Exodus 5:13

5:13 The slave masters were pressuring ¹  them, saying, “Complete ²  your work for each day, just like when there was straw!”

Exodus 14:7

14:7 He took six hundred select ³  chariots, and all the rest of the chariots of Egypt, ⁴  and officers ⁵  on all of them.

Exodus 19:18

19:18 Now Mount Sinai was completely covered with smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire, and its smoke went up like the smoke of a great furnace, ⁶  and the whole mountain shook ⁷  violently.

[5:13]  ¹ tn Or “pressed.”

[5:13]  ² tn כַּלּוּ (kallu) is the Piel imperative; the verb means “to finish, complete” in the sense of filling up the quota.

[14:7]  ³ tn The passive participle of the verb “to choose” means that these were “choice” or superb chariots.

[14:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “every chariot of Egypt.” After the mention of the best chariots, the meaning of this description is “all the other chariots.”

[14:7]  ⁵ tn The word שָׁלִשִׁם (shalishim) means “officers” or some special kind of military personnel. At one time it was taken to mean a “three man chariot,” but the pictures of Egyptian chariots only show two in a chariot. It may mean officers near the king, “men of the third rank” (B. Jacob, Exodus, 394). So the chariots and the crew represented the elite. See the old view by A. E. Cowley that linked it to a Hittite word (“A Hittite Word in Hebrew,” JTS 21 [1920]: 326), and the more recent work by P. C. Craigie connecting it to Egyptian “commander” (“An Egyptian Expression in the Song of the Sea: Exodus XV.4,” VT 20 [1970]: 85).

[19:18]  ⁵ sn The image is that of a large kiln, as in Gen 19:28.

[19:18]  ⁶ tn This is the same word translated “trembled” above (v. 16).