Keluaran 5:6

5:6 That same day Pharaoh commanded ¹  the slave masters and foremen ²  who were ³  over the people: ⁴ 

Keluaran 10:22

10:22 So Moses extended his hand toward heaven, and there was absolute darkness ⁵  throughout the land of Egypt for three days. ⁶ 

[5:6]  ¹ tn Heb “and Pharaoh commanded on that day.”

[5:6]  ² tn The Greek has “scribes” for this word, perhaps thinking of those lesser officials as keeping records of the slaves and the bricks.

[5:6]  ³ tn The phrase “who were” is supplied for clarity.

[5:6]  ⁴ sn In vv. 6-14 the second section of the chapter describes the severe measures by the king to increase the labor by decreasing the material. The emphasis in this section must be on the harsh treatment of the people and Pharaoh’s reason for it – he accuses them of idleness because they want to go and worship. The real reason, of course, is that he wants to discredit Moses (v. 9) and keep the people as slaves.

[10:22]  ⁵ tn The construction is a variation of the superlative genitive: a substantive in the construct state is connected to a noun with the same meaning (see GKC 431 §133.i).

[10:22]  ⁶ sn S. R. Driver says, “The darkness was no doubt occasioned really by a sand-storm, produced by the hot electrical wind…which blows in intermittently…” (Exodus, 82, 83). This is another application of the antisupernatural approach to these texts. The text, however, is probably describing something that was not a seasonal wind, or Pharaoh would not have been intimidated. If it coincided with that season, then what is described here is so different and so powerful that the Egyptians would have known the difference easily. Pharaoh here would have had to have been impressed that this was something very abnormal, and that his god was powerless. Besides, there was light in all the dwellings of the Israelites.