Keluaran 6:6

6:6 Therefore, tell the Israelites, ‘I am the Lord. I will bring you out ¹  from your enslavement to ²  the Egyptians, I will rescue you from the hard labor they impose, ³  and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.

Keluaran 19:5

19:5 And now, if you will diligently listen to me ⁴  and keep ⁵  my covenant, then you will be my ⁶  special possession ⁷  out of all the nations, for all the earth is mine,

Ulangan 4:20

4:20 You, however, the Lord has selected and brought from Egypt, that iron-smelting furnace, ⁸  to be his special people ⁹  as you are today.

[6:6]  ¹ 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]  ² tn Heb “from under the burdens of” (so KJV, NASB); NIV “from under the yoke of.”

[6:6]  ³ tn Heb “from labor of them.” The antecedent of the pronoun is the Egyptians who have imposed slave labor on the Hebrews.

[19:5]  ⁴ tn Heb “listen to my voice.” The construction uses the imperfect tense in the conditional clause, preceded by the infinitive absolute from the same verb. The idiom “listen to the voice of” implies obedience, not just mental awareness of sound.

[19:5]  ⁵ tn The verb is a perfect tense with vav (ו) consecutive; it continues the idea in the protasis of the sentence: “and [if you will] keep.”

[19:5]  ⁶ tn The lamed preposition expresses possession here: “to me” means “my.”

[19:5]  ⁷ tn The noun is סְגֻלָּה (sÿgullah), which means a special possession. Israel was to be God’s special possession, but the prophets will later narrow it to the faithful remnant. All the nations belong to God, but Israel was to stand in a place of special privilege and enormous responsibility. See Deut 7:6; 14:2; 26:18; Ps 135:4; and Mal 3:17. See M. Greenburg, “Hebrew sÿgulla: Akkadian sikiltu,” JAOS 71 (1951): 172ff.

[4:20]  ⁸ tn A כּוּר (kur) was not a source of heat but a crucible (“iron-smelting furnace”) in which precious metals were melted down and their impurities burned away (see I. Cornelius, NIDOTTE 2:618-19); cf. NAB “that iron foundry, Egypt.” The term is a metaphor for intense heat. Here it refers to the oppression and suffering Israel endured in Egypt. Since a crucible was used to burn away impurities, it is possible that the metaphor views Egypt as a place of refinement to bring Israel to a place of submission to divine sovereignty.

[4:20]  ⁹ tn Heb “to be his people of inheritance.” The Lord compares his people to valued property inherited from one’s ancestors and passed on to one’s descendants.