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 24:10

24:10 and they saw ⁵  the God of Israel. Under his feet ⁶  there was something like a pavement ⁷  made of sapphire, clear like the sky itself. ⁸ 

Exodus 27:12

27:12 The width of the court on the west side is to be seventy-five feet with hangings, with their ten posts and their ten bases.

Exodus 27:14-15

27:14 The hangings on one side ⁹  of the gate are to be ¹⁰  twenty-two and a half feet long, with their three posts and their three bases. 27:15 On the second side ¹¹  there are to be ¹²  hangings twenty-two and a half feet long, with their three posts and their three bases.

Exodus 37:3

37:3 He cast four gold rings for it that he put ¹³  on its four feet, with ¹⁴  two rings on one side and two rings on the other side.

Exodus 38:9

The Construction of the Courtyard

38:9 He made the courtyard. For the south side ¹⁵  the hangings of the courtyard were of fine twisted linen, one hundred fifty feet long,

Exodus 38:14

38:14 with hangings on one side ¹⁶  of the gate that were twenty-two and a half feet long, with their three posts and their three bases,

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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 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.

⁶ 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).

⁷ tn Or “tiles.”

⁸ 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.

⁹ tn The word literally means “shoulder.” The next words, “of the gate,” have been supplied here and in v. 15. The east end would contain the courtyard’s entry with a wall of curtains on each side of the entry (see v. 16).

¹⁰ tn Here “will be” has been supplied.

¹¹ tn Heb “shoulder.”

¹² tn Here the phrase “there will be” has been supplied.

¹³ tn “that he put” has been supplied.

¹⁴ tn This is taken as a circumstantial clause; the clause begins with the conjunction vav.

¹⁵ tn Heb “south side southward.”

¹⁶ tn The word literally means “shoulder.” The next words, “of the gate,” have been supplied here. The east end contained the courtyard’s entry with a wall of curtains on each side of the entry (see v. 15).