Keluaran 14:6-7

14:6 Then he prepared ¹  his chariots and took his army ²  with him. 14:7 He took six hundred select ³  chariots, and all the rest of the chariots of Egypt, ⁴  and officers ⁵  on all of them.

Yeremia 51:21

51:21 I used you to smash horses and their riders. ⁶ 

I used you to smash chariots and their drivers.

[14:6]  ¹ tn Heb “bound.”

[14:6]  ² tn Heb “his people.”

[14:7]  ³ tn The passive participle of the verb “to choose” means that these were “choice” or superb chariots.

[14:7]  ⁴ tn Heb “every chariot of Egypt.” After the mention of the best chariots, the meaning of this description is “all the other chariots.”

[14:7]  ⁵ tn The word שָׁלִשִׁם (shalishim) means “officers” or some special kind of military personnel. At one time it was taken to mean a “three man chariot,” but the pictures of Egyptian chariots only show two in a chariot. It may mean officers near the king, “men of the third rank” (B. Jacob, Exodus, 394). So the chariots and the crew represented the elite. See the old view by A. E. Cowley that linked it to a Hittite word (“A Hittite Word in Hebrew,” JTS 21 [1920]: 326), and the more recent work by P. C. Craigie connecting it to Egyptian “commander” (“An Egyptian Expression in the Song of the Sea: Exodus XV.4,” VT 20 [1970]: 85).

[51:21]  ⁶ tn Heb “horse and its rider.” However, the terms are meant as generic or collective singulars (cf. GKC 395 §123.b) and are thus translated by the plural. The same thing is true of all the terms in vv. 21-23b. The terms in vv. 20c-d, 23c are plural.