Keluaran 2:3

2:3 But when she was no longer able to hide him, she took a papyrus basket ¹  for him and sealed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and set it among the reeds along the edge of the Nile. ² 

Keluaran 6:6

6:6 Therefore, tell the Israelites, ‘I am the Lord. I will bring you out ³  from your enslavement to ⁴  the Egyptians, I will rescue you from the hard labor they impose, ⁵  and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.

Keluaran 7:17

7:17 Thus says the Lord: “By this you will know that I am the Lord: I am going to strike ⁶  the water of the Nile with the staff that is in my hand, and it will be turned into blood. ⁷ 

Keluaran 12:39

12:39 They baked cakes of bread without yeast using the dough they had brought from Egypt, for it was made without yeast – because they were thrust out ⁸  of Egypt and were not able to delay, they ⁹  could not prepare ¹⁰  food for themselves either.

Keluaran 17:12

17:12 When ¹¹  the hands of Moses became heavy, ¹²  they took a stone and put it under him, and Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side and one on the other, ¹³  and so his hands were steady ¹⁴  until the sun went down.

Keluaran 21:8

21:8 If she does not please ¹⁵  her master, who has designated her ¹⁶  for himself, then he must let her be redeemed. ¹⁷  He has no right ¹⁸  to sell her to a foreign nation, because he has dealt deceitfully ¹⁹  with her.

[2:3]  ¹ sn See on the meaning of this basket C. Cohen, “Hebrew tbh: Proposed Etymologies,” JANESCU 9 (1972): 36-51. This term is used elsewhere only to refer to the ark of Noah. It may be connected to the Egyptian word for “chest.”

[2:3]  ² sn The circumstances of the saving of the child Moses have prompted several attempts by scholars to compare the material to the Sargon myth. See R. F. Johnson, IDB 3:440-50; for the text see L. W. King, Chronicles concerning Early Babylonian Kings, 2:87-90. Those who see the narrative using the Sargon story’s pattern would be saying that the account presents Moses in imagery common to the ancient world’s expectations of extraordinary achievement and deliverance. In the Sargon story the infant’s mother set him adrift in a basket in a river; he was loved by the gods and destined for greatness. Saying Israel used this to invent the account in Exodus would undermine its reliability. But there are other difficulties with the Sargon comparison, not the least of which is the fact that the meaning and function of the Sargon story are unclear. Second, there is no outside threat to the child Sargon. The account simply shows how a child was exposed, rescued, nurtured, and became king (see B. S. Childs, Exodus [OTL], 8-12). Third, other details do not fit: Moses’ father is known, Sargon’s is not; Moses is never abandoned, since he is never out of the care of his parents, and the finder is a princess and not a goddess. Moreover, without knowing the precise function and meaning of the Sargon story, it is almost impossible to explain its use as a pattern for the biblical account. By itself, the idea of a mother putting a child by the river if she wants him to be found would have been fairly sensible, for that is where the women of the town would be washing their clothes or bathing. If someone wanted to be sure the infant was discovered by a sympathetic woman, there would be no better setting (see R. A. Cole, Exodus [TOTC], 57). While there need not be a special genre of storytelling here, it is possible that Exodus 2 might have drawn on some of the motifs and forms of the other account to describe the actual event in the sparing of Moses – if they knew of it. If so it would show that Moses was cast in the form of the greats of the past.

[6:6]  ³ sn The verb וְהוֹצֵאתִי (vÿhotse’ti) is a perfect tense with the vav (ו) consecutive, and so it receives a future translation – part of God’s promises. The word will be used later to begin the Decalogue and other covenant passages – “I am Yahweh who brought you out….”

[6:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “from under the burdens of” (so KJV, NASB); NIV “from under the yoke of.”

[6:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “from labor of them.” The antecedent of the pronoun is the Egyptians who have imposed slave labor on the Hebrews.

