Keluaran 10:6

10:6 They will fill your houses, the houses of your servants, and all the houses of Egypt, such as ¹  neither ²  your fathers nor your grandfathers have seen since they have been ³  in the land until this day!’” Then Moses ⁴  turned and went out from Pharaoh.

Keluaran 13:13

13:13 Every firstling ⁵  of a donkey you must redeem ⁶  with a lamb, and if you do not redeem it, then you must break its neck. ⁷  Every firstborn of ⁸  your sons you must redeem.

Keluaran 34:28

34:28 So he was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; ⁹  he did not eat bread, and he did not drink water. He wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the ten commandments. ¹⁰ 

[10:6]  ¹ tn The relative pronoun אֲשֶׁר (’asher) is occasionally used as a comparative conjunction (see GKC 499 §161.b).

[10:6]  ² tn Heb “which your fathers have not seen, nor your fathers’ fathers.”

[10:6]  ³ 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]  ⁴ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[13:13]  ⁵ tn Heb “and every opener [of a womb].”

[13:13]  ⁶ tn The verb תִּפְדֶּה (tifdeh), the instructional imperfect, refers to the idea of redemption by paying a cost. This word is used regularly of redeeming a person, or an animal, from death or servitude (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 109).

[13:13]  ⁷ tn The conditional clause uses an imperfect tense; this is followed by a perfect tense with the vav consecutive providing the obligation or instruction. The owner might not redeem the donkey, but if he did not, he could not keep it, he had to kill it by breaking its neck (so either a lamb for it, or the donkey itself). The donkey could not be killed by shedding blood because that would make it a sacrifice, and that was not possible with this kind of animal. See G. Brin, “The Firstling of Unclean Animals,” JQR 68 (1977): 1-15.

[13:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “and every firstborn of man among your sons.” The addition of “man” is clearly meant to distinguish firstborn humans from animals.

[13:13]  sn One was to sacrifice the firstborn animals to Yahweh, but the children were to be redeemed by their fathers. The redemption price was five shekels (Num 18:15-16).

[34:28]  ⁹ tn These too are adverbial in relation to the main clause, telling how long Moses was with Yahweh on the mountain.

[34:28]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “the ten words,” though “commandments” is traditional.