Keluaran 4:16

4:16 He ¹  will speak for you to the people, and it will be as if ²  he ³  were your mouth ⁴  and as if you were his God. ⁵ 

Keluaran 18:11

18:11 Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods, for in the thing in which they dealt proudly against them he has destroyed them.” ⁶ 

Keluaran 32:4

32:4 He accepted the gold ⁷  from them, ⁸  fashioned ⁹  it with an engraving tool, and made a molten calf. ¹⁰  Then they said, “These are your gods, ¹¹  O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

Keluaran 32:23

32:23 They said to me, ‘Make us gods that will go before us, for as for this fellow Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has happened to him.’

[4:16]  ¹ tn The word “he” represents the Hebrew independent pronoun, which makes the subject emphatic.

[4:16]  ² tn The phrase “as if” is supplied for clarity.

[4:16]  ³ tn Heb “and it will be [that] he, he will be to you for a mouth,” or more simply, “he will be your mouth.”

[4:16]  ⁴ tn Heb “he will be to you for a mouth.”

[4:16]  ⁵ tn The phrase “as if” is supplied for clarity. The word “you” represents the Hebrew independent pronoun, which makes the subject emphatic.

[4:16]  sn Moses will be like God to Aaron, giving him the words to say, inspiring him as God would inspire a prophet. The whole process had now been removed one step. Instead of God speaking to Moses and Moses telling the people, Aaron would be the speaker for a while. But God was still going to work through Moses.

[18:11]  ⁶ tn The end of this sentence seems not to have been finished, or it is very elliptical. In the present translation the phrase “he has destroyed them” is supplied. Others take the last prepositional phrase to be the completion and supply only a verb: “[he was] above them.” U. Cassuto (Exodus, 216) takes the word “gods” to be the subject of the verb “act proudly,” giving the sense of “precisely (כִּי, ki) in respect of these things of which the gods of Egypt boasted – He is greater than they (עֲלֵיהֶם, ‘alehem).” He suggests rendering the clause, “excelling them in the very things to which they laid claim.”

[32:4]  ⁷ tn Here “the gold” has been supplied.

[32:4]  ⁸ tn Heb “from their hand.”

[32:4]  ⁹ tn The verb looks similar to יָצַר (yatsar), “to form, fashion” by a plan or a design. That is the verb used in Gen 2:7 for Yahweh God forming the man from the dust of the ground. If it is here, it is the reverse, a human – the dust of the ground – trying to form a god or gods. The active participle of this verb in Hebrew is “the potter.” A related noun is the word יֵצֶּר (yetser), “evil inclination,” the wicked designs or intent of the human heart (Gen 6:5). But see the discussion by B. S. Childs (Exodus [OTL], 555-56) on a different reading, one that links the root to a hollow verb meaning “to cast out of metal” (as in 1 Kgs 7:15).

[32:4]  ¹⁰ sn The word means a “young bull” and need not be translated as “calf” (although “calf” has become the traditional rendering in English). The word could describe an animal three years old. Aaron probably made an inner structure of wood and then, after melting down the gold, plated it. The verb “molten” does not need to imply that the image was solid gold; the word is used in Isa 30:22 for gold plating. So it was a young bull calf that was overlaid with gold, and the gold was fashioned with the stylus.

[32:4]  ¹¹ tn The word could be singular here and earlier; here it would then be “this is your god, O Israel.” However, the use of “these” indicates more than one god was meant by the image. But their statement and their statue, although they do not use the holy name, violate the first two commandments.