Exodus 4:27

4:27 The Lord said ¹  to Aaron, “Go to the wilderness to meet Moses. So he went and met him at the mountain of God ²  and greeted him with a kiss. ³ 

Exodus 7:15

7:15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning when ⁴  he goes out to the water. Position yourself ⁵  to meet him by the edge of the Nile, ⁶  and take ⁷  in your hand the staff ⁸  that was turned into a snake.

Exodus 18:7

18:7 Moses went out to meet his father-in-law and bowed down and kissed him; ⁹  they each asked about the other’s welfare, and then they went into the tent.

[4:27]  ¹ tn Heb “And Yahweh said.”

[4:27]  ² 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]  ³ tn Heb “and kissed him.”

[7:15]  ⁴ tn The clause begins with הִנֵּה (hinneh); here it provides the circumstances for the instruction for Moses – he is going out to the water so go meet him. A temporal clause translation captures the connection between the clauses.

[7:15]  ⁵ tn The instruction to Moses continues with this perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive following the imperative. The verb means “to take a stand, station oneself.” It seems that Pharaoh’s going out to the water was a regular feature of his day and that Moses could be there waiting to meet him.

[7:15]  ⁶ sn The Nile, the source of fertility for the country, was deified by the Egyptians. There were religious festivals held to the god of the Nile, especially when the Nile was flooding. The Talmud suggests that Pharaoh in this passage went out to the Nile to make observations as a magician about its level. Others suggest he went out simply to bathe or to check the water level – but that would not change the view of the Nile that was prevalent in the land.

[7:15]  ⁷ tn The verb תִּקַּח (tiqqakh), the Qal imperfect of לָקַח (laqakh), functions here as the imperfect of instruction, or injunction perhaps, given the word order of the clause.

[7:15]  ⁸ tn The final clause begins with the noun and vav disjunctive, which singles this instruction out for special attention – “now the staff…you are to take.”

[18:7]  ⁷ sn This is more than polite oriental custom. Jethro was Moses’ benefactor, father-in-law, and a priest. He paid much respect to him. Now he could invite Jethro into his home (see B. Jacob, Exodus, 496).