[7:17]  ⁶ tn The construction using הִנֵּה (hinneh) before the participle (here the Hiphil participle מַכֶּה, makkeh) introduces a futur instans use of the participle, expressing imminent future, that he is about to do something.

[7:17]  ⁷ sn W. C. Kaiser summarizes a view that has been adopted by many scholars, including a good number of conservatives, that the plagues overlap with natural phenomena in Egypt. Accordingly, the “blood” would not be literal blood, but a reddish contamination in the water. If there was an unusually high inundation of the Nile, the water flowed sluggishly through swamps and was joined with the water from the mountains that washed out the reddish soil. If the flood were high, the water would have a deeper red color. In addition to this discoloration, there is said to be a type of algae which produce a stench and a deadly fluctuation of the oxygen level of the river that is fatal to fish (see W. C. Kaiser, Jr., “Exodus,” EBC 2:350; he cites Greta Hort, “The Plagues of Egypt,” ZAW 69 [1957]: 84-103; same title, ZAW 70 [1958]: 48-59). While most scholars would agree that the water did not actually become blood (any more than the moon will be turned to literal blood [Joel 2:31]), many are not satisfied with this kind of explanation. If the event was a fairly common feature of the Nile, it would not have been any kind of sign to Pharaoh – and it should still be observable. The features that would have to be safeguarded are that it was understood to be done by the staff of God, that it was unexpected and not a mere coincidence, and that the magnitude of the contamination, color, stench, and death, was unparalleled. God does use natural features in miracles, but to be miraculous signs they cannot simply coincide with natural phenomena.

[12:39]  ⁸ sn For the use of this word in developing the motif, see Exod 2:17, 22; 6:1; and 11:1.

[12:39]  ⁹ tn Heb “and also.”

[12:39]  ¹⁰ tn The verb is עָשׂוּ (’asu, “they made”); here, with a potential nuance, it is rendered “they could [not] prepare.”

[17:12]  ¹¹ tn Literally “now the hands of Moses,” the disjunctive vav (ו) introduces a circumstantial clause here – of time.

[17:12]  ¹² tn The term used here is the adjective כְּבֵדִים (kÿvedim). It means “heavy,” but in this context the idea is more that of being tired. This is the important word that was used in the plague stories: when the heart of Pharaoh was hard, then the Israelites did not gain their freedom or victory. Likewise here, when the staff was lowered because Moses’ hands were “heavy,” Israel started to lose.

[17:12]  ¹³ tn Heb “from this, one, and from this, one.”

[17:12]  ¹⁴ tn The word “steady” is אֱמוּנָה (’emuna) from the root אָמַן (’aman). The word usually means “faithfulness.” Here is a good illustration of the basic idea of the word – firm, steady, reliable, dependable. There may be a double entendre here; on the one hand it simply says that his hands were stayed so that Israel might win, but on the other hand it is portraying Moses as steady, firm, reliable, faithful. The point is that whatever God commissioned as the means or agency of power – to Moses a staff, to the Christians the Spirit – the people of God had to know that the victory came from God alone.

[21:8]  ¹⁵ tn Heb “and if unpleasant (רָעָה, ra’ah) in the eyes of her master.”

[21:8]  ¹⁶ tn The verb יָעַד (ya’ad) does not mean “betroth, espouse” as some of the earlier translations had it, but “to designate.” When he bought the girl, he designated her for himself, giving her and her family certain expectations.

[21:8]  ¹⁷ tn The verb is a Hiphil perfect with vav (ו) consecutive from פָדָה (padah, “to redeem”). Here in the apodosis the form is equivalent to an imperfect: “let someone redeem her” – perhaps her father if he can, or another. U. Cassuto says it can also mean she can redeem herself and dissolve the relationship (Exodus, 268).

[21:8]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “he has no authority/power,” for the verb means “rule, have dominion.”

[21:8]  ¹⁹ sn The deceit is in not making her his wife or concubine as the arrangement had stipulated.