Exodus 3:5

3:5 God ¹  said, “Do not approach any closer! ²  Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ³  ground.” ⁴ 

Exodus 17:9

17:9 So Moses said to Joshua, “Choose some of our ⁵  men and go out, fight against Amalek. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.”

Exodus 30:28

30:28 the altar for the burnt offering and all its utensils, and the laver and its base.

Exodus 36:20

36:20 He made the frames ⁶  for the tabernacle of acacia wood ⁷  as uprights. ⁸ 

Exodus 40:11

40:11 You must also anoint the large basin and its pedestal, and you are to sanctify it. ⁹ 

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¹ tn Heb “And he”; the referent (God) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

² sn Even though the Lord was drawing near to Moses, Moses could not casually approach him. There still was a barrier between God and human, and God had to remind Moses of this with instructions. The removal of sandals was, and still is in the East, a sign of humility and reverence in the presence of the Holy One. It was a way of excluding the dust and dirt of the world. But it also took away personal comfort and convenience and brought the person more closely in contact with the earth.

³ sn The word קֹדֶשׁ (qodesh, “holy”) indicates “set apart, distinct, unique.” What made a mountain or other place holy was the fact that God chose that place to reveal himself or to reside among his people. Because God was in this place, the ground was different – it was holy.

⁴ tn The causal clause includes within it a typical relative clause, which is made up of the relative pronoun, then the independent personal pronoun with the participle, and then the preposition with the resumptive pronoun. It would literally be “which you are standing on it,” but the relative pronoun and the resumptive pronoun are combined and rendered, “on which you are standing.”

⁵ tn This could be rendered literally “choose men for us.” But the lamed (ל) preposition probably indicates possession, “our men,” and the fact that Joshua was to choose from Israel, as well as the fact that there is no article on “men,” indicates he was to select some to fight.

⁶ tn There is debate whether the word הַקְּרָשִׁים (haqqÿrashim) means “boards” or “frames” or “planks” (see Ezek 27:6) or “beams,” given the size of them. The literature on this includes M. Haran, “The Priestly Image of the Tabernacle,” HUCA 36 (1965): 192; B. A. Levine, “The Description of the Tabernacle Texts of the Pentateuch,” JAOS 85 (1965): 307-18; J. Morgenstern, “The Ark, the Ephod, and the Tent,” HUCA 17 (1942/43): 153-265; 18 (1943/44): 1-52.

⁷ tn “Wood” is an adverbial accusative.

⁸ tn The plural participle “standing” refers to how these items will be situated; they will be vertical rather than horizontal (U. Cassuto, Exodus, 354).

⁹ sn U. Cassuto (Exodus, 480) notes that the items inside the tent did not need to be enumerated since they were already holy, but items in the courtyard needed special attention. People needed to know that items outside the tent were just as holy.