Keluaran 10:28

10:28 Pharaoh said to him, “Go from me! ¹  Watch out for yourself! Do not appear before me again, ²  for when ³  you see my face you will die!”

Keluaran 20:18

20:18 All the people were seeing ⁴  the thundering and the lightning, and heard ⁵  the sound of the horn, and saw ⁶  the mountain smoking – and when ⁷  the people saw it they trembled with fear ⁸  and kept their distance. ⁹ 

Keluaran 24:10

24:10 and they saw ¹⁰  the God of Israel. Under his feet ¹¹  there was something like a pavement ¹²  made of sapphire, clear like the sky itself. ¹³ 

[10:28]  ¹ tn The expression is לֵךְ מֵעָלָי (lekh me’alay, “go from on me”) with the adversative use of the preposition, meaning from being a trouble or a burden to me (S. R. Driver, Exodus, 84; R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 51, §288).

[10:28]  ² tn Heb “add to see my face.” The construction uses a verbal hendiadys: “do not add to see” (אַל־תֹּסֶף רְאוֹת, ’al-toseph rÿ’ot), meaning “do not see again.” The phrase “see my face” means “come before me” or “appear before me.”

[10:28]  ³ tn The construction is בְּיוֹם רְאֹתְךָ (bÿyom rÿ’otÿkha), an adverbial clause of time made up of the prepositional phrase, the infinitive construct, and the suffixed subjective genitive. “In the day of your seeing” is “when you see.”

[20:18]  ⁴ tn The participle is used here for durative action in the past time (GKC 359 §116.o).

[20:18]  ⁵ tn The verb “to see” (רָאָה, ra’ah) refers to seeing with all the senses, or perceiving. W. C. Kaiser suggests that this is an example of the figure of speech called zeugma because the verb “saw” yokes together two objects, one that suits the verb and the other that does not. So, the verb “heard” is inserted here to clarify (“Exodus,” EBC 2:427).

[20:18]  ⁶ tn The verb “saw” is supplied here because it is expected in English (see the previous note on “heard”).

[20:18]  ⁷ tn The preterite with vav (ו) consecutive is here subordinated as a temporal clause to the following clause, which receives the prominence.

[20:18]  ⁸ tn The meaning of נוּעַ (nua’) is “to shake, sway to and fro” in fear. Compare Isa 7:2 – “and his heart shook…as the trees of the forest shake with the wind.”

[20:18]  ⁹ tn Heb “and they stood from/at a distance.”

[24:10]  ¹⁰ sn S. R. Driver (Exodus, 254) wishes to safeguard the traditional idea that God could not be seen by reading “they saw the place where the God of Israel stood” so as not to say they saw God. But according to U. Cassuto there is not a great deal of difference between “and they saw the God” and “the Lord God appeared” (Exodus, 314). He thinks that the word “God” is used instead of “Yahweh” to say that a divine phenomenon was seen. It is in the LXX that they add “the place where he stood.” In v. 11b the LXX has “and they appeared in the place of God.” See James Barr, “Theophany and Anthropomorphism in the Old Testament,” VTSup 7 (1959): 31-33. There is no detailed description here of what they saw (cf. Isa 6; Ezek 1). What is described amounts to what a person could see when prostrate.

[24:10]  ¹¹ sn S. R. Driver suggests that they saw the divine Glory, not directly, but as they looked up from below, through what appeared to be a transparent blue sapphire pavement (Exodus, 254).

[24:10]  ¹² tn Or “tiles.”

[24:10]  ¹³ tn Heb “and like the body of heaven for clearness.” The Hebrew term שָׁמַיִם (shamayim) may be translated “heaven” or “sky” depending on the context; here, where sapphire is mentioned (a blue stone) “sky” seems more appropriate, since the transparent blueness of the sapphire would appear like the blueness of the cloudless sky.