Exodus 5:21

5:21 and they said to them, “May the Lord look on you and judge, ¹  because you have made us stink ²  in the opinion of ³  Pharaoh and his servants, ⁴  so that you have given them an excuse to kill us!” ⁵ 

Exodus 14:12

14:12 Isn’t this what we told you ⁶  in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone so that we can serve the Egyptians, ⁷  because it is better for us to serve ⁸  the Egyptians than to die in the desert!’” ⁹ 

Job 21:4

21:4 Is my ¹⁰  complaint against a man? ¹¹ 

If so, ¹²  why should I not be impatient? ¹³ 

Proverbs 14:19

14:19 Those who are evil will bow ¹⁴  before those who are good,

and the wicked will bow ¹⁵  at the gates ¹⁶  of the righteous.

[5:21]  ¹ tn The foremen vented their anger on Moses and Aaron. The two jussives express their desire that the evil these two have caused be dealt with. “May Yahweh look on you and may he judge” could mean only that God should decide if Moses and Aaron are at fault, but given the rest of the comments it is clear the foremen want more. The second jussive could be subordinated to the first – “so that he may judge [you].”

[5:21]  ² tn Heb “you have made our aroma stink.”

[5:21]  ³ tn Heb “in the eyes of.”

[5:21]  ⁴ tn Heb “in the eyes of his servants.” This phrase is not repeated in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[5:21]  ⁵ tn Heb “to put a sword in their hand to kill us.” The infinitive construct with the lamed (לָתֶת, latet) signifies the result (“so that”) of making the people stink. Their reputation is now so bad that Pharaoh might gladly put them to death. The next infinitive could also be understood as expressing result: “put a sword in their hand so that they can kill us.”

[14:12]  ⁶ tn Heb “Is not this the word that we spoke to you.”

[14:12]  ⁷ sn U. Cassuto (Exodus, 164) explains this statement by the people as follows: “The question appears surprising at first, for we have not read previously that such words were spoken to Moses. Nor is the purport of the protest of the Israelite foremen (v 21 [5:21]) identical with that of the words uttered now. However, from a psychological standpoint the matter can be easily explained. In the hour of peril the children of Israel remember that remonstrance, and now it seems to them that it was of a sharper character and flowed from their foresight, and that the present situation justifies it, for death awaits them at this moment in the desert.” This declaration that “we told you so,” born of fright, need not have been strictly accurate or logical.

[14:12]  ⁸ tn Heb “better for us to serve.”

[14:12]  ⁹ tn Since Hebrew does not use quotation marks to indicate the boundaries of quotations, there is uncertainty about whether the Israelites’ statement in Egypt includes the end of v. 12 or consists solely of “leave us alone so that we can serve the Egyptians.” In either case, the command to Moses to leave them alone rested on the assumption, spoken or unspoken, that serving Egypt would be less risky than what Moses was proposing. Now with the Egyptian army on the horizon, the Israelites are sure that their worst predictions are about to take place.

[21:4]  ¹⁰ tn The addition of the independent pronoun at the beginning of the sentence (“Is it I / against a man / my complaint”) strengthens the pronominal suffix on “complaint” (see GKC 438 §135.f).

[21:4]  ¹¹ sn The point seems to be that if his complaint were merely against men he might expect sympathy from other men; but no one dares offer him sympathy when his complaint is against God. So he will give free expression to his spirit (H. H. Rowley, Job [NCBC], 147).

[21:4]  ¹² tn On disjunctive interrogatives, see GKC 475 §150.g.

[21:4]  ¹³ tn Heb “why should my spirit/breath not be short” (see Num 21:4; Judg 16:16).

[14:19]  ¹⁴ tn Many versions nuance the perfect tense verb שָׁחַח (shakhakh) as a characteristic perfect. But the proverb suggests that the reality lies in the future. So the verb is best classified as a prophetic perfect (cf. NASB, NIV, CEV, NLT): Ultimately the wicked will acknowledge and serve the righteous – a point the prophets make.

[14:19]  ¹⁵ tn The phrase “will bow” does not appear in this line but is implied by the parallelism; it is supplied in the translation for clarity and smoothness.

[14:19]  ¹⁶ sn J. H. Greenstone suggests that this means that they are begging for favors (Proverbs, 154).