Discovery BoxExodus 1:14 
Context1:14 They made their lives bitter 1 by 2 hard service with mortar and bricks and by all kinds of service 3 in the fields. Every kind of service the Israelites were required to give was rigorous. 4
Exodus 29:36
Context29:36 Every day you are to prepare a bull for a purification offering 5 for atonement. 6 You are to purge 7 the altar by making atonement 8 for it, and you are to anoint it to set it apart as holy.
Exodus 35:29
Context35:29 The Israelites brought a freewill offering to the Lord, every man and woman whose heart was willing to bring materials for all the work that the Lord through 9 Moses had commanded them 10 to do.
1 sn The verb מָרַר (marar) anticipates the introduction of the theme of bitterness in the instructions for the Passover.
2 tn The preposition bet (ב) in this verse has the instrumental use: “by means of” (see GKC 380 §119.o).
3 tn Heb “and in all service.”
4 tn The line could be more literally translated, “All their service in which they served them [was] with rigor.” This takes the referent of בָּהֶם (bahem) to be the Egyptians. The pronoun may also resume the reference to the kinds of service and so not be needed in English: “All their service in which they served [was] with rigor.”
5 tn The construction uses a genitive: “a bull of the sin offering,” which means, a bull that is designated for a sin (or better, purification) offering.
6 sn It is difficult to understand how this verse is to be harmonized with the other passages. The ceremony in the earlier passages deals with atonement made for the priests, for people. But here it is the altar that is being sanctified. The “sin [purification] offering” seems to be for purification of the sanctuary and altar to receive people in their worship.
7 tn The verb is וְחִטֵּאתָ (vÿhitte’ta), a Piel perfect of the word usually translated “to sin.” Here it may be interpreted as a privative Piel (as in Ps 51:7 [9]), with the sense of “un-sin” or “remove sin.” It could also be interpreted as related to the word for “sin offering,” and so be a denominative verb. It means “to purify, cleanse.” The Hebrews understood that sin and contamination could corrupt and pollute even things, and so they had to be purged.
8 tn The construction is a Piel infinitive construct in an adverbial clause. The preposition bet (ב) that begins the clause could be taken as a temporal preposition, but in this context it seems to express the means by which the altar was purged of contamination – “in your making atonement” is “by [your] making atonement.”
9 tn Heb “by the hand of.”
10 tn Here “them” has been supplied.
