Exodus 7:25

The Second Blow: Frogs

7:25 ¹ Seven full days passed ²  after the Lord struck ³  the Nile.

Exodus 10:6

10:6 They will fill your houses, the houses of your servants, and all the houses of Egypt, such as ⁴  neither ⁵  your fathers nor your grandfathers have seen since they have been ⁶  in the land until this day!’” Then Moses ⁷  turned and went out from Pharaoh.

Exodus 22:20

22:20 “Whoever sacrifices to a god other than the Lord ⁸  alone must be utterly destroyed. ⁹ 

Exodus 22:28

22:28 “You must not blaspheme ¹⁰  God ¹¹  or curse the ruler of your people.

Exodus 23:3

23:3 and you must not show partiality ¹²  to a poor man in his lawsuit.

Exodus 25:3

25:3 This is the offering you ¹³  are to accept from them: gold, silver, bronze,

Exodus 26:18

26:18 So you are to make the frames for the tabernacle: twenty frames for the south side, ¹⁴ 

Exodus 28:22

28:22 “You are to make for the breastpiece braided chains like cords of pure gold,

Exodus 32:12

32:12 Why ¹⁵  should the Egyptians say, ¹⁶  ‘For evil ¹⁷  he led them out to kill them in the mountains and to destroy ¹⁸  them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger, and relent ¹⁹  of this evil against your people.

Exodus 33:6

33:6 So the Israelites stripped off their ornaments by Mount Horeb.

Exodus 34:8

34:8 Moses quickly bowed ²⁰  to the ground and worshiped

Exodus 36:20

36:20 He made the frames ²¹  for the tabernacle of acacia wood ²²  as uprights. ²³ 

Exodus 36:27-28

36:27 And for the back of the tabernacle on the west he made six frames. 36:28 He made two frames for the corners of the tabernacle on the back.

Exodus 40:11

40:11 You must also anoint the large basin and its pedestal, and you are to sanctify it. ²⁴ 

[7:25]  ¹ sn An attempt to connect this plague with the natural phenomena of Egypt proposes that because of the polluted water due to the high Nile, the frogs abandoned their normal watery homes (seven days after the first plague) and sought cover from the sun in homes wherever there was moisture. Since they had already been exposed to the poisonous water, they died very suddenly. The miracle was in the announcement and the timing, i.e., that Moses would predict this blow, and in the magnitude of it all, which was not natural (Greta Hort, “The Plagues of Egypt,” ZAW 69 [1957]: 95-98). It is also important to note that in parts of Egypt there was a fear of these creatures as embodying spirits capable of great evil. People developed the mentality of bowing to incredibly horrible idols to drive away the bad spirits. Evil spirits are represented in the book of Revelation in the forms of frogs (Rev 16:13). The frogs that the magicians produced could very well have been in the realm of evil spirits. Exactly how the Egyptians thought about this plague is hard to determine, but there is enough evidence to say that the plague would have made them spiritually as well as physically uncomfortable, and that the death of the frogs would have been a “sign” from God about their superstitions and related beliefs. The frog is associated with the god Hapi, and a frog-headed goddess named Heqet was supposed to assist women at childbirth. The plague would have been evidence that Yahweh was controlling their environment and upsetting their beliefs for his own purpose.

[7:25]  ² tn The text literally has “and seven days were filled.” Seven days gave Pharaoh enough time to repent and release Israel. When the week passed, God’s second blow came.

[7:25]  ³ tn This is a temporal clause made up of the preposition, the Hiphil infinitive construct of נָכָה (nakhah), הַכּוֹת (hakkot), followed by the subjective genitive YHWH. Here the verb is applied to the true meaning of the plague: Moses struck the water, but the plague was a blow struck by God.

[10:6]  ⁴ tn The relative pronoun אֲשֶׁר (’asher) is occasionally used as a comparative conjunction (see GKC 499 §161.b).

[10:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “which your fathers have not seen, nor your fathers’ fathers.”

