Keluaran 9:19

9:19 So now, send instructions ¹  to gather ²  your livestock and all your possessions in the fields to a safe place. Every person ³  or animal caught ⁴  in the field and not brought into the house – the hail will come down on them, and they will die!”’”

Keluaran 12:4

12:4 If any household is too small ⁵  for a lamb, ⁶  the man ⁷  and his next-door neighbor ⁸  are to take ⁹  a lamb according to the number of people – you will make your count for the lamb according to how much each one can eat. ¹⁰ 

Keluaran 15:1

The Song of Triumph

15:1 ¹¹ Then Moses and the Israelites sang ¹²  this song to the Lord. They said, ¹³ 

“I will sing ¹⁴  to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, ¹⁵ 

the horse and its rider ¹⁶  he has thrown into the sea.

Keluaran 34:9

34:9 and said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, let my Lord ¹⁷  go among us, for we ¹⁸  are a stiff-necked people; pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

[9:19]  ¹ tn The object “instructions” is implied in the context.

[9:19]  ² tn הָעֵז (ha’ez) is the Hiphil imperative from עוּז (’uz, “to bring into safety” or “to secure”). Although there is no vav (ו) linking the two imperatives, the second could be subordinated by virtue of the meanings. “Send to bring to safety.”

[9:19]  ³ tn Heb “man, human.”

[9:19]  ⁴ tn Heb “[who] may be found.” The verb can be the imperfect of possibility.

[12:4]  ⁵ sn Later Judaism ruled that “too small” meant fewer than ten (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 88).

[12:4]  ⁶ tn The clause uses the comparative min (מִן) construction: יִמְעַט הַבַּיִת מִהְיֹת מִשֶּׂה (yim’at habbayit mihyot miseh, “the house is small from being from a lamb,” or “too small for a lamb”). It clearly means that if there were not enough people in the household to have a lamb by themselves, they should join with another family. For the use of the comparative, see GKC 430 §133.c.

[12:4]  ⁷ tn Heb “he and his neighbor”; the referent (the man) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[12:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “who is near to his house.”

[12:4]  ⁹ tn The construction uses a perfect tense with a vav (ו) consecutive after a conditional clause: “if the household is too small…then he and his neighbor will take.”

[12:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “[every] man according to his eating.”

[12:4]  sn The reference is normally taken to mean whatever each person could eat. B. Jacob (Exodus, 299) suggests, however, that the reference may not be to each individual person’s appetite, but to each family. Each man who is the head of a household was to determine how much his family could eat, and this in turn would determine how many families shared the lamb.

[15:1]  ¹¹ sn This chapter is a song of praise sung by Moses and the people right after the deliverance from the Sea. The song itself is vv. 1b-18; it falls into three sections – praise to God (1b-3), the cause for the praise (4-13), and the conclusion (14-18). The point of the first section is that God’s saving acts inspire praise from his people; the second is that God’s powerful acts deliver his people from the forces of evil; and the third section is that God’s demonstrations of his sovereignty inspire confidence in him by his people. So the Victory Song is very much like the other declarative praise psalms – the resolve to praise, the power of God, the victory over the enemies, the incomparability of God in his redemption, and the fear of the people. See also C. Cohen, “Studies in Early Israelite Poetry I: An Unrecognized Case of Three Line Staircase Parallelism in the Song of the Sea,” JANESCU 7 (1975): 13-17; D. N. Freedman, “Strophe and Meter in Exodus 15,” A Light unto My Path, 163-203; E. Levine, “Neofiti I: A Study of Exodus 15,” Bib 54 (1973): 301-30; T. C. Butler, “‘The Song of the Sea’: Exodus 15:1-18: A Study in the Exegesis of Hebrew Poetry,” DissAb 32 (1971): 2782-A.

[15:1]  ¹² tn The verb is יָשִׁיר (yashir), a normal imperfect tense form. But after the adverb “then” this form is to be treated as a preterite (see GKC 314-15 §107.c).

[15:1]  ¹³ tn Heb “and they said, saying.” This has been simplified in the translation for stylistic reasons.

[15:1]  ¹⁴ tn The form is the singular cohortative, expressing the resolution of Moses to sing the song of praise (“I will” being stronger than “I shall”).

[15:1]  ¹⁵ tn This causal clause gives the reason for and summary of the praise. The Hebrew expression has כִּי־גָּאֹה גָּאָה (ki ga’oh ga’ah). The basic idea of the verb is “rise up loftily” or “proudly.” But derivatives of the root carry the nuance of majesty or pride (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 132). So the idea of the perfect tense with its infinitive absolute may mean “he is highly exalted” or “he has done majestically” or “he is gloriously glorious.”

[15:1]  ¹⁶ sn The common understanding is that Egypt did not have people riding horses at this time, and so the phrase the horse and its rider is either viewed as an anachronism or is interpreted to mean charioteers. The word “to ride” can mean on a horse or in a chariot. Some have suggested changing “rider” to “chariot” (re-vocalization) to read “the horse and its chariot.”

[34:9]  ¹⁷ tn The Hebrew term translated “Lord” two times here is אֲדֹנָי (’adonay).

[34:9]  ¹⁸ tn Heb “it is.” Hebrew uses the third person masculine singular pronoun here in agreement with the noun “people.”