Discovery BoxExodus 12:32-33 
Context12:32 Also, take your flocks and your herds, just as you have requested, and leave. But bless me also.” 1
12:33 The Egyptians were urging 2 the people on, in order to send them out of the land quickly, 3 for they were saying, “We are all dead!”
Exodus 12:39
Context12:39 They baked cakes of bread without yeast using the dough they had brought from Egypt, for it was made without yeast – because they were thrust out 4 of Egypt and were not able to delay, they 5 could not prepare 6 food for themselves either.
1 tn The form is the Piel perfect with a vav (ו) consecutive (וּבֵרַכְתֶּם, uverakhtem); coming in the sequence of imperatives this perfect tense would be volitional – probably a request rather than a command.
sn Pharaoh probably meant that they should bless him also when they were sacrificing to Yahweh in their religious festival – after all, he might reason, he did let them go (after divine judgment). To bless him would mean to invoke good gifts from God for him.
2 tn The verb used here (חָזַק, khazaq) is the same verb used for Pharaoh’s heart being hardened. It conveys the idea of their being resolved or insistent in this – they were not going to change.
3 tn The phrase uses two construct infinitives in a hendiadys, the first infinitive becoming the modifier.
4 sn For the use of this word in developing the motif, see Exod 2:17, 22; 6:1; and 11:1.
5 tn Heb “and also.”
6 tn The verb is עָשׂוּ (’asu, “they made”); here, with a potential nuance, it is rendered “they could [not] prepare.”
