Exodus 14:5-7

New English Translation

Footnotes

1. Exodus 14:5 tn Heb “and it was told.” The present translation uses “reported,” since this involves information given to a superior.
2. Exodus 14:5 tn The verb must be given a past perfect translation because the fleeing occurred before the telling.
3. Exodus 14:5 tn Heb “and they said.” The referent (the king and his servants) is supplied for clarity.
4. Exodus 14:5 tn The question literally is “What is this we have done?” The demonstrative pronoun is used as an enclitic particle for emphasis (R. J. Williams, Hebrew Syntax, 24, §118).
5. Exodus 14:5 tn Heb “released Israel.” By metonymy the name of the nation is used collectively for the people who constitute it (the Israelites).
6. Exodus 14:6 tn Heb “bound.”
7. Exodus 14:6 tn Heb “his people.”
8. Exodus 14:7 tn The passive participle of the verb “to choose” means that these were “choice” or superb chariots.
9. Exodus 14:7 tn Heb “every chariot of Egypt.” After the mention of the best chariots, the meaning of this description is “all the other chariots.”
10. Exodus 14:7 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).