Keluaran 4:14

4:14 Then the Lord became angry with ¹  Moses, and he said, “What about ²  your brother Aaron the Levite? ³  I know that he can speak very well. ⁴  Moreover, he is coming ⁵  to meet you, and when he sees you he will be glad in his heart. ⁶ 

Keluaran 14:4

14:4 I will harden ⁷  Pharaoh’s heart, and he will chase after them. I will gain honor ⁸  because of Pharaoh and because of all his army, and the Egyptians will know ⁹  that I am the Lord.” So this is what they did. ¹⁰ 

Keluaran 33:1

33:1 The Lord said to Moses, “Go up ¹¹  from here, you and the people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land I promised on oath ¹²  to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ ¹³ 

Keluaran 33:5

33:5 For ¹⁴  the Lord had said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites, ‘You are a stiff-necked people. If I went up among you for a moment, ¹⁵  I might destroy you. Now take off your ornaments, ¹⁶  that I may know ¹⁷  what I should do to you.’” ¹⁸ 

Keluaran 33:12

33:12 Moses said to the Lord, “See, you have been saying to me, ‘Bring this people up,’ ¹⁹  but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. But you said, ‘I know you by name, ²⁰  and also you have found favor in my sight.’

Keluaran 33:16

33:16 For how will it be known then that I have found favor in your sight, I and your people? Is it not by your going with us, so that we will be distinguished, I and your people, from all the people who are on the face of the earth?” ²¹ 

[4:14]  ¹ tn Heb “and the anger of Yahweh burned against.”

[4:14]  sn Moses had not dared openly to say “except me” when he asked God to send whomever he wanted to send. But God knew that is what he meant. Moses should not have resisted the call or pleaded such excuses or hesitated with such weak faith. Now God abandoned the gentle answer and in anger brought in a form of retribution. Because Moses did not want to do this, he was punished by not having the honor of doing it alone. His reluctance and the result are like the refusal of Israel to enter the land and the result they experienced (see U. Cassuto, Exodus, 49-50).

[4:14]  ² tn Heb “Is not” or perhaps “Is [there] not.”

[4:14]  ³ sn S. R. Driver (Exodus, 29) suggests that the term “Levite” may refer to a profession rather than ancestry here, because both Moses and Aaron were from the tribe of Levi and there would be little point in noting that ancestry for Aaron. In thinking through the difficult problem of the identity of Levites, he cites McNeile as saying “the Levite” referred to one who had had official training as a priest (cf. Judg 17:7, where a member of the tribe of Judah was a Levite). If it was the duty of the priest to give “torah” – to teach – then some training in the power of language would have been in order.

[4:14]  ⁴ tn The construction uses the Piel infinitive absolute and the Piel imperfect to express the idea that he spoke very well: דַבֵּר יְדַבֵּר (dabber yÿdabber).

[4:14]  sn Now Yahweh, in condescending to Moses, selects something that Moses (and God) did not really need for the work. It is as if he were saying: “If Moses feels speaking ability is so necessary (rather than the divine presence), then that is what he will have.” Of course, this golden-tongued Aaron had some smooth words about how the golden calf was forged!

[4:14]  ⁵ tn The particle הִנֵּה (hinneh) with the participle points to the imminent future; it means “he is about to come” or “here he is coming.”

[4:14]  ⁶ sn It is unlikely that this simply means that as a brother he will be pleased to see Moses, for the narrative has no time for that kind of comment. It is interested in more significant things. The implication is that Aaron will rejoice because of the revelation of God to Moses and the plan to deliver Israel from bondage (see B. Jacob, Exodus, 93).

[14:4]  ⁷ tn In this place the verb חָזַק (hazaq) is used; it indicates that God would make Pharaoh’s will strong or firm.

[14:4]  ⁸ tn The form is וְאִכָּבְדָה (vÿ’ikkavÿda), the Niphal cohortative; coming after the perfect tenses with vav (ו) consecutives expressing the future, this cohortative indicates the purpose of the hardening and chasing. Yahweh intended to gain glory by this final and great victory over the strength of Pharaoh. There is irony in this expression since a different form of the word was used frequently to describe Pharaoh’s hard heart. So judgment will not only destroy the wicked – it will reveal the glory and majesty of the sovereignty of God.

[14:4]  ⁹ tn This is the perfect tense with the vav (ו) consecutive. But it announces the fulfillment of an long standing purpose – that they might know.

[14:4]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “and they did so.”

[33:1]  ¹¹ tn The two imperatives underscore the immediacy of the demand: “go, go up,” meaning “get going up” or “be on your way.”

[33:1]  ¹² tn Or “the land which I swore.”

[33:1]  ¹³ tn Heb “seed.”

[33:5]  ¹⁴ tn The verse simply begins “And Yahweh said.” But it is clearly meant to be explanatory for the preceding action of the people.

[33:5]  ¹⁵ tn The construction is formed with a simple imperfect in the first half and a perfect tense with vav (ו) in the second half. Heb “[in] one moment I will go up in your midst and I will destroy you.” The verse is certainly not intended to say that God was about to destroy them. That, plus the fact that he has announced he will not go in their midst, leads most commentators to take this as a conditional clause: “If I were to do such and such, then….”

[33:5]  ¹⁶ tn The Hebrew text also has “from on you.”

[33:5]  ¹⁷ tn The form is the cohortative with a vav (ו) following the imperative; it therefore expresses the purpose or result: “strip off…that I may know.” The call to remove the ornaments must have been perceived as a call to show true repentance for what had happened. If they repented, then God would know how to deal with them.

[33:5]  ¹⁸ tn This last clause begins with the interrogative “what,” but it is used here as an indirect interrogative. It introduces a noun clause, the object of the verb “know.”

[33:12]  ¹⁹ tn The Hiphil imperative is from the same verb that has been used before for bringing the people up from Egypt and leading them to Canaan.

[33:12]  ²⁰ tn That is, “chosen you.”

[33:16]  ²¹ sn See W. Brueggemann, “The Crisis and Promise of Presence in Israel,” HBT 1 (1979): 47-86; and N. M. Waldman, “God’s Ways – A Comparative Note,” JQR 70 (1979): 67-70.