preposition and a suffixed subject to form the temporal clause.

[34:24]  ⁷ tn The expression “three times” is an adverbial accusative of time.