Exodus 7:24

7:24 All the Egyptians dug around the Nile for water to drink, 1  because they could not drink the water of the Nile.

Exodus 8:18

8:18 When 2  the magicians attempted 3  to bring forth gnats by their secret arts, they could not. So there were gnats on people and on animals.

Exodus 9:11

9:11 The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for boils were on the magicians and on all the Egyptians.

Exodus 9:15

9:15 For by now I could have stretched out 4  my hand and struck you and your people with plague, and you would have been destroyed 5  from the earth.

Exodus 16:21

16:21 So they gathered it each morning, 6  each person according to what he could eat, and when the sun got hot, it would melt. 7 

1 sn The text stresses that the water in the Nile, and Nile water that had been diverted or collected for use, was polluted and undrinkable. Water underground also was from the Nile, but it had not been contaminated, certainly not with dead fish, and so would be drinkable.

2 tn The preterite with vav (ו) consecutive is here subordinated to the main clause as a temporal clause.

3 tn Heb “and the magicians did so.”

sn The report of what the magicians did (or as it turns out, tried to do) begins with the same words as the report about the actions of Moses and Aaron – “and they did so” (vv. 17 and 18). The magicians copy the actions of Moses and Aaron, leading readers to think momentarily that the magicians are again successful, but at the end of the verse comes the news that “they could not.” Compared with the first two plagues, this third plague has an important new feature, the failure of the magicians and their recognition of the source of the plague.

4 tn The verb is the Qal perfect שָׁלַחְתִּי (shalakhti), but a past tense, or completed action translation does not fit the context at all. Gesenius lists this reference as an example of the use of the perfect to express actions and facts, whose accomplishment is to be represented not as actual but only as possible. He offers this for Exod 9:15: “I had almost put forth” (GKC 313 §106.p). Also possible is “I should have stretched out my hand.” Others read the potential nuance instead, and render it as “I could have…” as in the present translation.

5 tn The verb כָּחַד (kakhad) means “to hide, efface,” and in the Niphal it has the idea of “be effaced, ruined, destroyed.” Here it will carry the nuance of the result of the preceding verbs: “I could have stretched out my hand…and struck you…and (as a result) you would have been destroyed.”

6 tn Heb “morning by morning.” This is an example of the repetition of words to express the distributive sense; here the meaning is “every morning” (see GKC 388 §121.c).

7 tn The perfect tenses here with vav (ו) consecutives have the frequentative sense; they function in a protasis-apodosis relationship (GKC 494 §159.g).