Exodus 33:10-11

33:10 When all the people would see the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people, each one at the entrance of his own tent, would rise and worship. ¹  33:11 The Lord would speak to Moses face to face, ²  the way a person speaks ³  to a friend. Then Moses ⁴  would return to the camp, but his servant, Joshua son of Nun, a young man, did not leave the tent. ⁵ 

Exodus 34:34-35

34:34 But when Moses went in ⁶  before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil until he came out. ⁷  Then he would come out and tell the Israelites what he had been commanded. ⁸  34:35 When the Israelites would see ⁹  the face of Moses, that ¹⁰  the skin of Moses’ face shone, Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with the Lord. ¹¹ 

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¹ tn All the main verbs in this verse are perfect tenses continuing the customary sequence (see GKC 337 §112.kk). The idea is that the people would get up (rise) when the cloud was there and then worship, meaning in part bow down. When the cloud was not there, there was access to seek God.

² tn “Face to face” is circumstantial to the action of the verb, explaining how they spoke (see GKC 489-90 §156.c). The point of this note of friendly relationship with Moses is that Moses was “at home” in this tent speaking with God. Moses would derive courage from this when he interceded for the people (B. Jacob, Exodus, 966).

³ tn The verb in this clause is a progressive imperfect.

⁴ tn Heb “he”; the referent (Moses) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

⁵ sn Moses did not live in the tent. But Joshua remained there most of the time to guard the tent, it seems, lest any of the people approach it out of curiosity.

⁶ tn The construction uses a infinitive construct for the temporal clause; it is prefixed with the temporal preposition: “and in the going in of Moses.”

⁷ tn The temporal clause begins with the temporal preposition “until,” followed by an infinitive construct with the suffixed subjective genitive.

⁸ tn The form is the Pual imperfect, but since the context demands a past tense here, in fact a past perfect tense, this is probably an old preterite form without a vav consecutive.

⁹ tn Now the perfect tense with vav consecutive is subordinated to the next clause, “Moses returned the veil….”

¹⁰ tn Verbs of seeing often take two accusatives. Here, the second is the noun clause explaining what it was about the face that they saw.

¹¹ tn Heb “with him”; the referent (the Lord) has been specified in the translation for clarity.