Exodus 4:14

4:14 Then the Lord became angry with ¹  Moses, and he said, “What about ²  your brother Aaron the Levite? ³  I know that he can speak very well. ⁴  Moreover, he is coming ⁵  to meet you, and when he sees you he will be glad in his heart. ⁶ 

Exodus 33:11

33:11 The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, ⁷  the way a person speaks ⁸  to a friend. Then Moses ⁹  would return to the camp, but his servant, Joshua son of Nun, a young man, did not leave the tent. ¹⁰ 

Exodus 34:34

34:34 But when Moses went in ¹¹  before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil until he came out. ¹²  Then he would come out and tell the Israelites what he had been commanded. ¹³ 

[4:14]  ¹ tn Heb “and the anger of Yahweh burned against.”

[4:14]  ² tn Heb “Is not” or perhaps “Is [there] not.”

[4:14]  ³ sn S. R. Driver (Exodus, 29) suggests that the term “Levite” may refer to a profession rather than ancestry here, because both Moses and Aaron were from the tribe of Levi and there would be little point in noting that ancestry for Aaron. In thinking through the difficult problem of the identity of Levites, he cites McNeile as saying “the Levite” referred to one who had had official training as a priest (cf. Judg 17:7, where a member of the tribe of Judah was a Levite). If it was the duty of the priest to give “torah” – to teach – then some training in the power of language would have been in order.

[4:14]  ⁴ tn The construction uses the Piel infinitive absolute and the Piel imperfect to express the idea that he spoke very well: דַבֵּר יְדַבֵּר (dabber yÿdabber).

[4:14]  ⁵ tn The particle הִנֵּה (hinneh) with the participle points to the imminent future; it means “he is about to come” or “here he is coming.”

[4:14]  ⁶ sn It is unlikely that this simply means that as a brother he will be pleased to see Moses, for the narrative has no time for that kind of comment. It is interested in more significant things. The implication is that Aaron will rejoice because of the revelation of God to Moses and the plan to deliver Israel from bondage (see B. Jacob, Exodus, 93).

[33:11]  ⁷ tn “Face to face” is circumstantial to the action of the verb, explaining how they spoke (see GKC 489-90 §156.c). The point of this note of friendly relationship with Moses is that Moses was “at home” in this tent speaking with God. Moses would derive courage from this when he interceded for the people (B. Jacob, Exodus, 966).

[33:11]  ⁸ tn The verb in this clause is a progressive imperfect.

[33:11]  ⁹ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[33:11]  ¹⁰ sn Moses did not live in the tent. But Joshua remained there most of the time to guard the tent, it seems, lest any of the people approach it out of curiosity.

[34:34]  ¹³ tn The construction uses a infinitive construct for the temporal clause; it is prefixed with the temporal preposition: “and in the going in of Moses.”

[34:34]  ¹⁴ tn The temporal clause begins with the temporal preposition “until,” followed by an infinitive construct with the suffixed subjective genitive.

[34:34]  ¹⁵ tn The form is the Pual imperfect, but since the context demands a past tense here, in fact a past perfect tense, this is probably an old preterite form without a vav consecutive.