[10:6]  ⁶ tn The Hebrew construction מִיּוֹם הֱיוֹתָם (miyyom heyotam, “from the day of their being”). The statement essentially says that no one, even the elderly, could remember seeing a plague of locusts like this. In addition, see B. Childs, “A Study of the Formula, ‘Until This Day,’” JBL 82 (1963).

[10:6]  ⁷ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[22:20]  ⁷ tn Heb “not to Yahweh.”

[22:20]  ⁸ tn The verb חָרַם (kharam) means “to be devoted” to God or “to be banned.” The idea is that it would be God’s to do with as he liked. What was put under the ban was for God alone, either for his service or for his judgment. But it was out of human control. Here the verb is saying that the person will be utterly destroyed.

[22:28]  ¹⁰ tn The two verbs in this verse are synonyms: קָלַל (qalal) means “to treat lightly, curse,” and אָרַר (’arar) means “to curse.”

[22:28]  ¹¹ tn The word אֱלֹהִים (’elohim) is “gods” or “God.” If taken as the simple plural, it could refer to the human judges, as it has in the section of laws; this would match the parallelism in the verse. If it was taken to refer to God, then the idea of cursing God would be more along the line of blasphemy. B. Jacob says that the word refers to functioning judges, and that would indirectly mean God, for they represented the religious authority, and the prince the civil authority (Exodus, 708).

[23:3]  ¹³ tn The point here is one of false sympathy and honor, the bad sense of the word הָדַר (hadar; see S. R. Driver, Exodus, 237).

[25:3]  ¹⁶ tn The pronoun is plural.

[26:18]  ¹⁹ tn Heb “on the south side southward.”

[32:12]  ²² tn The question is rhetorical; it really forms an affirmation that is used here as a reason for the request (see GKC 474 §150.e).

[32:12]  ²³ tn Heb “speak, saying.” This is redundant in English and has been simplified in the translation.

[32:12]  ²⁴ tn The word “evil” means any kind of life-threatening or fatal calamity. “Evil” is that which hinders life, interrupts life, causes pain to life, or destroys it. The Egyptians would conclude that such a God would have no good intent in taking his people to the desert if now he destroyed them.

[32:12]  ²⁵ tn The form is a Piel infinitive construct from כָּלָה (kalah, “to complete, finish”) but in this stem, “bring to an end, destroy.” As a purpose infinitive this expresses what the Egyptians would have thought of God’s motive.

[32:12]  ²⁶ tn The verb “repent, relent” when used of God is certainly an anthropomorphism. It expresses the deep pain that one would have over a situation. Earlier God repented that he had made humans (Gen 6:6). Here Moses is asking God to repent/relent over the judgment he was about to bring, meaning that he should be moved by such compassion that there would be no judgment like that. J. P. Hyatt observes that the Bible uses so many anthropomorphisms because the Israelites conceived of God as a dynamic and living person in a vital relationship with people, responding to their needs and attitudes and actions (Exodus [NCBC], 307). See H. V. D. Parunak, “A Semantic Survey of NHM,” Bib 56 (1975): 512-32.

[34:8]  ²⁵ tn The first two verbs form a hendiadys: “he hurried…he bowed,” meaning “he quickly bowed down.”

[36:20]  ²⁸ tn There is debate whether the word הַקְּרָשִׁים (haqqÿrashim) means “boards” or “frames” or “planks” (see Ezek 27:6) or “beams,” given the size of them. The literature on this includes M. Haran, “The Priestly Image of the Tabernacle,” HUCA 36 (1965): 192; B. A. Levine, “The Description of the Tabernacle Texts of the Pentateuch,” JAOS 85 (1965): 307-18; J. Morgenstern, “The Ark, the Ephod, and the Tent,” HUCA 17 (1942/43): 153-265; 18 (1943/44): 1-52.

[36:20]  ²⁹ tn “Wood” is an adverbial accusative.

[36:20]  ³⁰ tn The plural participle “standing” refers to how these items will be situated; they will be vertical rather than horizontal (U. Cassuto, Exodus, 354).

[40:11]  ³¹ sn U. Cassuto (Exodus, 480) notes that the items inside the tent did not need to be enumerated since they were already holy, but items in the courtyard needed special attention. People needed to know that items outside the tent were just as holy.